Vietnam started with Eisenhower

Since Republicans such as Mona Charen and Don Williams wrote a column and a letter to the editor stating that Vietnam was President Kennedy's war, and trying to degrade Sen. John Kerry because of his ties to the Kennedys, we need to set the record straight.

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During the Eisenhower administration, we paid two-thirds of France's military budget while they were fighting the Vietnamese. Before Dien Bien Phu in 1954, we formed the 100th Smoke Generating Battalion in Okinawa. This unit's sole purpose was to train Okinawan soldiers to go to Vietnam and assist the French. It was then realized that this was a violation of the World War II Japanese peace treaty, as no Japanese soldiers could fight on foreign soil. The 29th Infantry, also in Okinawa, then was given intensive jungle training and alerted to assist the French. Planes were preparing to fly to Vietnam when the operation was called off. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, in Singapore, then coined the phrase "brinksmanship of war."

With the fall of Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam was divided: the north communist, the south supposedly democratic. Eisenhower sent advisers to train the South Vietnamese army; these were the first U.S. troops in Vietnam after the treaty. The treaty called for national elections. When it was time for the elections, The United States realized the majority of Vietnamese would have voted for communism, so we called the elections off. Kennedy then was elected into office and inherited this mess.

Kennedy sent troops, but it was said that he was on the verge of withdrawing them when he was assassinated. After President Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency, we manufactured the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the rest is history.

When you look at the facts, any reasonable person would know that it was the Eisenhower administration's policies that led to the Vietnam War.

Carroll Kenny, Martinez

--From the Tuesday, May 4, 2004 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle