why was the vietnam war called a quagmire

It also sent hundreds of thousands of American soldiers into South Vietnam to fight Viet Cong guerrillas (small groups of fighters who launch surpriseĪttacks) and North Vietnamese troops. The United States launched a long and deadly air bombing campaign against North Vietnam during this time. Over the next few years, so-called 'Americanization' of the Vietnam War developed rapidly. 'Abandoning the concept of stability in the South before escalation against the North, policymakers now embraced the concept of stability through escalation, in the desperate hope that military action against Hanoi would prompt a stubbornly elusive political order in Saigon.' involvement considerably in an effort to arrest Saigon's political failure,' writes Brian VanDeMark in Into the Quagmire. 'South Vietnam's accelerating crisis alarmed American policymakers, driving them to deepen U.S. officials and military leaders supported this 'escalation' in American activity because they worried that South Vietnam's crumbling government would otherwise fall to the North Vietnamese Communists. Vietnam Becomes an American War (1965–67)īeginning in 1965, the United States dramatically increased its involvement in the war in Vietnam.

Why was the vietnam war called a quagmire