DBWI:Large Scale American Military Intervention in Vietnam?

[theReturner]

In OTL, America helped South Vietnam in their fight against North Vietnam by aiding them with weapons and equipment as well as advise about what they should and should not do. This plan was used under the Eisenhower,Kennedy and Nixon Administarions, and today it seems to have worked out very well. Vietnam is now a united and for the most part democratic country.

So, lets say that instead of this, the US decided to play a larger role in Vietnam, one that would actually see American Troops fighting on the ground in the jungles, like what happened in Korea?

For starters, what would be the POD needed for this to happen?

What would be the short term effects? The long term effects?

Today, would Vietnam be a united democracy, or would Communism still be in power? or would North and South be split, like Korea?

Any thoughts?

OOC: POD is no assassination on JFK, Nixon fallows him by being elected President in 1968.

[Typo]

I can see this being sort of plausible, nothing on the scale of Korea if that's what you are looking at, but more on the scale of the Angola crisis around the same time.

I don't think the NVA would directly invade the south if US troops are in country and the war might have gone on without great domestic disturbance, sending black soldiers into Angola prove to be a nightmare domestically, there wasn't enough asian-americans for the same thing in Vietnam.

I think the VC might have still won out in the end, but only because the US will have pushed them into some sort of power sharing agreement with the RVN government once it becomes clear it will take too much US combat power to maintain the south.

On the otherhand, does this butterfly away America in Angola?

[Emperor Norton I]

OOC: A have a feeling a number of people on my ignore list will pop in here to say something ignorant.

IC:

We would have wiped the floor with the damned Commies. Ike, Kennedy, and Nixon all talked tough but were pansies when it came to getting their hands a little dirty in the short run. We wouldn't have had to wait all those years to see a free Southeast Asia.