The Vietnam War was a brutal war for all involved. There were many American and Vietnamese deaths. The United States entered Vietnam with the goal of preventing the spread of communism. The secondary source authors of Thinking Through the Past, George Herring and Loren Baritz, argue why the United States failed in Vietnam. According to these two articles, there were many reasons why the United States failed in the Vietnam War, including lack of a plan, overconfidence in our capabilities, and fighting a war with little support from our people . After analyzing both articles, classroom lessons, and reading The American Promise, it is clear that the root cause that led to our failure was not understanding the Vietnamese and overconfidence in ourselves, the which led to underestimating the capabilities of the Vietnamese. North Vietnam and the final failure of the war. Before our involvement in the Vietnam War, South Vietnam experienced political turmoil, caused by the United States. After the French withdrawal in 1954 the CIA established a non-communist government. The problem was that the United States government was not concerned with whether or not to establish true democracy, but rather with preventing communism. The Diem regime was a totalitarian government and was Catholic. He was anti-communist and that was all the CIA and the American government cared about. The people of South Vietnam did not like him and he was eventually assassinated in 1963 (Wood 4-24). Before the Vietnam War, the United States lived in great fear that communism would spread throughout the world. Politicians and the American people feared the “domino theory.” According to our class lesson, the domino theory is the fear that the United States may... middle of paper... not understand the Vietnamese people. Baritz wrote that “North Vietnam ultimately won its war because it was willing to accept more deaths than we considered rational” (Hollitz 287). The large amount of bombs that the United States dropped on North Vietnam were almost useless, as the North Vietnamese were willing to lose all those people if it gave them the final victory in the war. To conclude, George Herring and Loren Baritz both had plausible and realistic arguments for what led to the eventual failure of Vietnam. From overconfidence to lack of understanding to overconfidence, they all played an important role. Without the support of the American people and the amount of money invested in the war, we could no longer continue to fight a war that the North Vietnamese were destined to win due to our ignorance of their people..