To close, this paper has looked at the factors which made the war in Vietnam so vital to so many. Not least of all, many Americans in that epoch took pride in the United States’ pre-eminent role in beating back the forces of Communism, and many others believed that US institutions would come under increasing fire from outside the nation’s borders if the spread of Communism was not stemmed in Southeast Asia. In the end, while it is easy to ridicule some of those decisions now, placing those determinations within the context of their times reveals that US fears were perfectly understandable.