Effects of the Vietnam War

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Ion Teale

Q3

  There were essentially are range of effects on the USA and its peoples, caused by the Vietnam War. Among the effects were a number of relatively new situations that arose from the war; such as the discomfort it seemed to cause America’s younger generation.

  This was a first and something that America was not prepared for. America was not ready to deal with the kind of youth opposition that it was to face. Four students were killed and nine wounded at Kent University, Ohio when national guardsmen opened fire on a seemingly peaceful protests. The demonstrators were among a growing group of youths that felt that the American government were breaching peoples rights to decide for themselves weather to go and fight or not. Some burned their draft cards as a form of protest. Due to this students were not called up. However people who did burn their draft cards were imprisoned and those that also attempted to avoid the war by leaving the country or claiming insanity to avoid the draft were branded ‘draft’ dodgers. This feeling of ‘anti Vietnam’ grew among families and the media very rapidly and the impact of the war was again demonstrated outside the democrat party convention in 1968 with massive riots outside it. The media proved vital in the general growing anti-Vietnam feeling throughout the US as they were allowed massive freedom to broadcast whatever they liked and thus informing the public on everything going on in Vietnam. This created groups like the ‘Hippies’ who were again youths and devoted to a lifestyle of rebellion. They radicalised protests and created symbols and slogans such as ‘ban the bomb’ and were a direct product of the impact of the war.

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 Another group who were hugely affected by the war were the blacks that were the poorest group in great the American society at the time. The felt that way to much money was being spent on the war, 66 million dollars a day in 1968, and that they were not investing funds into the poverty and in particular blacks in the US. And rightly so as they also felt that it was a ‘white mans war’. Poverty stricken blacks were more likely to be drafted and many southern blacks were not even allowed to vote. So they were fighting in ...

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