Explain how the Vietnam War affected Australian society and/or its relationships with the rest of the world in both the time p

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         VIETNAM WAR EXTENDED RESPONSE                                             EDWARD CHAN – 10 HG1

Question:

Explain how the Vietnam War affected Australian society and/or its relationships with the rest of the world in both the time period of the event and the future.

        Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War not only had extensive effects on the Australian society during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, but also greatly impacted on future generations. 

           Over the period of the Vietnam War, the increasing controversy over the degree to which Australia supported the war led to significant effects on a once cohesive but now divided Australian society. Support for involvement in Vietnam was widely recognised by the majority of society at the beginning of the war. Though, with the increased critical role of the media in changing public opinion, changing views of Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War was especially apparent from the mid-1960’s. Censorship had minor control over newspapers and the television, showing the Australian society horrific atrocities of the war. For example, people were shocked reading press reports of Vietcong suspects being tortured and of prisoners being physically abused disregarding any human rights issues. Widely-published was the My-Lai massacre (16th May 1968) exposing to the Australian society photographs of defenceless Vietnamese people, most of which were women and children, being raped, mutilated and slaughtered. Revealing the nature of the war was the main reason for the growing opposition to Australian involvement in Vietnam. As a result, a large proportion of the Australian society came to believe that troops were being sent to Vietnam to fight for an unpopular dictatorship in a civil war. From 1968 onwards, a continually increasing percentage of the Australian society were convinced they were involved in a war only to win gratitude of the US and where Australia had no part.

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        In addition, the conscription of young men to bolster troop numbers in Vietnam had significant and long-lasting controversial effects on Australian society. The weakened social cohesion over the issue of whether to support or oppose to the Vietnam War was at large a result of the growing tension of the conscription matter. With the introduction of the National Service Act (1964), many groups such as the Returned Service League (RSL), the Catholic Church and supporters of conservative political parties began to question their initial support of the policy of involvement in Vietnam. Selection of 20-year old men based on a ...

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