Explain why there were such different reactions in the USA to the country's involvement in the conflict in Vietnamin the 1960s?

The positive coverage of the war soon changed when the Vietcong planned a full frontal attack on the American forces striking 100 cities throughout the south of Vietnam. This onslaught was known as the Tet offensive. This attack changed the outlook on the war dramatically as it surprised the American public by its scale.  From this point onwards the media started showing powerful images of the war. People started to find out the true horrors of the war as pictures such as the one of a American soldier cold bloodedly executing a member of the Vietcong in the middle of a Saigon street.  As reports of atrocities spread the story of the My Lai massacre came about. The My Lai massacre occurred on the 16th March 1968 but was kept a secret until November1969.  The American soldiers of Charlie Company had attacked a small village in a savage act that killed many women and children.  This outraged many Americans that their country had killed so many civilians when they where supposed to be there to save them.  The US public opinion was forced into uproar when a university protest at Kent State went wrong. The protest took a turn when students set light to an empty building and the National Guardsmen were called in. The guardsmen set about trying to protect the university but when the students marched on them they let off tear gas which soon ran out so they started firing shots and they killed 4 American students.

In conclusion, public opinion in America dramatically changed throughout the decade. At the beginning of the sixties the public was patriotic and anti-communist and so was the media.  The rising death count made people lose faith in the war.  When the draft was introduced this caused huge upset among the youth forming the peace movement. When the black population were drafted to Vietnam, this caused upset among the civil rights movement. By the late sixties the majority of the American population was against the war but this was not all. There where still a minority of patriots who where resolutely behind the war. The Vietnam War was a part of history the public of the USA wanted to forget. From 1969 and with the election of a new president the American government became committed to ending the war. In 1971 a veteran’s march in Washington was held where the soldiers ceremoniously disposed of their medals. The sixties was a time of change where the youth and the black population started to have there own say on politics and things that would have before been seen as being something that they weren’t to be involved with.  This change in the social structure formed the anti-war movement that ended the Vietnam War.