Unfortunately for the Americans as well as for the Vietnamese, Agent Orange contained a highly toxic chemical called dioxin. It not only poisoned the environment but also contaminated the people who handled it at the air base when loading the plane. As a consequence some of the American soldiers concerned contracted cancer.
After it was used, Vietnamese doctors began to report victims suffering from vomiting and headaches. Long-term effects included birth defects and serious skin complaints. By the end the war, over 25,000 km² of rainforest and cropland had been ruined by defoliants.
Along with Agent Orange and napalm, US Army also used a tactic known as Blanket Bombing. Earlier in the war the Americans used selective targeting, this meant the US bomber planes could only bomb specific targets. As the war intensified, however, selective targeting was replaced by blanket bombing. Blanket bombing meant that the US bomber planes anything in sight. The goal of this tactic was to bomb the North Vietnamese to the conference table. Unfortunately all this caused was more damage to the environment of Vietnam and more disapproval back home in the USA.
On Saturday 16 March 1968, nine large black helicopter gunships landed close to a small Vietnamese village of My Lai on the coast about 120 km south of the huge American base Danang. The village consisted mainly of thatch covered red-brick houses set next to a minor road set among hedges, bamboo trees and a paddy field. About 700 inhabitants lived there at the time when the Americans came.
Three platoons of American soldiers left the helicopters. They were part of a search and destroy mission codenamed Task Force Barker after its overall commander, Lt Colonel Frank Barker. The US Army had heard that the inhabitants of My Lai were Vietcong sympathisers. The American soldiers entered the village and killed over half of the inhabitants in cold blood. As you can expect when the news of what had happened got back to America, most Americans were horrified as the massacre made headline news. Many were so appalled they doubted whether it could be true. The people of America were not happy.
The pressures of the war also effected the soldiers. Many soldiers began to take drugs to calm their nerves. Some soldiers became reckless and began to play dangerous games with their officers. These games have resulted in severe injuries. An immense number of soldiers were taking drugs. Mainly it was mild drugs, about 35% used serious drugs on a regular basis. This did not help with the efficiency of the US Army, things were not looking good.
At the beginning of the war the polls had shown that over 80% of Americans were for the war. In 1968 when news of the deaths of the US soldiers in Vietnam arrived back home the polls told a different story. The ultimate sacrifices paid by these soldiers seem pointless and led to riots and demonstrations. Students in many American colleges and universities demonstrated on campus. Many Americans said the war was immoral. The US government had no right to impose its views on a poor nation like Vietnam. Leading scientists criticised the use of chemical weapons and effects they were having on the environment.
US involvement in Vietnam first made an impact on the American people when the government was forced to draft many more young men into the armed forces than in previous years. Only 3,000 men a month had been needed in February ’65. When eleven times as many, 33,000 a month, were called up in October, opposition to the traffic rapidly mounted. Those who avoided the call-up were called “draft-dodgers.” Many men burned or tore up their draft papers. Some fled to Canada or Europe. Muhammad Ali, the world heavyweight boxing champion, even had his title take away from him after resisting the draft. There was widespread resentment, however, that many educated, affluent and middle-class Americans could find legitimate ways of avoiding or postponing the draft, leaving the poor Americans, many of them black, to do most of fighting.
The protests were strongest among young people. This was the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: a period noted for mini skirts, punk rock, exotic hairstyles, civil rights, race riots, drug abuse, and huge outdoor rock festivals like Woodstock. Many teenagers ‘dropped out’ of society in protest. The ‘hippies’ told people to make love not war.
The media played an important part in exciting protest. The war in Vietnam was the first war to be covered night after night on television. It made people viewing at home realise what was being done to Vietnam in their name. Photographs in magazines and newspapers had a similar impact. Two images in particular affected the way people thought about, and later remembered, the war. One was a photograph showing screaming Vietnamese children after a napalm attack. The other showed the cold-blooded execution of a Vietcong officer in the street. Many photographs similar scenes like these two were shown to the American public, which gave the Americans more reason to continue their protests. US Army commanders and many officers and soldiers were dismayed that the media coverage of the war, and even blamed television and the press for weakening the American stance in Vietnam. It was the media however, not the US Army, which first exposed the scandal of the My Lai massacre eighteen months after it took place in 1968. There was little media coverage of the communist side. Reporters could not go on patrol with the NVA or Vietcong units to describe their failures and report on their war crimes. It was much easier to follow the Americans. The newsreel sequences screened in North Vietnam were very one-sided. They showed the world what Ho Chi Minh wanted them to see: ‘ a small nation bravely fighting against the might of America.’
The protest continued in America up until 1973, when peace talks eventually began to take place in Paris up until 1975, when both powers decided to bring the Vietnam War to an end.
