Why were there such different reactions in the USA to their Countries involvement in the Vietnam War in 1960s?

Americas opinion to the Vietnam War was constantly changing I will show this in this essay.

At the beginning of the Vietnam War there were two views about it. One of the views was that sending American soldiers to fight in Vietnam was a good idea this was because in America at the time there was a widespread belief about stopping the spread of communism. Also in the years following up to the Vietnam War capitalist America and the communist countries had problems with each other before. For example in 1947 president Truman had came up with the ‘Truman Doctrine’ to stop communism. Also in 1950 the USA army had been sent in to help Korea stay a capitalist country. The other view of the American people (at the time this was only a small percent) was that sending American soldiers to fight a war that they should not be fighting in was wrong and they should just let the Vietnamese people sought it out between themselves.

From 1960-64 the percent of American people that supported the involvement in Vietnam had fallen but by only a small percent, with most of the Americans still supporting the Vietnam War because they were helping fight communism. The reason that the percentage fell was because in 1964 (the same year as President Johnson’s ‘Domino Theory’ speech the ‘Domino Theory’ was an idea that communism was trying to take over the world country by country, like a line of dominoes falling) some of the American population started to believe in the idea that the Vietnam War was wrong. In the same year 25,000 people went on a peace march to Washington (it was the largest antiwar demonstration in American history). The reason that so many went on this march in 1964 was because by this time America was sending a lot of soldiers to Vietnam to fight in the war a lot of the soldiers however that the American government had selected were of ethnic minority. Also everybody knew that the Vietnam War had to be funded from somewhere so the government had to take money out of hospital and school funds, they took it mainly from the areas with the ethnic minorities living in (at this time America was very racially divided). So the areas with ethnic minorities in would have been a lot less developed than in areas with white people living in. But all that the ethnic minorities wanted was to be treated as fairly as everyone else was. The areas that they were living in were called ‘Ghettos’ (much like the areas in the Second World War where the Jewish people were being persecuted).

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However from 1965-68 the US started to set up bigger operations because they thought that this would end the war between them and the Vietnamese. One of the major operations that they set up was called operation ‘Rolling Thunder’. But there were still those people who opposed the view that America fight in the Vietnam War. One of these people was college student David Miller who in 1965 publicly burnt his draft card in public. Because he was one of those (at the time) few Americans who did not support the Vietnam War and was not happy that so much money was being spent on it, especially operations like ‘Rolling Thunder’ which cost a lot of money. When the money could be spent on his future (at the time it seemed like he did not have one because he was going to be drafted to fight in the Vietnam War) and on other areas like hospitals. The US government was not happy about this and when they found out they made sure that he got two years in prison because of his outburst. The American government did this also because they did not want to see people copying David Miller’s ideas by burning or misusing their draft cards in the same way that he did. However this wasn’t the reaction of the American people because the same thing was starting to happen all across America intensifying the initial protests. The people that did this soon became known as ‘draft dodgers’.

The boxing legend Mohammed Ali ‘The Greatest’ and heavyweight champion at one point. In 1967 astonished Americans by becoming a draft dodger by refusing to join the fight to win the Vietnam War. Because Ali refused to join the Vietnam War he was stripped of his boxing championship and sent to prison to two years. At this point Mohammed Ali summed up the way all of the black population across America was feeling about the Vietnam War by saying

“I won’t fight because no Vietnamese ever called me nigger”

This showed that Mohammed Ali was not willing to fight like other people for something that they did not believe in. So why should they fight for something that does not have any meaning? Also at home they had a bigger fight to win and that was against racism which a lot of American people had not yet won. So why should they fight this war they questioned? So many didn’t from the years 1963-1973, 9118 men were prosecuted because they refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War, because they had reasons very similar to Mohammed Ali about not fighting a war that they should not have been part of. A lot of the people before they went to prison were strongly opposing the Vietnam War and they were part of the ‘Hippie’ movement.

The ‘Hippie’ movement started in the 1960’s and spread quickly across America. This was because a lot of young Americans wanted peace not war across the world. The ‘Flower Power’ movement firmly opposed the American involvement in Vietnam their message was the same as the ‘Hippies’ (the ‘Flower Power’ consisted of the same people, young college students). The ‘Hippies’ were increasing the pressure on government officials when they started plans on new ways of winning the Vietnam War; one of the ways was a ‘search and destroy’ mission.

The ‘search and destroy’ mission was given the go ahead by President Johnson. In 1968 American soldiers were sent on a ‘search and destroy’ mission into a village. They had been told that all the villagers would be at market and that it was a Vietcong headquarters. They killed three to four hundred villagers, including women, children and old men, and burnt their houses and some American soldiers raped women. This ‘search and destroy’ mission that later became known as the ‘My Lai massacre’. This was one of the worst missions to happen in the Vietnam War because the Americans had broken one of the rules of war. Not to kill innocent civilians and they had no reason for doing it. After this many American people’s views changed about the Vietnam War they had found out about the ‘My Lai massacre’ on television sent back by the US media.

Throughout the Vietnam War the US media had total access to everything that was going on and they made a lot of people change their opinions on the Vietnam War because they showed pictures of American soldiers getting shot and walking into booby traps (like the Bouncing Betty). So this made a lot of young people change their minds about helping the war effort and becoming draft dodgers or joining ‘Hippie’ movements. They also showed soldiers taking drugs, a lot of parents did not want to see their children end up like this.

During the Vietnam War many drugs did get used by the soldiers like LSD or marijuana this was to mellow you out, and the soldiers that were being sent were not capable of winning a war because many were just recruits and had no experience or not much training.

By 1969 the war in Vietnam was costing a total of $30 billion a year and was costing 300 lives a week. Yet the USA was still not winning. This was upsetting the people even more because once again the government was taking funds from other areas (like hospitals and schools) and the taxes that the people had to pay had gone up. The American people could see through television that they were not winning so they were against paying for something that they were not winning and more people went against the cause that they should keep helping the Vietnamese.

So many people knew that the Vietnam War would be over in a short time if no one supported it and they started to object to it.