Source F is a written text by the American journalist Richard Hamer that attempts to explain the difficulties the Americans and South Vietnamese faced in fighting a guerrilla war. It begins by documenting a typical patrol situation for an American group of soldiers, stating that “Vietnamese are in every paddy. Then, a mortar shell lands right in the middle of the patrol”, noting that when it detonates “a couple of guys are dead; others are screaming in agony with a leg or arm blown off, or their guts hanging out”. Hamer continues on to explain that it is not possible to truly determine if one of the peasants – who could quite easily be a Vietcong partisan – lobbed the mortar and, if so, how difficult it is to determine which peasant was responsible and act accordingly. He then proceeds to criticise the hypocriticism of the American war to win over the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Vietnamese people by saying that “One does not use Napalm on villages and hamlets sheltering civilians […] one does not blast hamlets to dust with high explosives from jet planes high in the sky without warning” if one desires to secure popular support among a people. As such, it is clear that Source F attributes American defeat to the crimes they committed against the Vietnamese population as a whole in an effort to defeat the Vietcong. The fact that Hamer is an American journalist makes this theory more reliable than the one presented in Source D, his criticism of American tactics exposing the fact that many people on both sides were strongly against the employment of military weapons against the civilian population.
Source G ties in closely with Source E as a statement of an American solider upon hearing about the My Lai Massacre in 1968. On March 16th 1968, American soldiers murdered some three-hundred and forty seven to five hundred and four unarmed civilians in South Vietnam, falsely claiming that the village had been a stronghold of the Vietcong. I know from my own knowledge that American soldiers also subjected their victims to torture, maiming, mutilation and in some instances sexual abuse. The soldier is quoted as saying that “Most of the soldiers had never been away from home before they went into service” and that “[they] thought they were going to do something courageous on behalf of their country”. He then says that a friend compares the crimes at My Lai to the crimes committed by the Schutzstaffel (SS) or Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) of National Socialist Germany, quoting them as saying “It was a Nazi thing. We didn’t go there to be Nazis. At least none of the people I knew went there to be Nazis.” His response reflects the general public response to the crimes at My Lai – the media’s coverage of the story provoked an outrage in America. Many were shocked, stunned and horrified by the crimes – some so horrified that they refused to believe that American troops could have been responsible for such an act, instead choosing to belief that the story was fabricated. Following the events at My Lai public opinion turned massively against the war, possibly explaining the fact that it came to a conclusion seven years later. It is also worth noting that First Lieutenant William Calley, the man who ordered the attack, was the only participant to be convicted of any crime. Whether or not Source G supports Source M is debatable – one the one hand, it attributes defeat largely to crimes such as those committed at My Lai but at the same time it represents the impact the media had on the war effort by exposing those crimes. It is logical to assume that Source G can be used to support Source M, all though it does not support the theory as explicitly as other sources do.
Source H, the fifth source, depicts the impact of the war on the American home front. A satirical cartoon drawn for the British magazine Punch a year before My Lai in 1967, it depicts a train representing President Johnson’s vision for the ‘Great Society’ – a State where the vision to “Feed and shelter the homeless [and] to provide education and medical care” has been realised. Numerous workmen, including Johnson himself, are mournfully dismantling the train in order to provide fuel for the US economy (depicted by the train’s engine), which in turn is billowing smoke baring the word “Vietnam”. The comic shows that the war effort in Vietnam was consuming massive amounts of resources that Johnson had hoped to put to use in his vision for the Great Society – instead of helping to improve the lives of Americans, the American economy is vested entirely in continuing the war against North Vietnam. The cartoon also reflects the fact that popular support for the war is rapidly vanishing as people begin to realise that the American economy has been transformed into a machine of war to destroy others instead of an instrument of peaceful development. Source H does not support the theory presented in Source M, instead attributing the loss of the Vietnam War to the economic burdens placed on America by dedicating such massive investments of State resources to the war effort.
Source J is, alike the second source, a photograph likely taken by a journalist as the Kent State University in 1970s America. The photograph depicts a large-scale protest against the Vietnam War being held by students, holding up signs with slogans such as “Stop the Bombing”, “Fight Poverty” and “Stop the War in Vietnam”. Alike the previous source (and arguably Source F), the photograph shows that popular support for the war is rapidly disappearing and that many people were ready to see it end by 1970. It is also worth noting that the protest comes two years after the My Lai Massacre, with the American people now fully aware that gross atrocities have been committed by both American and South Vietnamese forces in the nation. All though there is no evidence within the source itself to suggest that it agrees with the theory in Source M, it is clear that by it’s own content it must support said theory – if it was not for media coverage of the war and exposure of American war crimes, the anti-war supporters would have been far fewer in number and protests would never have achieved the kind of momentum they did. As such, we can logically associate Source J with the final source and make the assumption that it does fundamentally support the theory presented within Source M.
The penultimate source, Source K, is an opinion poll conducted by Gallup Polls in Australia three times between April 1969 and October 1970. It is not an especially useful poll because it shows us popular opinion in a nation that played a relatively minor role in the Vietnam Conflict. In April 1969 48% were in favour of continuing the war, whilst 40% were in favour of withdrawal. In October 1969 51% of the general population were in favour of withdrawal, with support for the war falling to 39%. In October 1970, support for withdrawal remains steady at 50%. The poll clearly shows a divide in public opinion in April 1969 with most people favouring the war, yet by October 1969 support for the war had plummeted – just a month earlier convictions for the My Lai Massacre had begun. The poll is not specific enough to determine whether or not the source supports Source M even at a fundamental level, all though the dates of popularity change do approximately match certain events as they were exposed by the media, possibly suggesting a link between change in public opinion and media exposure of American crimes.
Source M is the source we are most concerned with. In it the British Broadcasting Corporation commentator, Robin Day, asserts that “The war on colour television screens in American living rooms made Americans far more anti-militarist and anti-war than anything else” and that “The full brutality of combat will be there in close-up in colour, and blood looks very red on the colour television screen.” Day advocates the theory that it was primarily media coverage of the war that brought it to an end, with the American people becoming so horrified by what they saw it was impossible for the American State to continue the conflict beyond the 1970s. It is worth noting that Day was speaking to members of the armed forces at a seminar for the Royal United Service Institution, meaning that his remarks would have been carefully chosen to avoid any possible offence his comments may have caused. It is also worth noting that the theory Day presents also relies on ideas presented in other sources: the crimes of the Americans, the superior tactics of the Vietcong and the difficulty of waging the war all gave the media material to help bring the conflict to a speedy conclusion.
To conclude, I believe that there is sufficient evidence to support the theory that the media was largely responsible for the downfall of the American war effort and their subsequent withdrawal from the subcontinent. The majority of the sources agree, at least fundamentally, with the idea that the media held enough power over the public to force the American government to capitulate on their position. If it were not for the media’s readiness to expose the horrific crimes committed by the American armed forces in coalition with South Vietnam, the war may well have continued for a long time afterwards. Nonetheless, we must also consider the superior fighting capabilities of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong partisans, both of whom established their doctrine of warfare based off those developed by Mao Zedong in the People’s Republic of China and Kim-Il Sung of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The inability of the Americans to earn the support of the South Vietnamese people also further fuelled the fires of war and made it increasingly difficult to maintain an effective military presence in the South. One must also consider the vastly superior social and economic policies of the Communist North which played a key role in winning over the South Vietnamese people who came to see the Americans as an occupying force of aggression. All though it was the media that inevitably brought an end to the war, America would not have been able sustain the conflict in the long-term regardless of the level of media intervention in the conflict.
