Analysis Of The Vietnam War Protests

Secretary of State John Kerry once said “I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.” The Vietnam War was a conflict that lasted from 1956-1975 which the United States participated in along with the South Vietnamese who fought against the Communist North Vietnamese. Many Americans strongly disapproved of the war which caused many protests and riots. The war lasted 25 years killing many people and eventually the North Vietnamese won. The Vietnam War was important to Americans back home because it tested the citizen’s right to free speech, effected future foreign policy, and created many issues for returning veterans.

The Vietnam War raged on from 1954-1975, taking over three million lives with it. Conflicts rooted in the cold war resulted in the United States sending troops to defend South Vietnamese democracy. However as the war became more lengthy and expensive, many civilians began to protest the United States participating in the war, creating the Antiwar Movement. Though the movement had lasting effects on society, it did not immediately cause the United States to retreat from Vietnam. The antiwar movement of the 1960’s, which is deeply connected with the transcendentalist belief of Civil Disobedience, protested the involvement of the United States in the infamous Vietnam War, and has had numerous effects on the American Military and Government to this day. However, the movement that strived for peace did not completely accomplish its goal of ending the United States’ involvement in international armed conflict.

The Vietnam War was a major controversy for the United States compared to World War 1 and World War 2. With both of the previous wars that the United States had been a major part of they had brought the people of the country together to fight  and work hard to show their support to the soldiers that were fighting. During these two wars we saw the rise of women in the workforce as they came into the picture of taking the jobs that the men held while they went away to fight in the way. And then there was the avid signing up to fight. Men as young as teenagers signing up to fight in both of these wars. The difference is that with the Vietnam War it was met with disdain from the public and also the soldiers as well. With this war people

Instructions: Each group will be assigned one specific question and will have one group representative or someone in the group share their answer. Since it is a short day, we will only have time for one person per group.

has adapted to the jungle and the way of life in Vietnam, he would be

Steve Siebold states, “Of course you are allowed freedom of speech in this country, but don’t disrespect your national anthem and everything it stands for. That’s shameful. Don’t disrespect your fans and employer…You can have freedom of speech without disrespecting the Star-Spangled Banner.” (Siebold, 2016, para. 7). In reality, it is of the opinion that this reasoning brings to light that there are indeed alternatives to the type of protesting and that it does not necessarily mean it has to be done at the expense of the national anthem. Since freedom of speech exists it can be done on a different platform. This reasoning, however, could have been stronger if the author provided exactly what it is the national anthem does stand for instead of just an implication of everything. Yet, in some ways this can be viewed as a red herring fallacy, as it does not stick to the facts of how it is wrong, but diverts to doing it somewhere

How Did Protesting Grow During The Vietnam War? “Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of america -- not in the battlefields of vietnam,” -Marshall Mcluhan. The Vietnam war to many people should not have happened. Many people protested in spots like the white house, pentagon, and the capitol building. People burned draft cards and spent years in prison.

Most scholars probably think that the Americans who fled to Canada during the Vietnam war had personal reasons, but according to the latest research, most of the resisters of the Vietnam war were politically motivated. There are different kinds of motives by various resistors who took place during the Vietnam War. First were the Dodgers. These were that kind of people who left America because they did not approve what the government was doing. They resisted through making public claims, trying not to register for the draft, and not taking the oath. The second types of resister were known as the draft resistors, and these were the people who were in the military and refuted their duties. The deserters were also another group of resistors

I feel protest is not patriotic because of the following reasons. Protest is not patriotic because in the Weathermen Underground the author describes a group of protesters that were violent and bombed important political and education buildings. They did this because they were not pleased with the war happening in Vietnam and were not getting a response from the government. This is an unpatriotic act because The Weathermen Underground were destroying buildings that were important to the country. The aggressive actions by this group of protesters were thought to harm the country for not taking the troops out of Vietnam. However, the only reason that The Weathermen Underground were as aggressive as bombing important buildings was because when

Mueller found a "rally in support at the beginning of the war and high levels of public support into 1966. By mid-1966, however, support had declined in the wake of such events as infighting among the South Vietnamese and the emergence of vocal criticism of the war during the Fulbright hearings in early 1966. By this time, the public had also come to see that the war would not be over quickly but was instead likely to be a “long, bloody

In 1967, 64 percent of all eligible African-Americans were drafted versus only 31 percent of eligible whites (Black 2009). This fact testifies to only a small portion of why nearly all African-Americans found themselves protesting against the Vietnam War. The lack of civil rights in the U.S deterred many blacks from supporting Vietnam, a conflict aimed at liberating the rights of another people. African Americans were frustrated with a country who fought for other citizens and saw no purpose in fighting for a peoples’ freedom but their own. Although African-Americans were specifically discriminated against both in Vietnam and America, they were not alone in their anti-war position. The majority of the American public opposed the Vietnam War. As the war dragged on, people found no reason to fight in Vietnam and believed that the United States should prioritize their own citizens first. Many public figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali, held similar claims. Their opinions aligned with the public’s concern and suggested that the U.S withdraw troops and focus resources on the civil rights issues at home. These public figures fought for a specific minority, but, in light of the entire American population, the majority of people opposed the war.

Appy claims that public opposition to the war and formation of a peace movement leading to a lack of trust in the government due to lies and cover-ups on events happening in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq are comparable to America’s attitude during the Vietnam War. Supporting this claim to the opposition of the war by the public because of the government’s perversion in the media is seen in the Middle through the example of Pat Tillman. Tillman’s death, which was propagated to make the public believe that he died in battle instead of a result of friendly fire, sets a prime instance for a comparison of the government’s. (Appy, 311-312). The causes of the War in Iraq such as finding and eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction lead to

In the past 40 years, the United States have been involved in many revolutions throughout the Middle East and developing countries. Some of these revolutions have been successful while others have not. Revolutions occur when countries have been under extreme dictatorship from a menacing source. Revolutions since the past 40 years have included the Communist party dictated by Mao Zedong in the 1960s, the most controversial war, The Vietnam War, Khmer Rouge, the overthrow of Taliban rule in the 1990s, and the most recent Jasmine Revolution in 2010.

The Vietnam War certainly left a distaste in the lives of many who have been affected by the war; scholars have become increasingly interested in the interaction between war and public opinion. There have been many scholarly works published on the Vietnam War, but the issue that will be analyzed here is how public opinion changed the course of the war. The first article by Scott Gartner and Gary Segura is titled, “Race, Casualties, and Opinion in the Vietnam War,” it examined how the diverse races within America in combination with the atrocities in the war led to the formation of opinions that were similar in one race but were different in another race. The second article by Paul Burstein and William Freudenburg titled, “The Impact of

From the outset, the Vietnam War manifested itself as a conflict that could only be settled by prolonged engagement. Because the war was fundamentally an ideological struggle between the democratic, capitalist United States and the Communist bloc of the U.S.S.R. and China, the strategy formulated by both democratic and communist advisory forces in North and South Vietnam conformed to accepted Cold War military practices. However, while initially similar to the war in Korea, the war in Vietnam soon outgrew and exceeded the expectations of U.S. strategists, evolving into one the longest and most bitterly contested campaigns in U.S. history. The reasons for this relative loss of control on the part of the American