Vietnam War Social Relation

The 1960's were a time of radical change in the society of America. A sense of liberalism could be felt though out the counting during the middle of the decade. The infamous Vietnam War and the new alternative culture were pushing the United States towards a time of liberalism and a nationwide rebellion against the social norms. The first combat forces were sent to Da Nang in 1965, by a formally anti war President, Lyndon B Johnson. The question of why the United States was engaging in a war between North and South Vietnam was raised. Anti war rebellions sprouted up all across the country, all asking the same question, “What are we fighting for?” This alternative culture started to develop though out America. Men, women, youth and

The anti-war protests of the 1960s was a response of resentment by minorities and young educated college students against the nation’s desire to participate in war against Communism in Vietnam and conduct a military draft. The protests, originally began with peaceful public demonstrations by activists, who were nonviolent; however, the peaceful demonstrators were frequently attacked and victimized by the police and other citizens, who did not share their same opinion. Throughout the peaceful protests the activists suffered many beatings in the hands of the police and as a result, many of the activists claimed the right of self-defense and turned to taking offensive actions against their oppressors including the police and other citizens. Later, the scene of violence and mayhem quickly shifted to college campuses, to which college students began protesting the draft (Gurr, 1989, pp. 183-185). At the time the average age of an American soldier serving in Vietnam was 19 and students quickly rebelled after realizing that young Americans were legally old enough to be drafted to fight and die, but were not yet legally allowed to vote or drink alcohol (UShistory, nd.).

The antiwar protest movements that took place throughout the Vietnam War were one of the most divisive and tumultuous internal forces during twentieth century U.S. history. The divisive nature of the antiwar protest movements becomes multiplied, because instead of a social conflict where there are two dichotomised “camps”, (those who are pro-war and those who are antiwar,) we are instead presented with antiwar sentiment which is largely segmented, and not a “unified” movement. The antiwar movements comprised of a number of independent groups, such as the Students for a Democratic Society, the War Resisters League, and the Committee for Nonviolent Direct Action. These groups all had varying motives, ideologies and tactics associated with their method of antiwar protest and resistance to the Vietnam War, making it impossible to give sufficient detail to all the separate movements in this paper. The myriad of movements were often only vaguely allied and for the most part, united only in their opposition to America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. For the majority of this essay however, I intend to focus on the youth cultures movements, as many key events of protest took place on campuses, or were predominantly orchestrated by the American youth.

Social advances in American life led to many young adult getting involved with the Antiwar Movement of the 1960s. Older generations were not the ones typically vocalizing their beliefs and disapproval of the war. Protesters not only wanted to express disapproval of the Vietnam war, but also the draft. The first Antiwar Movements took place in April 1965 and were nonviolently protesting the Vietnam War. Those who were apart of the antiwar movement were determined to get their message across. Radical protestors held up signs that read slogans such as “Make love, not war,” and “Hell no, we won't go!”. These signs highly offended traditionalists and was set apart from the norm. Antiwar movement eclipsed the other movements going on during the 1960s due to its cause and its protestors (“Antiwar Movement (Vietnam)” 1). As the country surged into the 1970s, the protests turned from nonviolent to violent. “As violence increased within the Antiwar Movement there was a shift in public opinion: Older Americans and prominent figures became more vocal in their criticism of the continuing war” (“Antiwar Movement (Vietnam ) 3”. United States citizens, particularly the youth, furthered from “thinking inside of the box” and like their parents and began expressing their own ideologies and beliefs.. Also, with the up rise of

In the recent decades since the Vietnam conflict there have been debates over whether U.S. leaders and military personnel or the common U.S. people had a greater impact on the outcome of the conflict. At first glance it may seem like the common people played a greater role in the outcome of Vietnam because the large number of antiwar protests put pressure on the leaders to withdrawal troops. However, when the situation is further examined it becomes apparent that the U.S. leaders and military personnel’s lack of knowledge about the North and South Vietnamese people and their use of poor military tactics ultimately made the war unwinnable. The unwinnable state of the war was not influenced by the ant-war protests held by the common U.S. people,

As America was fighting a war for freedom in another country, unruly teens were fighting their own at home. Cultural change, the explosion of free love, youthful rebellion, and a new liberal mindset all seemed to have one underlying device in common; drug use. The late 1960’s into the early and mid-70’s found the perfect environment for recreational drug use. Music and arts celebrated this lifestyle, as well as free thinkers and their idiotic philosophies about spiritual elation through mind altering narcotics. Lack of family structure with so many homes transformed by the Vietnam War also left young teens without guidance, and an economy with little to offer to the up and coming generation. As the next few years passed and the free love generation began to grasp the concept of working for a living, showering on a regular basis, love with commitment (or antibiotics), and cultural change through policy, they brought to the workforce a new dynamic not previously prevalent. Recreational drug use had become part of society. Vietnam War veterans also brought their own demons home with their return, opiate addictions were a common occurrence (Carson 2012).

Originally, the topic I have chosen was about the social effects of the Vietnam War and how the veterans were treated when they returned. However, I was able to narrow it down to a protest that took place at Kent State University and the treatments given to veterans who suffer from diseases due to war. The Kent State University protest was a violent one that took place on May 4th,1970. These students were clearly anti-war, and this was shown by their disagreement with the military draft, the power the military held, and the denial of many basic civil rights (Kohn). National guards started getting involved when the protests began disrupting the rest of the town and nearby neighbors. Tear gas was fired into the crowd of students, following with

The war in Vietnam brought about a huge societal shift in the US, in the way that people viewed the concept of conflict as a whole. In 1969, the number one complaint of many Americans was the ongoing war in Vietnam, in fact, in public opinion polls from as early as 1965, the war was proven to be the number one national issue among the American public. (SparkNotes Editors, 2015) It was this objection to the war in Vietnam that truly sparked the 1960’s Anti-War Movement in the U.S and the rest of the world. The movement became increasingly popular among young Americans, reflecting the growing disillusionment towards politics and society in general. (Wikipedia, 2015). The anti-war movement originated mostly on college campuses around 1964, as

During the war in America is a common topic, but we’ll go over it anyways. It’s been told by the media that the time of the Vietnam war was about a great civil disagreement but in reality it depended on where you were and what you identified as.A group that became known as the "Silent Majority" were firmly behind US actions. The other side was the much publicized " Counter-culture" which was not as widespread as it seems and was mostly restricted to the white minority that could afford to go to college. Due to these factors they were able to avoid the draft. The war still had devastating effects on particular sections of society.African-Americans served in large numbers to make up for the whites that managed to avoid serving and suffered a

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a radical anti-war group founded by Tom Hayden. They drew their ideas from the Civil Rights movement and believed in political activism (Isserman 110) They helped put together on the first major anti-war marches that took place in Washington D.C. in April of 1965 (McCormick 37). This group’s name quickly grew in size as it came from around 25,000 people at this first march to 500,000 people in November of 1969. The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam was started by two Wisconsin protestors, Frank Emspak and Roy Robinson. The founding of this group showed that the anti-war movement as stronger and more organized as it had been before. There were other ways that people express their feeling about the war. The San Francisco Mime Troupe expressed their opinions in a creative way as they performed a play with characters that resembled the countries in the Vietnam War (Holden 118-120). Other protesters carried Viet Cong flags, that were red and blue, to demonstrations and burned the American

As tension between the U.S. government and the media continued to increase, the American citizens started losing trust in the abilities of their government. The U.S. government persisted that a victory was on the brink, however, the media constantly portrayed images of death and loss. This led to the up rise of the antiwar movement. The antiwar crusade first surfaced amongst liberal intellectuals on college campuses around the United States, however, after the Tet Offensive the movement became much more popular. The leftist anti-war activists began spreading their beliefs through campus demonstrations called “teach-ins.” The main goal of these teach-ins was to allow students to safely discuss their views on the war, and to hopefully instate a call to action amongst those that attended. Many people had moral objections about the Vietnam war, and believed that the war was unjust. Others thought that a victory in Vietnam was simply not worth American lives. Protest began popping up around college campuses like the University of South Carolina, and more notably, Kent State University.

The antiwar movement became a mass crusade in which millions of Americans participated. It involved people of all ages, organized in hundreds of diverse local and national groups, including the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, Women Strike for Peace, Resistance, American Friends Service Committee, and Business Executives Move for a Vietnam Peace. Among student groups, the SDS played a vital role. While antiwar activists came from all elements of American society, most were white, middle class, and well educated. Colleges and universities were among the most important sites of antiwar activism.

The year is 1965: the skate board is the latest craze in kids toys; the miniskirt makes its appearance; hypertext is introduced for linking on the Internet; Kellogg 's Pop Tarts pastries are created; Sonny & Cher make their first TV appearance in "American Bandstand”; rights activist Malcolm X is shot dead; the Gemini 3 launched the first US 2-man space flight; and the first United States combat forces arrive in Vietnam. This was not the start of the Vietnam War since the war actually started in 1955, pitting Communist North Vietnam against anti-Communist South Vietnam. The United States believed it had to protect South Vietnam from Communist take-over and is the reason the U.S. supplied South Vietnam with millions of dollars in military aid as well as with military advisors from the start of the war. Eventually, the US had no other choice but to send troops to war and it became the first war Americans opposed publicly and passionately, making the US involvement in the Vietnam War a shameful venture rather than a noble cause. Although the Vietnam War was the first televised war, it is unclear if Vietnam War films are able to give an honest portrayal of the Vietnam War experience, or if truer reality of the war can be found only in textbooks.

A large majority of the news reported only showed pieces of what really happened in battles to make it seem as though the troops were harming innocent people, when in reality the soldiers were fighting for their own lives as well as the best interest of the United States. It is the actions of the reporters and how they interpreted the information for the public that led to many people shifting their views against the war. In the late 1960’s, anti-war movements, such as when nearly 100,000 protesters gathered and marched to the Pentagon, broke out across the country that included a variety of people of different races. However, most of the founders and participants of the movements were college students. Alternatively, if newspapers and television news channels did not send journalists to Vietnam, Americans would not have been shown the horrors of the war and the manipulated actions of the soldiers by the news companies. Anti-war movements would not have been created and the United States would not have been as united by a shared opposition of the involvement in the Vietnam

The Vietnam War's controversy spurred a great many sources of protest, against our government's use of power, how far we could stretch the rights of free expression, and primarily against the violence of the war itself. "There were said to be three stages of the antiwar movements. "The first phase (1964-1965) was idealistic. The second phase (1966-1968) was more pragmatic, a period when young people characteristically protested not on principal, but out of a desire not to be drafted and killed. The third phase (1969-1972) coincided with the de-Americanization of the war"(Jeffreys-Jones, 43). The administration received disapproval in its acts. Soldiers returned home from battle not to be renowned as heroes, but as killers. Although, some soldiers abroad even took part in the anti war movement; "The antiwar movement spread directly among the combat troops in Vietnam, who began to wear peace symbols and flash peace signs and movement salutes. Some units even organized their own demonstrations to link up with the movement at home" (Schlight, 45). "Many college professors, businesspeople, parents of draft-age youth, religious leaders, doctors, lawyers, politicians and entertainers also voiced their objections to American involvement in the Vietnam War" (Jeffreys-Jones, 77).However the war turned out to be a failure and the moral of American society was low. We see a reflection of that now with the war in Iraq. The support of the war