Other Protest Movements – II

The Anti-Vietnam War Protests

REASONS FOR THE GROWTH OF OPPOSITION

1.  Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

• The 1960s student movement was born out of the youth culture that developed in the 1950s, notably:

  1. Teenage rebelliousness, influenced by such as the film Rebel Without a Cause and the book Catcher in the Rye. 

  2. Protest folk music (eg Bob Dylan). 

  3. University education widened horizons and awareness, and exposed them to left-wing ideas. 

  4. The atomic bomb led students to believe that they were about to die in a nuclear war and that society needed to ‘ban the bomb’; this conflated with the Hippy ideal to and ‘make love not war’. 

  5. The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 led many young people to despair of the old political system – which they labelled ‘the Man’. 

• In 1962, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) met at Port Huron, Michigan, and issued the Port Huron Statement, criticising racism and the horrors of the twentieth century, and stating that ‘we may be the last generation’.  They supported a wide range of Civil Rights, free speech, use of chemicals, and anti-capitalism issues. 

• From 1965, the SDS got involved in violent anti-Vietnam protests. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic account from BBC Bitesize

YouTube

Opposition to the Vietnam War - Mr Cloke

2.  The Draft

• As the numbers of US soldiers deployed to Vietnam increased, young men were drafted into the army.  Many saw it as a death sentence, since ‘cherries’ were killed in inordinate numbers. 

• Many wealthier young people therefore avoided the draft, by seeking college or parental deferments; studying ‘vital’ subjects like physics and engineering; joining the National Guard; even fleeing to Canada.  Famous draft-dodgers included future presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. 

• The result was that 80% of the 2.5 million enlisted men came from poor or working-class families, and had only a school education.  A large proportion were Black.  This was seen as discriminatory and unfair. 

• In the 1964 election, President Johnson ran as a ‘peace’ candidate, promising “we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves”.  There was therefore outrage in 1965, when he doubled the number of draftees. 

• In 1969, President Nixon reformed the draft, so that it chose draftees on a lottery system by their date of birth.  This system generated even more opposition. 

3.  The Domestic Impact

• In 1967, the war was costing America $20 billion a year and, to pay for it, he was forced to stop the Great Society programme. 

• In August 1967, for the first time, an opinion poll showed that more people were against the war (46%) than were for it (44%) – though the poll was probably affected by a large rise in taxes that had just been announced. 

• In 1967, Martin Luther King opposed the war on the ground of its cost; he said the money should be spent on reducing poverty at home, and advised young Black men to refuse the draft. 

• TThe Nation of Islam asked why black boys should die for a country which would not grant them equal rights; in April 1967 NoI member Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted. 

• In March 1968, Johnson – who had become universally hated – told Americans that he was not going to re-run for President. 

4.  TV and the Media

• At first, the US media supported the war, and labelled its opponents communists.  The 1968 John Wayne film The Green Berets showed American soldiers as kind humanitarians fighting a brutal and cruel enemy. 

• AA turning point came with the Vietcong’s ‘Tet Offensive’ in January 1968, in which they captured the US Embassy in Saigon, leading TV news anchor Walter Cronkite to say: "What the hell is going on?  I thought we were winning". 

• During the offensive, as a cameraman was filming a Vietcong prisoner, the Saigon Police Chief walked over and shot him in the head.  The man was later proved to be a member of a Vietcong murder squad; but all the viewers saw was a man horribly executed without trial.  Many Americans decided that the South Vietnamese government was not worth saving. 

• A ‘credibility gap’ opened up between what the US Army was claiming, and what people suspected was happening; time after time the government was exposed as liars (eg in the claim that it was not bombing civilians targets). 

5.  My Lai

• On 16 March 1968, during the Tet Offensive, an American patrol led by Lieutenant William Calley entered the Vietnamese village of My Lai.  The village was in a Vietcong-held area, and the American base nearby was under attack.  The patrol did not find any Vietcong, and did not come under enemy fire.  Instead, it committed the worst reported American atrocity of the war, murdering 347 men, women, children and babies.  Some of the women were raped first, then killed.  One soldier admitted killing babies clinging to their mother because, he said, the babies were about to attack. 

• Only an American helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, who saw the massacre, tried to stop the killing and save the villagers.  His report, and letters written by other witnesses to President Nixon, Senators and Army chiefs were ignored. 

• In November 1969, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published the story of My Lai; the US public were horrified. 

• Nonetheless, although a number of officers were charged, only Lt William Calley was found guilty of murder and sentenced to hard labour for life … and in 1971 President Nixon reduced his sentence to 3½ years house arrest. 

• Although many of the ‘silent majority’ of Americans sympathised with Calley, for others – especially students and war veterans – My Lai removed all ‘moral right’ for the US to be in Vietnam.