why did people protest the vietnam war

Why? Our spirit is opposed to violence, opposed to hate, opposed to every motive that has produced this terrible war … we can overcome, … In May 1968, 562 US troops were killed in one week alone. The protests against the Vietnam War were a series of demonstrations against American involvement in the conflict between North and South Vietnam. By the time of the 1969 moratorium day protests, nearly 40,000 Americans had died in Vietnam. American involvement in Southeast Asia began in the years following World War II. High-profile opposition to the Vietnam War increasingly turned to mass protests in an effort to shift U.S. public opinion. The war that had been sold to the US public as one where victory was guaranteed was in reality taking many young lives. Speakers included Senator Wayne Morse, a Democrat from Oregon who had become a sharp critic of the Johnson Administration. Cold War > Vietnam Protest Movement Primary Sources Vietnam Protest Movement. If there was to be a political protest, it never became apparent in Congress where the entire House voted to support Johnson and only two Senators voted against US involvement. More than 200 people have been arrested after thousands of demonstrators clashed in an anti-Vietnam war protest outside the United States embassy in London. In February, about 2,500 members of Women Strike for Peace (WSP) marched to the Pentagon. On the day of the protest, administrators told the students to remove the armbands or they would be suspended. The Vietnam War provoked outrage from people across the political spectrum, including groups and individuals who disagreed fundamentally on ideological issues, and even on the aims of the anti-war campaign. This event actually highlighted to the US public the enormous strain frontline troops were experiencing on a daily basis against a supposedly inferior enemy. In a shocking gesture, a young Buddhist monk sat on a Saigon street and set himself on fire, creating an iconic image of Vietnam as a deeply troubled land. Others claimed the killings had been justified. A powerful bomb, which was being built by members of the radical Weather Underground group, went off prematurely. The issue of American involvement came up in an interview with President Kennedy conducted by journalist Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963, less than three months before Kennedy's assassination. Coupled with these casualty figures were stories that eventually came out about atrocities committed by US troops against the very people they were meant to be defending and supporting. In 1971, 300,000 took part in an anti-war demonstration in the same city. America rallied to the call of the commander-in-chief and after the Gulf of Tonkin incident it became very apparent that few would raise protests against the decision to militarily support South Vietnam. Even when most of the fighting in Vietnam was turned over to South Vietnamese forces and overall American involvement in Southeast Asia decreased, protests against the war continued. And as so few Americans were involved, it wasn't a terribly volatile issue. The resultant tensions impacted upon the nature of the demonstrations as different wings of the campaign fought for supremacy, with the left eventually emerging victorious at the … 'Housewives,, professional people, they were all involved, it was a very wide spread' according to camerman John Miller who states that people all came … In the middle of the … Protest to conscription has been a feature of all American wars, since the Spanish-American War in 1898 and continuing through the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Managed by Caboodle UX design studio in London, Citation: C N Trueman "Protests against the Vietnam War", The war had been sold to the US public as one where a sophisticated and ultra wealthy super-power would have few problems defeating a Third World nation that North Vietnam seemed to represent. Thousands of outraged young people descended on Chicago to protest outside the convention hall. In May 1968, 562 US troops were killed in one week alone. In New York City, protesters paraded and held a rally in Central Park. Most Vietnam songs released during Kennedy’s presidency articulated a reluctance to be drafted. The hippy movement preached love not war. The fact is they protested because they did not want to be inducted into the military. And in the wake of Kent State, the nation remained deeply divided. The 1971 May Day protests against the war in Vietnam. Though Nixon claimed the action would be limited, it struck many Americans as a widening of the war, and it sparked a new round of protests on college campuses. Vietnam War protesters in Vienna in 1968. When they publicly threw away their medals and medal ribbons, many in America were shocked that those who had worn the uniform of the US military had come to think that the only way ahead was to discard the very things that had been issued to them to represent their bravery – their medals. Coupled with these casualty figures were stories that eventually came out about atrocities committed by US troops against the very people they were meant to be defending and supporting. On 29th August 1970, 30,000 Mexican-Americans marched against the Vietnam war. By the summer of 1965, young Americans across the country began to change focus in their fight against the Vietnam War. Despite a brief upsurge in protests following and resumption of the air war against North Vietnam in the spring of 1972, the factionalization of the movement and the withdrawal of most U.S. forces led to a decline in protests. The following day, Mary Beth Tinker's 14-year-old brother John wore an armband to school and was also sent home. At different times they chose different targets: the Pentagon, Presidents Nixon and Johnson, the draft, Dow Chemical. Protests against the Vietnam War did not start when America declared her open involvement in the war in 1964. The first was film of children running away from their village having been burned by napalm and the second was the summary execution of a Vietcong suspect by a South Vietnamese police chief on the streets of Saigon in 1968. In an expansion of his message concerning race and the war in Vietnam, King began to link the oppression of the poor to the global oppressiveness of capitalism as exhibited in the U.S. action in Southeast Asia. As that conflict escalated, the protests grew in strength, and some turned violent. In 1975, when North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon and the South Vietnamese government collapsed, the last Americans fled Vietnam in helicopters. Continued U.S. support for the Thieu … Vietnamese monk protesting with self-immolation. Involvement in the Vietnam War was very much sold as a patriotic venture so few were prepared to protest. In society to the US public as one where victory was guaranteed was in taking. Kennedy ’ s most famous cities – New York city, protesters paraded and a. Vindicated in a divided America to a war and urged students to the... From a common belief that the Vietnam war protests at the time of global cultural that! 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