“Hell No! We Won’t Go!”: American Public Opinion of the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War, which began in November of 1955, did not see US involvement until August of 1964 when President Johnson called for air strikes on the North Vietnamese in response to the perceived attack on the U.S.S. Maddox. With the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, President Johnson now had the authority to “take all necessary measures, including the use of armed force” against the threat of the North Vietnamese, thus setting the stage for a lengthy and bloody war. While most Americans first supported the US’s involvement in Vietnam, as time wore on and more and more troops died, the American public began to question the necessity of fighting in Vietnam, leading to a strong counterculture movement of college students protesting the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was a failure of political will, and the American public’s view of the US army went from seeing them as heros to condemning them as killers serving the purpose of suppressing a communist government and protecting their own country from the fear communism presented. The 1960’s were a decade characterized by hope, and President Johnson’s pro-war propaganda lead Americans to believe that war was the only path to securing democracy from the threat of communism, but as the 1970’s approached, US troops and citizens became more disillusioned towards a war that seemingly had no real purpose and no end in sight.
Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
“Born in the U.S.A.” Bruce Springsteen
Following the US victory in WWII, the 1960’s were a time of political power and economic dominance in the United States. The “Red Scare” and Joseph McCarthy’s communist “witch hunts” that had characterized the 1950’s contributed to a general uneasiness and fear amongst the American people. Communism had been turned into a villain that the American people must defeat in order to preserve their way of life. With the attack at the Gulf of Tonkin, in conjunction with President Lyndon Johnson's strong efforts to defend South Vietnam from the North Vietnamese rebels, Americans were ready to fight for their country and against communism. President Eisenhower first coined the term “domino theory” in regards to the spread of communism during his Cold War speech in 1954 where he warned that the fall of French Indochina to communism would make other Asian countries susceptible to communism as well. The premise of the “domino theory” is that if one country, in this case Vietnam, fell to communist ways, the surrounding countries would also fall to communism. The United States’ growing fear of this collapse into communism has now been proven to be nothing more than unfounded panic and fear-mongering, as the amount of communist countries today is as little as five (Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, China, and North Korea). If the goal of the Vietnam War was to stop communism from overtaking Vietnam, then the war has also been proven to have have been lost by the US, for Vietnam is one of the five communist countries to date. Motivated by the concept of the “domino theory” and the policy of containment, President Johnson sent thousands of American troops to fight in Vietnam from 1964 to the end of his presidency in 1969. However, he concealed his military escalation from the American public, adopting a policy of “minimum candor” when dealing with the press, fearing that knowledge of American escalation and lack of decisive victory in Vietnam would jeopardize public opinion of both his administration and the war itself. This policy of concealment would eventually lead to cracks in the American public’s faith in its government and in the US’s motivations for fighting in the Vietnam war. By the time President Johnson’s term was up in 1968, American views on the Vietnam War had greatly shifted from support to condemnation, prompting Johnson not to run for reelection.
Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes, Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord, And when you ask 'em "How much should we give?" Ooh, they only answer, "More, more, more" yoh!
“Fortunate Son”, Creedence Clearwater Revival
As the Vietnam War entered its fifth year in 1969, President Richard Nixon was elected largely on a platform promising to end the war and remove American troops from Vietnam. Airing campaign videos with slogans like “This time, vote like your whole world depended on it,” President Richard Nixon capitalized on Americans’ frustration with the lack of progress in the Vietnam War. The Tet Offensive attack from the North Vietnamese army in February 1968, the airing of vivid images of American troops and casualties in Vietnam on television, and the Viet Cong contributed to the growing opposition to the Vietnam War in America and sparked many anti-war movements, particularly among young people on college campuses. With growing criticism against the war, Anti-war demonstrations were being held across America, plenty of which were widely broadcasted, appreciated, and talked about. The military draft passed in 1964, which made 2.2 million American men eligible for battle, and contributed to American opposition against the war and the growth of the peace movement. By November of 1967, nearly 500,000 troops were deployed in Vietnam and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. The Vietnam War cost the U.S. $25 billion dollars per year, and disillusionment was beginning to reach greater sections of the taxpaying public. More casualties were reported in Vietnam every day, leading U.S. commanders demanded more troops. The draft called as many as 40,000 young men into service within every month of war, stoking the flames of the anti-war movement. Student activism on college campuses played a large role in the anti-war movement (which was supported by the gains made during the Free Speech movement) as well as the growth and spread of television, which allowed for the violence and horrors of the war to enter the suburban home and the American consciousness. The Nixon administration reacted to these protests by remaining firm in their stance that these protestors remained in the minority; Nixon claimed that anti-war protesters constituted a small minority that should not be allowed to drown out the “silent majority” of Americans who were still in support of the war. Tensions reached a boiling point with the Kent State shooting in May of 1970. A small group of students on the Kent State campus protested the US’s invasion of Cambodia. National Guard troops were called in to suppress the peaceful protest and ended up shooting and killing four students. The images of the dead students further angered the American public, who viewed the government’s reaction to the protest as unreasonable.
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
“For What It’s Worth,” Buffalo Springfield
The Vietnam War is one of the most controversial wars in American history. While support for the war among the American people at its outset was significant, the combination of heavy American casualties, the growth of the counterculture peace movement, student protests on college campuses, the cost of the war, and the perceived injustices of the military draft all led to a widespread disillusionment not only with America’s involvement in the Vietnam War but with the American government itself. While WWII produced a generation of military heroes, the Vietnam War’s legacy is not one of heroism and pride, but rather one of shame and distrust. The Vietnam War is now most recognized by the cultural effects it had on American society, from the hundreds of protest songs written to the films made (like Oliver Stone’s Platoon) that explored the senseless violence and corruption of the war. The Vietnam War will remain a lengthy, confusing, and divisive event in American history: a war with no formal declaration of war and with no clear-cut victory.