Antiwar Movement In US Essay Research Paper

Antiwar Movement In US Essay, Research Paper

The antiwar movement against Vietnam in the US from 1965-1971 was the most

significant movement of its kind in the nation’s history. The United States

first became directly involved in Vietnam in 1950 when President Harry Truman

started to underwrite the costs of France’s war against the Viet Minh. Later,

the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy increased the US’s

political, economic, and military commitments steadily throughout the fifties

and early sixties in the Indochina region. Prominent senators had already begun

criticizing American involvement in Vietnam during the summer of1964, which led

to the mass antiwar movement that was to appear in the summer of 1965. This

antiwar movement had a great impact on policy and practically forced the US out

of Vietnam. Starting with teach-ins during the spring of 1965, the massive

antiwar efforts centered on the colleges, with the students playingleading

roles. These teach-ins were mass public demonstrations, usually held in the

spring and fall seasons. By 1968, protestersnumbered almost seven million with

more than half being white youths in the college. The teach-in movement was at

first, a gentle approach to the antiwar activity. Although, it faded when the

college students went home during the summer of 1965, other types of protest

that grew through 1971 soon replaced it. All of these movements captured the

attention of the White House, especially when 25,000 people marched on

Washington Avenue. And at times these movements attracted the interestof all the

big decision-makers and their advisors. The teach-ins began at the University of

Michigan on March 24, 1965, and spread to other campuses, including Wisconsin on

April 1. These protests at some of America’s finest universities captured public

attention. The Demonstrations were one form of attempting to go beyond mere

words and research and reason, and to put direct pressure on those who were

conducting policy in apparent disdain for the will expressed by the voters.

Within the US government, some saw these teach-ins as an important development

that might slow down on further escalation in Vietnam. Although several hundred

colleges experienced teach-ins, most campuses were untouched by this

circumstance. Nevertheless, the teach-ins did concern the administration and

contributed to President Johnson’s decision to present a major Vietnam address

at Johns Hopkins University on April 7, 1965. The address tried to respond to

the teach-ins campus protest activity. The Johns Hopkins speech was the first

major example of the impact of antiwar. Johnson was trying to stabilize public

opinion while the campuses were bothering the government. In 1965, the US

started strategically bombing parts of Northern Vietnam, catalyzing the antiwar

movement public opinion ofwhat was going on in Indochina. These bombings spawned

the antiwar movement and sustained it, especially as the North Vietnamese leader

Ho Chi Minh refused to listen to American demands. The antiwar movement would

have emerged alone by the bombings, and the growing cost of American lives

coming home in body bags only intensified public opposition to the war. This

movement against the Northern bombings, and domestic critics in general, played

a role in the decision to announce a bombing pause from May 12 to the 17, of

1965. Antiwar activists carried on through the pause with their own programs,

and the scattered teach-ins had become more of a problem for President Johnson

when their organizers joined in an unofficial group, the Inter-University

Committee for a Public Hearing on Vietnam. This new committee began planning a

nationwide teach-in to be conducted on television and radio, of which would be a

debate between protesters and administrators of the government. The antiwar

movement, through the national teach-in, contributed to the resignations of many

government officials, including the resignation of McGeorge Bundy inearly 1966.

This well-publicized debate made the antiwar effort more respectable. As

supporters of the war found themselves more popular, they were driven

increasingly to rely on equating their position with"support for our boys

in Vietnam.". 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. For example, to join the November 1969 antiwarMobilization, a

unit boycotted its Thanksgiving Day dinner. One problem of the antiwar movement

was the difficulty of finding ways to move beyond protest and symbolic acts to

deeds that would actually impede the war. Unlike college students and other

civilians, the troops in Vietnam had no such problem. Individual acts of

rebell

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