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Vietnam Protest
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Vietnam War The United States was unjustified in its involvement in the Vietnam War because, in my opinion, the U.S had little justification to sacrifice thousands of innocent youths for political ideals. It was the longest and most unpopular war in which the United States fought. Many Americans on the home front protested their government’s involvement in the war. Many young Americans felt no reason to fight for a cause they did not believe in, especially in such a strange foreign country. The civil rights movement also strongly influenced many of the war protests. This was because such a large percentage of minority soldiers sent over to fight were being unfairly treated. The African American soldiers were being ordered to the frontlines more often than white soldiers were. One such protest that made a large impact on the outcome of the war took place in Selma, Alabama. One of the most vigorously protested topics of the Vietnam War was Conscription. Most of two million soldiers who fought in the war were chosen through the Selective Service. The draft had been instated in America since the Civil War and had been used in every major United States war since. Young adult males were required to register for the draft when they turned eighteen years old. A lottery system decided who would be called up held in the calendar month of his nineteenth birthday. If selected for the draft, the draftee had to serve 24 months of active duty. There had been no protest to conscription during the two world wars or the Korean War. Ever since the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, there had been some hostility towards the idea of drafting men during times of peace. During the Vietnam War, the hostility Americans felt towards the draft erupted and caused major protests across the nation. They are where many ways people protested the draft. Some eligible draft members avoided the draft by leaving the country for Canada, Sweden, or a number of other countries. Other men protested by publicly burning their draft cards. 1971 about 1,000 Vietnam veterans camped in Washington, D.C., to lobby for an immediate end to the war. Lyndon B. Johnson won the presidential election on November 1st 1964. Despite the tension between the Doves and the Hawks president Lyndon B. Johnson kept his policy of slow escalation. As he began his term in office in 1965 he was confident that his “society programs” would be established despite “that nagging little war in Vietnam” (p. 58 A Nation Divided) as News Week reported it. The South Vietnamese government had not grown any stronger over the previous few months and losing substantial ground to the increasingly powerful Vietcong. The Vietcong where mainly gaining influence by infiltrating the countryside. Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to ignore how the war was going despite the fact that fifty percent of the American public disliked the way he was handling the situation. Robert MacNamara, Johnson’s defense secretary, advised that “The American policy in Vietnam would only lend in disastrous defeat, and that the time had come for harder choices.” (p. 58 A Nation Divided) Johnson’s only choices for the war were escalation or withdrawal.
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