Opposition to the Vietnam War

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Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War began slowly and in small numbers in 1964 on various college campuses in the United States. This happened during a time of unprecedented student activism reinforced in numbers by the demographically significant baby boomers, but grew to include a wide and varied cross-section of Americans from all walks of life. The growing opposition to the Vietnam War was also partly attributed to greater access to uncensored information compared with previous wars and extensive television media coverage of what, ultimately, became America's longest combat war. Likewise, a system of conscription that provided exemptions and deferments more easily claimed by middle and upper class registrants - and thus inducted disproportionate numbers of poor, working-class, and minority registrants - drove much of the protest. By the end of 1967, as the war ground on with no end in sight, public opinion polls showed a majority of Americans opposed the war.

1 Polarization and protest
- 1.1 Protests
- 1.2 Common slogans and chants
2 Government suppression
3 Vietnam war crimes hearings
4 Conscription, student deferments and draft resistance
5 Later years
6 Anti-war songs of the Vietnam Era
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Polarization and protest

The U.S. became polarized over the war. Many supporters of U.S. involvement argued for what was known as the domino theory, which held that if the South fell to communist guerillas, other nations, primarily in Southeast Asia, would succumb in short succession, much like falling dominoes, and much like the nations of eastern Europe had fallen under Soviet control between 1945 and 1948. Military critics of the war pointed out that the conflict was political and that the military mission lacked any clear idea of how to achieve its objectives. Civilian critics of the war argued that the government of South Vietnam lacked political legitimacy, or that support for the war was immoral. President Johnson's undersecretary of state, George Ball, was one of the lone voices in his administration advising against war in Vietnam.

Gruesome images of two anti-war activists who set themselves on fire in November 1965 provided iconic images of how strongly some people felt that the war was immoral. On November 2 32-year-old Quaker member Norman Morrison set himself on fire in front of The Pentagon and, on November 9, 22-year old Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte did the same thing in front of the United Nations building. Both protests were conscious imitations of earlier (and ongoing) Buddhist protests in South Vietnam itself.

Protests against the Vietnam War took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The protests were part of a movement in opposition to the Vietnam War and took place mainly in the U.S. (See also Students for a Democratic Society, Free Speech Movement, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Youth International Party, Chicago Seven.)

[edit] Protests

The very first protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam were in 1945, when United States Merchant Marine sailors condemned the U.S. government for the use of U.S. merchant ships to transport French troops to "subjugate the native population" of Vietnam; these protesters opposed the "recolonization" of Vietnam. [1]

[edit] 1963

In August 1963, the first organized Vietnam War protests took place in New York and Philadelphia held by American pacifists during the annual commemorations of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings
In October 1963, Vietnam War protests took place at the University of Wisconsin.

[edit] 1964

The first use of the word hippie on US television came on April 22 at the opening of the New York World's Fair. Some young anti-Vietnam War protesters, wearing t-shirts, denim jeans and with long hair, staged a sit-in and were called "hippies" by NYPD officers and reporters. The police fought and swung their batons at them to chase them off the escalators, and they fought back and were arrested.
On May 2, 400 to 1000 students marched through Times Square, New York and another 700 in San Francisco in the first major student demonstration against the war. Smaller numbers also marched in Boston, Seattle, and Madison Wisconsin.
August: for reference, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Gulf of Tonkin Resolution occurred in August 1964.

[edit] 1965

On March 24, the anti-war Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) attended the first teach-in, organized by some teachers, against the war at the University of Michigan, attended by 2,500 participants. This was to be repeated at 35 campuses across the country.
On April 17, the SDS and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a civil rights activist group, led the first of several anti-war marches in Washington DC, with about 25,000 protesters.♂
The first draft card burnings took place at University of California, Berkeley at student demonstrations in May organised by a new anti-war group, the VDC (Vietnam Day Committee), where a coffin was marched to the local Draft board office, a teach-in was attended by 30,000, and president Lyndon Johnson was burned in effigy.
Gallup poll in May showed 48% of US respondents felt the Government was handling the conflict effectively; 28% felt the situation was being handled badly; the rest, no opinion.
Protests were held in June on the steps of the Pentagon, and in August, attempts were made by activists at Berkeley to stop trains carrying troops from moving.
Polls in late August show that 24% of Americans view sending troops to Vietnam as a mistake versus 60% who do not. [2]
In mid-October, the anti-war movement had significantly expanded to become a national and even global phenomenon, as anti-war protests drawing 100,000 were held simultaneously in as many as 80 major cities around the US, London, Paris and Rome.
On November 27, some 25,000 protesters led by several student activist groups surrounded the White House, calling for an end to the war, then marched to the Washington Monument. On that same day, President Johnson announced a significant escalation of US involvement in Indochina, from 120,000 to 400,000 troops.

[edit] 1966

In February, a group of about 100 veterans attempted to return their decorations to the White House in protest of the war, but were turned back.
Anti-war demonstrations were again held around the country and the world March 26 with 20,000 taking part in New York City.
On May 16, another large demonstration calling for an end to the war took place outside the White House and the Washington monument.
June 4 - a three page anti-war ad appeared in the New York Times bearing the signatures of 6,400 teachers and professors.
June - The Gallup poll respondents supporting the US handling of the war slipped to 41%; 37% expressed disapproval; the rest, no opinion.
A crowd of 4,000 demonstrated against the US war in London on July 3 and scuffled with police outside the US Embassy; 33 protesters were arrested.
Protests, strikes and sit-ins continued at Berkeley and across other campuses throughout the year, and also, three army privates known as the 'Fort Hood Three" refused to deploy in Vietnam, calling the war "illegal and immoral", and were sentenced to prison terms.
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) refused to go to war, famously stating that he had "got nothing against no Viet Cong" and that "no Viet Cong ever called me nigger." According to a writer for Sports Illustrated, the governor of Illinois called Ali "disgusting" and the governor of Maine said that Ali "should be held in utter contempt by every patriotic American." [3] In 1967 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released on appeal.

[edit] 1967

January 14 - 20,000-30,000 people staged a "Human Be-In" anti-war event in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, which by that time had become the center of hippie activity.
February 8 - Christian groups opposed to the war staged a nationwide "Fast for Peace".
March 25 - Civil rights leader Martin Luther King led a march of 5,000 against the war in Chicago, Illinois.
On April 15, 400,000 people marched to the UN building in New York City to protest the war, where they were addressed by critics of the war such as Benjamin Spock, Martin Luther King, and Jan Barry Crumb, a veteran of the conflict. On the same date 100,000 marched in San Francisco.
On April 24, Abbie Hoffman led a small group of protesters against both the war and capitalism who interrupted the New York Stock Exchange, causing chaos by throwing fistfuls of both real and fake dollars down from the gallery.
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) was among those who refused to go to war, famously stating April 28 that he had "got nothing against no Viet Cong." According to a writer for Sports Illustrated, the governor of Illinois called Ali "disgusting" and the governor of Maine said that Ali "should be held in utter contempt by every patriotic American." <ref>http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/ali_m.htm</ref>He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released on appeal.
May 2 - British philosopher Bertrand Russell presided over the "Russell Tribunal" in Stockholm - a mock war crimes tribunal. Its proceedings were criticized as a show trial. It ruled that the US and its allies committed war crimes in Vietnam.
On May 30 Crumb and ten like-minded men attended a peace demonstration in Washington, D.C., and on June 1 Vietnam Veterans Against the War was born.
In the summer of 1967, Neil Armstrong and various other NASA officials began a tour of South America to raise awareness for space travel. According to First Man, a biography of Armstrong's life, during the tour, several college students protested the astronaut, and shouted such phrases as "Murderers get out of Vietnam!" and other anti-Vietnam War messages.
July 30: Gallup poll reported 52% of Americans disapproved of Johnson's handling of the war; 41% thought the US made a mistake in sending troops; over 56% thought US was losing the war or at an impasse.
In October 1967, Stop the Draft Week resulted in major clashes at the Oakland, California induction center and saw more than a thousand registrants return their draft cards in events across the country. The cards were delivered to the Justice Department on October 20.
The next day, a large demonstration took place at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. As many as 100,000 demonstrators attended the event, and at least 30,000 later marched to the Pentagon for another rally and an all night vigil. A few, including Abbie Hoffmann and Jerry Rubin, attempted to "exorcise" and "levitate" the building, while others engaged in civil disobedience on the steps of the Pentagon, interrupted by clashes with soldiers and police. In all, 647 arrests were made. When a plot to airdrop 10,000 flowers on the Pentagon was foiled by undercover agents, these flowers ended up being placed in the barrels of MP's rifles, as seen in some famous photographs<ref>http://www.levity.com/aciddreams/samples/pentagon.html</ref>. Norman Mailer documents the events surrounding the march on the pentagon in his novel "The Armies of the Night."

By this time, it had also become commonplace for the most radical or outspoken elements among the anti-war marchers to prominently display the flag of the Viet Cong 'enemy', which only served to alienate many who were otherwise morally opposed to the conflict.

[edit] 1968

February: Gallup poll showed 35% approved of Johnson's handling of the war; 50% disapproved; the rest, no opinion. [NYT, 2/14/68] In another poll that month, 23% of Americans defined themselves as "doves" and 61% "hawks".[4]
March 12th: anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy received more votes than expected in the New Hampshire Primary, leading to more expressions of opposition against the war. McCarthy urged his supporters to exchange the 'unkempt look' that was rapidly becoming fashionable among war opponents, for a more clean-cut style, in order to petition middle-class and 'soccer mom' votes; these were known as "Clean Genes".
In March, Gallup poll reported that 49% of respondents felt involvement in the war was an error.
During the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held August 26–August 29 in Chicago, Illinois, anti-war protesters assembled throughout the city. Tensions between police and protesters quickly escalated to riot.

[edit] 1969

March polls indicate that 19% of Americans want the war to end as soon as possible, 26% want South Vietnam to take over responsibility for the war from the U.S., 19% favor the current policy and 33% want all-out military victory. [5]
July 1969: A Gallup poll indicates that 53% of the respondents approve of Nixon's handling of the war; 30% disapprove; the balance have no opinion. [NYT, 7/31/69]
The Moratorium demonstrations took place on October 15, 1969. Millions of Americans took the day off from work and school to participate in local demonstrations against the war. These were the first major demonstrations against the Nixon administration's handling of the war. On November 15, 1969 crowds estimated up to half a million people participated in an anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. with a similar demonstration being held in San Francisco, these protests being organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (New Mobe) and the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (SMC).
In October, 58% of Gallup respondents said US entry into the war was a mistake.

[edit] 1970

Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest, Washington, D.C. A week after the Kent State Shootings, on 4 May, 100,000 anti-war demonstrators converged on Washington, D.C. to protest the shooting of the students in Ohio and the Nixon administration's incursion into Cambodia. Even though the demonstration was quickly put together, protesters were still able to bring out thousands to march in the Capital. It was an almost spontaneous response to the events of the previous week. Police ringed the White House with buses to block the demonstrators from getting too close to the executive mansion. Early in the morning before the march, Nixon met with protesters briefly at the Lincoln Memorial but nothing was resolved and the protest went on as planned.

The Chicano Moratorium: on 29 August, 1970, 25,000 Mexican-Americans participated in the largest anti-war demonstration in Los Angeles. Police attacked with clubs and guns. Three people were killed. Ruben Salazar, KMEX news director and Los Angeles Times reporter was killed.

[edit] Common slogans and chants

"Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?"
The slogan "One, two, three, four! We don't want your fucking war!" was chanted repeatedly at demonstrations throughout the U.S. in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
"Draft Beer, not boys", "Hell no, we won't go", "Make love, not war" and "Eighteen today, dead tomorrow" were a few of the anti war slogans.
"Fight the VD, Not the VC!" displayed sentiments to concentrate more on the familiar problem of venereal diseases than the foreign group, the Vietcong.
"Love our country", "America, love it or leave it" and "No glory like old glory" are examples of pro-war slogans.

There are many other pro- and anti- war slogans, however the mere informational use of those are very small. The group that mostly used the anti-war slogans were called "doves"; those that supported the war were known as "hawks."

[edit] Government suppression

Children run down a road near Trang Bang after an ARVN napalm attack on villages suspected of harboring National Liberation Front fighters in this June, 1972 photo by Huynh Cong Ut, which became a defining symbol of the international movement against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (Nick Ut / The Associated Press)

The growing anti-war movement alarmed many in the US government. On August 16, 1966 the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigations of Americans who were suspected of aiding the NLF, with the intent to introduce legislation making these activities illegal. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the meeting and 50 were arrested.

On 1 February 1968, a suspected NLF officer was summarily executed by General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. Loan shot the suspect in the head on a public street in front of journalists. The suspect was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. The execution was filmed and photographed and provided another iconic image that helped sway public opinion in the United States against the war. The media did not release the image context with the image so it was famously seen as a picture of American supported injustice.

On 15 October 1969, hundreds of thousands of people took part in National Moratorium anti-war demonstrations across the United States; the demonstrations prompted many workers to call in sick from their jobs and adolescents nationwide engaged in truancy from school. However, the proportion of individuals doing either who actually participated in the demonstrations is uncertain. A second round of "Moratorium" demonstrations was held on November 15, but was less well-attended.

South Vietnamese police Chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyen Van Lem. Photo © Eddie Adams.

The U.S. realized that the South Vietnamese government needed a solid base of popular support if it was to survive the insurgency. In order to pursue this goal of winning the "Hearts and Minds" of the Vietnamese people, units of the United States Army, referred to as "Civil Affairs" units, were extensively utilized for the first time for this purpose since World War II.

Civil Affairs units, while remaining armed and under direct military control, engaged in what came to be known as "nation building": constructing (or reconstructing) schools, public buildings, roads and other physical infrastructure; conducting medical programs for civilians who had no access to medical facilities; facilitating cooperation among local civilian leaders; conducting hygiene and other training for civilians; and similar activities.

This policy of attempting to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people, however, often was at odds with other aspects of the war which served to antagonize many Vietnamese civilians. These policies included the emphasis on "body count" as a way of measuring military success on the battlefield, the bombing of villages (symbolized by journalist Peter Arnett's famous quote, "it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it"), and the killing of civilians in such incidents as the My Lai massacre. In 1974 the documentary "Hearts and Minds" sought to portray the devastation the war was causing to the South Vietnamese people, and won an Academy Award for best documentary amid considerable controversy. The South Vietnamese government also antagonized many of its citizens with its suppression of political opposition, through such measures as holding large numbers of political prisoners, torturing political opponents, and holding a one-man election for President in 1971.

Despite the increasingly depressing news on the war, many Americans continued to support President Johnson's endeavors. Aside from the domino theory mentioned above, there was a feeling that the goal of preventing a communist takeover of a pro-Western government in South Vietnam was a noble objective. Many Americans were also concerned about saving face in the event of disengaging from the war or, as President Richard M. Nixon later put it, "achieving Peace with Honor". In addition, instances of Viet Cong atrocities were widely reported, most notably in an article that appeared in Reader's Digest in 1968 entitled The Blood-Red Hands of Ho Chi Minh.

However, anti-war feelings also began to rise. Many Americans opposed the war on moral grounds, seeing it as a destructive war against Vietnamese independence, or as intervention in a foreign civil war; others opposed it because they felt it lacked clear objectives and appeared to be unwinnable. Many anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam Veterans, as evidenced by the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Some of the Americans opposed to the Vietnam War, as for instance Jane Fonda, stressed their support for ordinary Vietnamese civilians struck by a war beyond their influence. The anti-war sentiments gave reason to those that believed returning soldiers were "spat on" or otherwise abused. In April of 1971, Thousands of Vietnam Veterans against the war converged on the White House on Washington D.C. and threw their medals on the capitol steps.

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson began his re-election campaign. A member of his own party, Eugene McCarthy, ran against him for the nomination on an anti-war platform. McCarthy did not win the first primary election in New Hampshire, but he did surprisingly well against an incumbent. The resulting blow to the Johnson campaign, taken together with other factors, led the President to make a surprise announcement in a March 31 televised speech that he was pulling out of the race. He also announced the initiation of the Paris Peace Negotiations with Vietnam in that speech. Then, on August 4, 1969, US representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy began secret peace negotiations at the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris. Seizing the opportunity caused by Johnson's departure from the race, Robert Kennedy then joined in and ran for the nomination on an anti-war platform. Johnson's vice president, Hubert Humphrey, also ran for the nomination, promising to continue to support the South Vietnamese government.

[edit] Vietnam war crimes hearings

In January, 1971, just weeks into his first term, Congressman Ron Dellums set up a Vietnam war crimes exhibit in an annex to his Congressional office. The exhibit featured four large posters depicting supposed atrocities committed by American soldiers embellished with red paint. This was followed shortly thereafter by a series of hearings on "war crimes" in Vietnam, which began April 25. Dellums had called for formal investigations into the allegations, but Congress chose not to endorse these proceedings. As such, the hearings were ad hoc and only informational in nature. As a condition of room use, press and camera presence were not permitted, but the proceedings were transcribed. A small number of other anti-Vietnam War congresspeople also took part in the hearings.

The transcripts describe alleged details of U.S. military's conduct in Vietnam. Some tactics were descried as “gruesome”, such as the severing of ears from corpses to verify body count. Others involved the indiscriminate killing of civilians. Soldiers claimed to have ordered artillery strikes on villages which did not appear to have any military presence. Soldiers were claimed to use racist terms such as "gooks," "dinks" and "slant eyes" when referring to the Vietnamese.

Witnesses described that legal, by-the-book instruction was augmented by more questionable training by non-commissioned officers as to how soldiers should conduct themselves. One witness testified about "free-fire zones," areas as large as 80 square miles in which soldiers were free to shoot any Vietnamese they encountered after curfew without first making sure they were hostile. Allegations of exaggeration of body count, torture, murder and general abuse of civilians and the psychology and motivations of soldiers and officers were discussed at length.

[edit] Conscription, student deferments and draft resistance

See also: Kent State shootings

"The draft" initiated protests when on May 5 1965, U. Cal-Berkeley student activists marched on the Berkely Draft board and forty students staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States. Another 19 cards were burnt May 22 at a demonstration following the Berkeley teach-in [6].

At that time, only a fraction of all men of draft age were actually conscripted, but the Selective Service System office ("Draft Board") in each locality had broad discretion on whom to draft and whom to exempt where there was no clear guideline for exemption. In late July 1965, Johnson doubled the number of young men to be drafted per month from 17,000 to 35,000, and on August 31, signed a law making it a crime to burn a draft card.

On October 15, 1965 the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam in New York staged the first draft card burning to result in an arrest under the new law.

In 1967, the continued operation of a seemingly unfair draft system then calling as many as 40,000 men for induction each month fueled a burgeoning draft resistance movement. On October 16, 1967, draft card turn-ins were held across the country, yielding more than 1,000 draft cards, later returned to the Justice Department as an act of civil disobedience. Resisters expected to be prosecuted immediately, but Attorney General Ramsey Clark instead prosecuted a group of ringleaders including Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr. in Boston in 1968.

The charges of unfairness led to the institution of a draft lottery for the year 1970 in which a young man's birthday determined his relative risk of being drafted (September 14 was the birthday at the top of the draft list for 1970; the following year July 9 held this distinction).

The first draft lottery since World War II in the United States was held on 1 December 1969 and was met with large protests and a great deal of controversy; statistical analysis indicated that the methodology of the lotteries unintentionally disadvantaged men with late year birthdays. <ref>Nonrandom Risk: The 1970 Draft Lottery, Norton Starr, Journal of Statistics Education v.5, n.2, 1997 </ref> This issue was treated at length in a 4 January 1970 New York Times article titled "Statisticians Charge Draft Lottery Was Not Random".

Thousands of young American men chose exile in Canada or Sweden rather than risk conscription. The Japanese anti-war group Beheiren helped some American soldiers to desert and hide from the military in Japan. <ref>Antiwar campaigners to donate documents to Vietnamese museum, Keiji Hirano, Kyodo News, The Japan Times, February 16, 2002. (Web edition hosted by lbo-talk under the title "What Japanese Anti-Vietnam War activists are up to") </ref> In order to gain an exemption or deferment many men obtained student deferments by attending college, though they would have to remain in college until their 26th birthday to be certain of avoiding the draft. Some got married, which remained an exemption throughout the war. Some men found sympathetic doctors who would claim a medical basis for applying for a 4F (medically unfit) exemption, though Army doctors could and did make their own judgments. Still others joined the National Guard or entered the Peace Corps as a way of avoiding Vietnam. All of these issues raised concerns about the fairness of who got selected for involuntary service, since it was often the poor or those without connections who were drafted. Ironically, in light of modern political issues, a certain exemption was a convincing claim of homosexuality, but very few men attempted this because of the stigma involved. Also, conviction for certain crimes would earn an exclusion, the topic of the anti-war song 'Alice's Restaurant' by Arlo Guthrie.

Even many of those who never received a deferment or exemption never served, simply because the pool of eligible men was so huge compared to the number required for service, that the draft boards never got around to drafting them when a new crop of men became available (until 1969) or because they had high lottery numbers (1970 and later).

Of those soldiers who served during the war, there was increasing opposition to the conflict amongst GIs <ref>1961-1973: GI Resistance in the Vietnam War, libcom.org </ref> , which resulted in fragging and many other activities which hampered the US's ability to wage war effectively.

Most of those subjected to the draft were too young to vote or drink in most states, and the image of young people being forced to risk their lives in the military without the privileges of enfranchisement or the ability to drink alcohol legally also successfully pressured legislators to lower the voting age nationally and the drinking age in many states.

Student opposition groups on many college and university campuses seized campus administration offices, and in several instances forced the expulsion of ROTC programs from the campus.

Some Americans who were not subject to the draft protested the conscription of their tax dollars for the war effort. War tax resistance, once mostly isolated to solitary anarchists like Henry David Thoreau and religious pacifists like the Quakers, became a more mainstream protest tactic. As of 1972, an estimated 200,000-500,000 people were refusing to pay the excise taxes on their telephone bills, and another 20,000 were resisting part or all of their income tax bills. Among the tax resisters were Joan Baez and Noam Chomsky.<ref>War Tax Resistance War Resisters League (2003) p. 75</ref>

[edit] Later years

On April 22, 1971, later Senator and 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He spoke for nearly two hours with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in what has been named the Fulbright Hearing, after the Chairman of the proceedings, Senator J. William Fulbright. Kerry presented the conclusions of the Winter Soldier Investigation, where veterans had described personally committing or witnessing war crimes.

Avoiding service in the Vietnam War would later become an issue in American politics. Politicians criticized for avoiding service include Vice-President Dan Quayle, President Bill Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore, President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Opposition to the Vietnam War in Australia followed along similar lines to the United States, particularly with opposition to conscription. While Australian disengagement began in August 1971 under Prime Minister John Gorton, it was not until the election of Gough Whitlam in 1972 that conscription ended.