Anti-Vietnam War
- Vasco
- 14 de out. de 2020
- 2 min de leitura
Atualizado: 18 de dez. de 2020
The 1960’s had plenty of social movements and all of them were very important for the American people. One of the biggest ones was the anti-Vietnam War movement and this post will mainly talk about that.
No one knows exactly what motivated the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. While some claim it was to stop or delay the rise of communism, others believe that it was “Just War”, that there was no real motive. That period of small, yet dense USA history was full of cover ups and to these days, there are still many questions that remain without an answer.
There are several reasons for all the criticism regarding the American influence in Vietnam. First and foremost, the American people had never seen anything of the kind since it was the first war ever with National Television coverage. The brutality witnessed in such explicit images brought angst, dread and perturbation to people, causing their total disapproval.
The protests were also encouraged by other social movements such as the gay-rights movement, the gender equality movement and the African-American movement. People noticed a lack of attention given to the problems back home.
It was almost like everything that mattered was the prestige and the image shown to the rest of the world. To be honest, the way I see things, that was everything that ever mattered to the US. A great analogy would be a beautiful nut with a rotten interior.
Besides these two reasons, there are two much more obvious factors leading to the people’s disbelief. The first was the non-existent declaration of war and the second was the theory of “Just War” according to which, people saw no clear objectives or reasons to fight for.
Last but not least, there was an event in 1969 that took the movement to a whole different level. For the first time since World War 2, there was a lottery draft for the war. Some burned their draft letters as a sign of disrespect, others would cut fingers not to be drafted and some even fled to Canada and Mexico.
The two most important events took place in 1967 and 1970. The first was a peaceful protest that gathered 100 000 people in the Lincoln Memorial.
The second was not so peaceful as it ended with 4 students being shot dead by a group of National Guardsmen.
The Vietnam war registered a total of 1 353 000 casualties and it is common knowledge that if it wasn’t for the pride, vainglory and haughtiness of the United States all those lives could have been spared.
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