Anti-War Movement in Vietnam

survival of the union. However, the attitude of embracing war has not necessarily been the typical one. In each of America's conflicts, large segments of the population have been critical of the war effort, and even larger numbers have been apathetic.

After World War II and the Atomic Age, though, the attitude toward warfare changed. No longer was one government simply stating that it had the power or might to destroy another government. The stakes had jumped to even higher levels - mankind was now capable of destroying all of mankind.

Some scholars have commented that the voices of those who protested America's involvement in war, "sometimes muted but often strident and occasionally significant, [were] as much the heritage of the United States as its people's patriotism" (Coline i). This paper will present an overview of the American Anti-War Movement during the years of the Vietnam Conflict. This paper will examine and explore the following: America's involvement in Vietnam, the Selective Service Act, the conscientious objectors, war resisters, the Anti-War Movement, impact of academia and the media on the peace movement, the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the Kent State University fiasco. The paper will conclude with a view of Vietnam veterans, Richard Nixon and his policies,

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its role of bringing the war into the comfortable lives of many middle class Americans. Television showed pictures of the bloody death and maiming of American soldiers, the extermination of Vietnamese villages and civilians by the American military, and the tremendous destructive capability of napalm bombing and defoliates in the "aid of our fighting purpose." Defoliates such as Agent Orange is today attributed to birth defects that befell the Vietnamese citizens. One of the most potent examples of the media effect, however, was that of the situation surrounding Lieutenant William Calley, who in March 1968, led an American expedition into a town known as My Lai. Here, Calley instructed his troops to massacre the entire village of more than 100 old men, women and children. Calley's later court martial and the media attention it engendered was a powerful testament to what the anti-war movement had been calling "America's hypocrisy in Vietnam" (Amter 183-184). In one of the more vivid accounts of the incident, later reported by the media, one soldier described the behavior of one of the American soldiers: He was kneeling there holding this grenade launcher, and he was launching grenades at the hootches. A couple of times he laun
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Washington Post, South Vietnam, Vietnam Powers, Service System, Irony History, Vietnam War, Poor Americans, South Vietnamese, Viet Cong, War Nixon, anti-war movement, south vietnam, vietnam war, vietnam veterans, vietnam veterans war, viet cong, veterans war, south vietnamese, washington post, american forces, peace movement, democratic national convention, america's involvement vietnam, kerry vietnam veterans, nixon's national security,
Approximate Word count = 4195
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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