This research paper examines the origins, traces the course and analyzes the effects and consequences of the domestic divisions caused by the American involvement in the Vietnam War.
Until the administration of President Lyndon Johnson sharply escalated the military involvement of United States forces in that war in 1965, the domestic antiwar protest movement was weak and scattered, largely a carryover of prior opposition to nuclear atmospheric testing by liberal and radical pacifist organizations and other fringe groups. As the Americanization of the war proceeded without producing demonstrable progress toward officially announced goals, it increasingly polarized American public opinion on the war and energized the antiwar protest movements which grew in size and intensity during the balance of the Johnson administration.
The antiwar protest movement itself was highly diffuse, consisting of many conflicting ideologies and differences of viewpoint, shifting coalitions and leadership changes. Its counter cultural aspects alienated many mainstream Americans. Nevertheless, it helped focus the attention of many in the general public as well as other influential figures, who grew frustrated, impatient and weary over time of the war's inconclusive nature, its brutality and the deceitful practices of the Johnson administration. As a public consensus developed in opposition to the war, the antiwar protest movement lost much of its influence and forward momentum, due to its own excesses and internal divisions. Its influence was temporarily blunted by the counter strategies of the administration of President Richard Nixon, which nevertheless gave it a new lease on life by the contradictions of its own approach to ending the war, which became apparent by 1970, and which thereafter eroded public and Congressional support for Nixon's Vietnam policies.
The United States had been indirectly involved in support of the French militar...