Salt Lake Community College

Why Were Americans So Opposed To The Vietnam War?

Amber Martin
HIST 1510
April 07, 2015
Why were Americans so opposed to the Vietnam War?

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The Vietnam War, like any war before or after it, had those who felt that we, the United
States, should not be fighting in it. However, unlike other wars, the Vietnam War was much
more disliked and only continued to be so as it dragged on for eleven long years, from the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 to the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Some of the factors feeding american
opposition was the plentiful, uncensored news coverage of the war, and the horrible atrocities
the people at home witnessed our troops committing, such as the My Lai Massacre. The Tet
Offensive was also a major turning point during the war, when many americans realized that the
war was not winding down as the government had led them to believe. Other events such as the
invasion of Cambodia and the resulting Kent State shootings, the draft and the Civil Rights
Movement also helped fuel the anti-war movement.
The United States got involved in the Vietnam War after the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and
Resolution in which DRV (North Vietnam) torpedo boats attacked two U.S. destroyers in the
Gulf of Tonkin (History.com). Before that, the United States had only played an advisory role in
the war, aiding the South vietnamese against their communist Northern vietnamese oppressors
(Murray, 10). President Johnson responded by initiating Operation Rolling Thunder, bombing
North Vietnam and sending in ground troops. General William Westmoreland was put in
command and 175,000 troops were to be sent in, in addition to the 82,000 already there
(History.com). To supply the soldiers needed, Johnson relied on conscription, the draft, to get
the young able bodied men he needed to fight in Vietnam. The Vietnam War became a young
mans war, as the average age of the common soldier was 19 years of age (Tucker, 107). The
draft was met with resistance. Nobody wanted to be forced to fight, and possibly die, for a war
they didnt believe in. There were many ways young men avoided the draft. Many fled to
Canada, who had no punishment for draft evaders. Others went to school or got married so that
they could defer (delay) enlistment (Senker, 47). Enlisting in the National Guard was also
common, as they didnt have to see actual combat (Tucker, 107). However, not everyone could
escape the draft. Those that got sent to Vietnam tended to be the poorer people, both black

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and white (Senker, 47). This didnt go over well with the African American population, who felt
they were being unfairly treated and picked on. Enter the Civil Rights Movement. The most
vocal over this unfairness was Martin Luther King, Jr.. He lamented that a disproportionate
share of draftees were African Americans, and that they also made up a considerable share of
the casualties as well . In one of his speeches he stated: Blacks are dying in extraordinarily
high proportions relative to the rest of the population to guarantee liberties in southeast Asia
which they had not found in southwest Georgia and east Harlem (Evans, 45). He continued
And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys
on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them
together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a
poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not
be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor (Caputo, 86).
Television and photojournalism were the main reasons the Vietnam war was so widely
opposed. Commonly referred to as the Living Room War reporters and journalists brought the
horrors of war into the homes of the american public on their televisions, now widely common in
the average american household. Scenes of burning villages, dead bodies, blood-covered
soldiers and civilians, and panic-stricken children brought the war into americas living rooms
(Caputo, 68). These images would profoundly affect to publics opinion of the war. It was through
scenes like these that the events of the Tet Offensive and the My Lai Massacre added to the
opposition to the war. One of the most influential figures of television was CBS Evening News
anchor Walter Cronkite. With his reputation for hard work, accuracy, and impartiality, Cronkite
was a very credible source that many Americans trusted (Tucker, 87). Shortly after a visit to
Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, Cronkite gave this report on the nightly news: To say we are
closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of evidence, the optimists who have been wrong
in the past. To suggest that we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism.
To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.

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On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must
test the enemys intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is
increasingly clear to this reporter that the only way out then, will be to negotiate, not as victors,
but as honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best
they could (Connell, 102). Walters report had an immediate impact on the public as more and
more people realized we were not doing well in this war.
The Tet Offensive was a major turning point in the war. This was when the American
public began to realized that the United States wasnt doing as great as the President and
General Westmoreland had been telling the them. This caused many more people to oppose
the war and call for the President to begin America's withdrawal from Vietnam.But what was the
Tet Offensive and why did it cause so many issues? Well, on the vietnamese holiday Tet, a
celebration of the new year, the United States called for a cease fire in honor of the holiday.
However, at midnight the North Vietnamese forces launched a mass surprise attack, targeting
cities all over Vietnam. The main targets were U.S. military bases and the American Embassy in
Saigon. Luckily, the Americans had a tip just before the attack, but they were still unprepared for
the strength and ferocity that the NVA and Vietcong attacked with (Caputo, 74). This was not the
weak and failing enemy General Westmoreland had been telling the American public about.
Televisions showed marines desperately fighting at the Embassy, napalmed children running in
the streets, and death and destruction everywhere (Senker, 46). When all was said and done
the United States had won. However, the North had accomplished their goal to shake the
morale of the United States. Tet was a major blow psychologically, as it turned even more
people against the war. One of the most famous photographs taken during Tet by photographer
Eddie Adams. It depicts General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese chief of the national
police, firing his pistol into the head of suspected VietCong official Nguyen Van Lem, who has
his hands tied behind his back. The suspected Vietcong is a young man with his face
grotesquely contorted as the bullet enters his skull. (Photo: Hamill, 196)

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After the shooting, Loan walked by him and said They killed many of my people, and yours
too. then walked away. Eddie Adams later shared his story in an interview: ...we see them pull
out this guy out of the building, they were like taking him by the hand.... and they just kept
walking up maybe a hundred yards to the corner I was about five feet away from the prisonerand to my left came this guy, I had no idea, I had a 35mm lenses and a single-frame camera,
and he went over and I see him go for his pistol. Well, when somebody goes for their pistol, they
normally threaten Youre going to do this, or Im gonna shot you, and nothing ever happens. As
soon as he waved his pistol, I took one frame. And that was the instant when he shot him. And I
had no idea he was gonna do this. And the U.S. Army asked for the picture. They wanted all the
details of the camera: the model of the camera, the shutter speed the picture was taken at
They found out that the pistol that the bullet was shot from, and they said the bullet was still in

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his head when the picture was taken. I didnt even know I got him shooting him (Hamill, 197).
Adams photo became a horrific icon of the war. Was the man with the revolver really Americas
ally? And was the boy with tied hands really Americas enemy (Alxelrod, 207)?
Things only went downhill after Tet. The My Lai Massacre occurred just months after Tet.
With troop morale down and Generals pushing for more bodies to add to the count, the lines
between civilian and enemy became blurred. In a hamlet in Son My called My Lai, information
reported that there was a village of some odd 250 vietcong hiding out. Charlie Company, a 100strong U.S. Army platoon led by Lt. William C. Calley, was called in for the task of eliminating all
vietcong in the area. According to the info, all the women and children left the village at 7:00 am
to go to the village market, so the plan was to attack shortly after they left. However, when
Charlie Company arrived all they found were women, children, and old men. No vietcong.
Nevertheless, Calley ordered his men to open fire and eliminate them all. Villagers were
rounded up, shot and shoved in ditches. Houses were blown up with grandes. The livestock
were slaughtered and thrown in the water supply to poison it. The killing was put to a stop when
a scouting helicopter piloted by Warrant Officer Hugh C. Thompson landed his chopper between
the remaining villagers and the soldiers, threatened to shoot anyone who tried to kill another
vietnamese person. In total, around 500 villagers lay dead. Later Calley was court martialed and
charged and found guilty of murdering 109 vietnamese men, women and children. He was
sentenced to jail, but was released and put under house arrest for three years instead (Senker,
42). This is an excerpt from Paul Meadlos (a soldier who served in Charlie Company)
Testimony:
Q [Prosecutor Aubrey Daniels]: What did you do in the village?
A [Paul Meadlo]: We just gathered the people up and led them to a designated area.
Q: How many people did you gather up?
A: Between 30 and 50. Men, women and children.
Q:What kind of children?

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A: They were just children.
Q: Where did you get these people?
A: Some of them was in hooches and some was in rice paddies when we gathered them up.
Q: Why did you gather them up?
A: We suspected them of being Viet Cong. And as far as Im concerned, theyre still Viet Cong
Q: What did you do when you got there?
A: Just guarded them.
Q: Did you see Lieutenant Calley?
A: Yes.
Q: What did he do?
A: He came up to me and he said, You know what to do with them, Meadlo, and I assumed he
wanted me to guard them. Thats what I did.
Q: What were the people doing?
A: They were just standing there
A: [Calley returned and] said, How come theyre not dead? I said, I didnt know we were
supposed to kill them. He said, I want them dead. He backed off twenty or thirty feet and
started shooting into the people- the Viet Cong- shooting automatic. He was beside me. He
burned four or five magazines. I burned off a few, about three. I helped shoot em.
Q: What were the people doing after you shot them?
A: They were lying down.
Q: Why were they lying down?
A: They was mortally wounded [Then] Calley said to me, Weve got another job to do,
Meadlo.
Q: What happened then?
A: He started shoving [more villagers] off and shooting them in the ravine.
Q: How many times did he shoot?

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A: I cant remember.
Q: Did you shoot?
A: Yes. I shot the Viet Cong. He ordered me to help kill people. I started shoving them off and
shooting. (Axelrod, 266)
After the My Lai story was published, the publics view of the soldiers in vietnam shifted and
viewed them as baby killers, heartless killing machines. Because of this, troop morale became
low and soldiers started to desert and mutiny against officers orders.
A common form of soldier dissent was the unprecedented number of desertions that
occurred during the Vietnam War: 503, 926 between 1960 and 1973. The reason behind this
was largely because of Nixon's beginning of vietnamization towards the end of the war, in an
attempt to phase the U.S. out of Vietnam and let the south Vietnamese handle the North
themselves. This move had a demoralizing effect on the soldiers in Vietnam, as no one wanted
to be the last man killed in an abandoned cause. As a result, search and destroy missions
became search and avoid missions, as soldiers just wanted to survive their in-country rotation
and get home (Axelrod, 267). So if a platoon commander or officer tried to send his men on
missions and into harms way, the soldiers might in turn respond by fragging said officer or
commander (Axelrod, 277). Fragging was when soldiers would put fragmentation grenades in
the tents of officers if they gave orders that the men didnt like. Sometimes it would be just a
scare tactic like a smoke grenade going off under their cot or just the frag grenade with their
name on it. However, some took it one step further and would blown up the officer whilst they
were in their tent, effectively getting rid of the problem. In 1970, there were 2,000 cases of
fragging in Vietnam (Maga, 257).
When troops got home they received anything but a hero's welcome as the veterans of
the past had received. Some were greeted by rowdy protesters who would spit on them, throw
food at them and yell insults at the vets as they unboarded their planes. One such experience
happened to Sgt. David E. McCray when he arrived home in 1971. He recalls, My homecoming

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is still hard for me to talk about. I need to go back to my departure first. The night before
reporting for my Vietnam assignment, at a relatives home, I overheard a reference to me as a
baby killer by one of those relatives, who refused to leave their room to talk to me. If this wasnt
bad enough, when I was transported by my bus fro the Oakland Army Base to Travis Air Force
Base we were met with protesters at the gate with a barrage of tomatoes. This had quite a
negative impression on me. Upon my estimated time of separation from the army from active
duty in Seattle, I was spat upon in both the Seattle airport and the Denver airport. I did not have
that experience in the Dallas Love Field airport or the Oklahoma City airport, but the damage
had already been done. I found myself embarrassed and ashamed of my uniform. The first thing
I did was to borrow a pair of jeans from my brother and a shirt before I made the trip to Pawnee,
Oklahoma, to see my mother. To this day the memories haunt me, especially the cruel comment
by the relative (Li, 108). Sgt. McCrays story became a common one among veterans in 1970
as the war opposition was escalating.
Adding to the opposition, was the invasion of Cambodia by the U.S. forces and South
Vietnam. Believing that the North was using Cambodia to keep the bulk of their supplies in
Cambodia, Nixon gave the orders to invade. This order was met by huge upset in the United
States, as many saw this as an escalation of the war, and not a wind down as Nixon had
promised when he took office in 1969. Many college students held protests and strikes all over
the nation. The most famous of these is the Kent State protest, which resulted in the shooting of
four students by the National Guard stationed on the Campus. Students on campus had set fire
to the Reserve Officers Training Corps building and the National Guard was called in to keep
the peace. However, when tear gas failed to work and rocks got thrown at them, one of the
Guards started firing into the crowd (Senker, 50). The shooting lasted only thirteen seconds with
sixty-one rounds fired (Tucker, 203). When the smoke cleared, four lay dead or mortally
wounded, with an additional nine injured. This caused public outrage. It was bad enough to
Americans dying in Vietnam, but now they were dying in their homeland? Something needed to

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change. Soon after kent, Nixon had to give in to the overwhelming cries for withdrawal (Senker,
51). Soon a phased withdrawal from Vietnam began. After the last American soldier left, the
North quickly defeated the rest of the Southern resistors and Saigon fell.
The Vietnam War is one that the Americans seldom like to talk about and is viewed as
Americas dirty war. It was one of the most opposed wars lending to the fact that new
technology , like the television, allowed the american public to see war as it never had before.
They witnesses the horror of dead and the atrocities committed during war. They attended
marches for peace in hopes of bring our boys home. They protested Vietnam till the very last
troop was able to come home. All in all, Vietnam was not a honorable war, or one that the
average american chose to support.

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Works Cited

Primary Sources:
Connell, Kim A. Primary Source Accounts of the Vietnam War. [Library ed.
Berkeley Heights, NJ: MyReportLinks.com, 2006. Print.
Hamill, Pete. Vietnam: The Real War: A Photographic History. ABRAMS, 2013. Print.
Li, Xiaobing. Voices from the Vietnam War Stories from American, Asian, and
Russian Veterans. Lexington, Ky.: U of Kentucky, 2010. Print.

Secondary Sources:
Axelrod, Alan. The Real History of the Vietnam War: A New Look at the past. New
York: Sterling, 2013. Print.
Caputo, Philip. 10,000 Days of Thunder: A History of the Vietnam War. New York:
Atheneum for Young Readers, 2005. Print.
Evans, Chris. Bloody Jungle: The War in Vietnam. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole,
2013. Print.
Maga, Timothy P. The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Vietnam War. Indianapolis, IN:
Alpha, 2010. Print.
Murray, Stuart. Vietnam War. New York: DK, 2005. Print.
Senker, Cath. Living Through: The Vietnam War. Chicago, Ill.: Heinemann Library,
2012. Print.

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Tucker, Spencer. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military
History. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Print.
"Vietnam War." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2015.