During the Vietnam War, thousands of American citizens refused to fight in Vietnam. Why?
Answers
Answer:
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began with demonstrations in 1964 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. This movement informed and helped shape the vigorous and polarizing debate, primarily in the United States, during the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s on how to end the war.
Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
Part of the Counterculture of the 1960s
and Vietnam War
Vietnamdem.jpg
Anti-war protest at the Pentagon, 1967
Date
1964–1973
Caused by
American involvement in Vietnam
Goals
End of military conscription
Withdrawal of troops from Vietnam
Resulted in
Disruption of military conscription
Lowered military morale
End of the Johnson presidency
Voting age lowered to 18
Withdrawal of troops and aid
Many in the peace movement within the United States were students, mothers, or anti-establishment hippies. Opposition grew with participation by the African-American civil rights, second-wave feminist movements, Chicano Movements, and sectors of organized labor. Additional involvement came from many other groups, including educators, clergy, academics, journalists, lawyers, physicians—such as Benjamin Spock—and military veterans.
Their actions consisted mainly of peaceful, nonviolent events; few events were deliberately provocative and violent. In some cases, police used violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators. By 1967, according to Gallup polls, an increasing majority of Americans considered military involvement in Vietnam to be a mistake, echoed decades later by the then-head of American war planning, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.[1]