While Senator Fulbright and Dr. King were correct that the Vietnamese revolutionary government was led by indigenous forces, they underestimated its internationalist commitments to world revolution. As this debate continues today, the same misunderstandings are frequently found in the literature. It is part of the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. They were chronically hungry and occasionally threatened by famines. The main problem with most of those books is the complete lack of Vietnamese voices. Such criticism led to the 26th Amendment, which granted suffrage to 18-year-olds. Because of those war protestors irresponsible and unpatriotic actions a country was lost, its population has been subjected to cruel and subhuman treatments ever since. Some people were injured, killed, or put in jail and that's all because they wanted peace in there country. It doesn't fully answer the why, and those who are curious will have to search further. Answering press questions after addressing a Howard University audience on 2 March 1965, King asserted that the war in Vietnam was “accomplishing nothing” and called for a negotiated settlement (Schuette, “King Preaches … Television changed many minds. The North Vietnamese, they argued, were fighting a patriotic war … It's pretty simple: "Fortunate Son" is a protest song written by a Vietnam-era veteran in support of the men who served and against … Rather, the song was likely meant as a message of unity for the common American. Senator William Fulbright, an early critic of American policy, stated as much: Ho Chi Minh is not a mere agent of Communist China…He is a bona fide nationalist revolutionary, the leader of his country’s rebellion against French colonialism. The History and Public Policy Program uses history to improve understanding of important global dynamics, trends in international relations, and American foreign policy. A blog of the History and Public Policy Program. Peace movement leaders opposed the war on moral and economic grounds. In his memoirs, President Nixon, himself, went so far as to blame the loss of the Vietnam War squarely on the shoulders of the media. Patriotism, often a major factor why young people join the military, gets mixed reviews from me. During World War II, the Hollywood movie machine was turning out a war movie almost every week. They felt that what happened in Vietnam could not truly impact the US. Chester – Forgotten song of the American Revolution “Chester” was the most popular war song of the Revolution, now almost unknown or remembered. To justify American involvement in the conflict, US leaders frequently put forward an opposite image of the Vietnamese revolutionaries, claiming they were pawns in the hands of Moscow or Beijing. North Vietnam’s war profoundly divided American citizens, seriously damaged American credibility around the world, and lent moral support to many radical movements in Africa and Latin America. Students at a college were protesting the war. The rulers in Hanoi are urged on by Peking. Why did the Vietnam War protesters consider themselves patriotic? US Labor and the Vietnam War, barely 150 pages, doesn't and can't, tell the whole story. Most Vietnam songs released during Kennedy’s presidency articulated a reluctance to be drafted. View of anti-Vietnam war protestors around the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on 21 October 1967. The soldiers are patriotic while the war protestors are not. In the war’s early stages, protest songs voiced the concerns of a minority movement. Ho Chi Minh was the most popular leader in all of Vietnam, and the United States was supporting an undemocratic, corrupt military regime. Because that tradition had historically been directed against China, Vietnam would not be a menace to the US and could even serve as an American ally to contain Communist China. The late 1960s became increasingly radical as the activists felt their demands were ignored. The loss of Indochina would mean the loss of Malaya, the loss of Burma and Thailand, and ultimately the conquest of all the south and southeast Asiatic area.”. Knowing the War is knowing why. Protests were initially peaceful and included sit-ins or teach-ins or marches, but they eventually erupted into violence. What both advocates for and critics of the Vietnam War got wrong about North Vietnam: its radical commitment to communist revolution. Read more, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NWWashington, DC 20004-3027. The protesters arrived without a plan of what to do next. Peaceful demonstrations turned violent. Protesting the Vietnam war WAS patriotic. Portrayed in this manner, the Vietnamese communists did not possess their own beliefs nor were they capable of independent action. The wounds the U.S. inflicted on itself never stopped. Four years after President John F. Kennedy sent the first American troops into Vietnam, Martin Luther King issued his first public statement on the war. As the war dragged on, more and more Americans grew weary of mounting casualties and escalating costs. Students observed that young Americans were legally old enough to fight and die, but were not permitted to vote or drink alcohol. If patriotism means concern for the safety, protection, and well being of one’s countrymen I’m all for it. They supported them in Indochina, Siam, and Malaya in the 1930s, China in the late 1940s, and Laos and Cambodia in 1975. The end of World War II set the stage for the Cold War, the struggle between communism and capitalism that pitted East against West and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. May. It goes without saying that to understand the […] Communism was threatening free governments across the globe. When Richard Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969, the nation was bitterly divided over what course of action to follow next. THE TEXT ON THIS PAGE IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN AND HAS NOT BEEN SHARED VIA A CC LICENCE. Embracing ideologies from communism to Islamism, these revolutions sought to overthrow or roll back Western domination. After their victory in 1975, they thought of themselves as the vanguard of world revolution and snubbed not only Washington, but also Moscow and Beijing. Despite a brief upsurge in protests following and resumption of the air war against North Vietnam in the spring of 1972, the factionalization of the movement and the withdrawal of most U.S. forces led to a decline in protests. The internationalist spirit of the Vietnamese Communist Party is still alive today, a quarter century after the collapse of world communism, as evidenced in Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong’s trip across the globe to Cuba in 2012 where he preached the merits of socialism and the evils of capitalism. The small antiwar movement grew into an unstoppable force, pressuring American leaders to reconsider its commitment. For all that bloodshed and fanfare, barely five years later most peasants were coerced into giving up their land and joining Maoist-style cooperatives. North Vietnamese leaders did implement a “real land reform” by redistributing large amounts of land to landless peasants, but they also executed about 15,000 landlords and rich peasants in the process. If ever there was an act of state worthy of protest, this was it. Dr. King’s characterization that the Vietnamese had “no great love” for China also misses the awe and veneration Vietnamese communists showered on Chinese leaders in the 1950s and the slavish deference the Vietnamese leadership today expresses toward China. Vietnam continued to train sappers for, and send surplus weapons to, Algeria, Chile, and El Salvador in service of foreign revolutions even after 1975. While giving priority to their own revolution, Ho Chi Minh and his comrades did not ignore revolutions elsewhere. Because draft deferments were granted to college students, the less affluent and less educated made up a disproportionate percentage of combat troops. To them, supporting the troops meant continuing to support the war, or at least keeping my mouth shut. That’s a … Later protests [ edit ] In April 1971, thousands of these veterans converged on the White House in Washington, D.C., and hundreds of them threw their medals and decorations on the steps of the United States Capitol . American planes wrought environmental damage by dropping their defoliating chemicals. Some observers credit the conflict for inspiring “antisystemic movements” in the 1960s and 1970s in North America, Europe, Japan, and Latin America; another source counts at least 14 revolutions that ensued in the seven years following US withdrawal of troops from South Vietnam in 1973. And throughout it all, the government lied relentlessly. April: U.S. deaths in Vietnam surpass the roughly 33,000 lost in the Korean War. These questions must be asked of all revolutions, but they hold special importance in the Vietnamese case because the nature of this revolution has been widely misunderstood. [1] Huy Duc, Ben thang cuoc [The winning side], vol. ; 1963. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese revolutionaries were commonly portrayed either as dominoes in the game of big powers or as essentially nationalists who inherited a tradition of patriotism and were motivated by national independence—but the North Vietnamese were in fact radicals who dedicated their careers to realizing a communist utopia. About 80 percent of American ground troops in Vietnam came from the lower classes. This domino theory justified US intervention in Vietnam. Indeed, myths and exaggerations pervade the entire collective memory of this brutal war. The protesters believed the war was wrong and they thought that the United States shouldn’t be involved. Despite the growing antiwar movement, a silent majority of Americans still supported the Vietnam effort. They were countered by those who supported the war and saw the protesters as unruly and disruptive. The Vietnam War lasted from 1964-1973—the longest war in American history until it was overtaken by the one in Afghanistan—and servicemen typically did … As the war dragged on, more and more Americans grew weary of mounting casualties and escalating costs. The first protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam were in 1945, when United States Merchant Marine sailors condemned the U.S. government for the use of U.S. merchant ships to transport European troops to "subjugate the native population" of Vietnam. In opposing American intervention in Vietnam, contemporary critics and antiwar activists typically claimed that the Vietnamese revolution was aimed at achieving national self-determination. Photograph: Leif Skoogfors/Getty Images. October 15: An estimated two million protesters gather across the U.S. for … The rally, which was organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a Manhattan-based group, ended an 84-mile march that began early Friday morning outside Morristown, N.J. The savagery was epochal. War Resisters League … Given their limited military and economic capabilities, the ability and determination of small but radical states like North Vietnam to inflict such humiliation on a superpower poses a significant analytical puzzle: What were the thoughts of revolutionary leaders in those states? That threat did not materialize—not because the Vietnamese communists were not real communists, as the antiwar camp claimed, but because their fanaticism was self-destructive and engineered their own demise. Formative Performance Task Formative Performance Task Formative Performance Task Formative Performance Task Create a political, social, and economic chart outlining the arguments used by Vietnam War protestors. The Vietnam War was misbegotten from the start. This is a regime which has destroyed freedom in Tibet, which has attacked India and has been condemned by the United Nations for aggression in Korea. Antiwar activists misunderstood the nature of the Vietnamese revolution, but proponents of intervention fared no better. Using the accompanying Documents, Answer the following Supporting Questions in detail: Print and hand write, or type your answers and email them to me. In the end, Vietnamese communism stopped short of exporting revolution beyond Indochina because its radical character had created enemies everywhere around it, from Vietnamese peasants who resisted collectivization, to China and Cambodia which resented Vietnam’s arrogance. During the 20th century, anti-Western revolutions swept throughout Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Why did some Americans consider the Vietnam War protesters unpatriotic? Young American soldiers were suffering and dying. Copyright ©2008-2020 ushistory.org, owned by the Independence Hall Association in Philadelphia, founded 1942. Military spending simply took money away from Great Society social programs such as welfare, housing, and urban renewal. As Senator Hubert Humphrey spoke in 1951, “We cannot afford to see southeast Asia fall prey to the Communist onslaught…If Indochina were lost, it would be as severe a blow as if we were to lose Korea. The pro-intervention camp widely exaggerated the security threat of the Vietnamese revolution to the US. [2] Tran Quang Co, Hoi uc va suy nghi [Memories and thoughts] (Unpublished, 2003). Vietnamese revolutionaries were said to be reenacting the patriotic tradition of their ancestors through the millennia. Many admitted that involvement was a mistake, but military defeat was unthinkable. The North Vietnamese, they argued, were fighting a patriotic war to rid themselves of foreign aggressors. 2 (Osinbook 2012), 63-67. It is likely that Guthrie did not intend the song to either be wholly patriotic nor wholly colonialist. © 2021 The Wilson Center. 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Events in Southeast Asia and at home caused those numbers to grow as the years passed. This is particularly true of communist North Vietnam, or the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which at one point provoked the United Stated to commit about half a million troops to defending South Vietnam and to fight a long, bitter, and divisive conflict. Peace movement leaders opposed the war on moral and economic grounds. Many Americans who opposed the war did so because they felt that it was not a war that was necessary for the security of the US. Why did the studios wait until 1978 to make the first major Vietnam War movie. The small antiwar movement grew into an unstoppable force, pressuring American leaders to reconsider its commitment. Hanoi attempted to defend the international communist camp even when Moscow and Beijing had abandoned it. Students occupied buildings across college campuses forcing many schools to cancel classes. Millions of Americans watched body bags leave the Asian rice paddies every night in their living rooms. In 1962, the For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. The age of the average American soldier serving in Vietnam was 19, seven years younger than its World War II counterpart. When the police arrived to arrest protesters, the crowds often retaliated. [1] When Gorbachev turned a deaf ear to the Vietnamese request, Vietnam asked China to create an anti-imperialist alliance (Beijing also said no).[2]. If it simply means love of country in the abstract, the kind of “love” that’s displayed during patriotic holidays I have a problem. He is also…a dedicated communist but always a Vietnamese communist…For our purposes, the significance of Ho Chi Minh’s nationalism is that it is associated with what Bernard Fall has called “the 2,000-year-old distrust in Vietnam of everything Chinese.” Vietnamese communism is therefore a potential bulwark—perhaps the only potential bulwark—against Chinese domination of Vietnam. The contest in Vietnam is part of a wider pattern of aggressive purposes. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese revolutionaries were commonly portrayed either as dominoes in the game of big powers or as essentially nationalists who inherited a tradition of patriotism and were motivated by national independence—but the North Vietnamese were in fact radicals who dedicated their careers to realizing a communist utopia. You could consider any War of Independence song to be a protest song, and a patriotic one at that since the enemy was external to the budding new land. As the Johnson Administration escalated the commitment, the peace movement grew. When the war in Vietnam began, many Americans believed that defending South Vietnam from communist aggression was in the national interest. Some believe that the politicians and antiwar protesters sold out the US military. It was lost in the very act of its beginning. In retrospect, however, it is clear that the Vietnamese communists were no stooges of Moscow or Beijing. The ‘Hard Hat Riot’ of 1970 Pitted Construction Workers Against Anti-War Protesters The Kent State shootings further widened the chasm among a citizenry divided over the Vietnam War In their living rooms watching the evening news, Americans regularly saw film of airplanes flying, often dropping bombs, and troops on patrol, sometimes in combat. Their economic arguments were less complex, but as critical of the war effort. The events of the war and the effect it had on media eventually led many defenders of U.S policies to believe that the media and its lack of censorship aided in the loss of the Vietnam War. An How could they even consider challenging those much more powerful than they were? At the height of the war, Hanoi’s leaders in fact challenged both their Soviet and Chinese comrades for not daring to stand up against US imperialism. Anti-Vietnam war protests in England and Australia; September 21. Once drafted, Americans with higher levels of education were often given military office jobs. Protests raged all over the country. In 1989, when Eastern European communist regimes were about to fall, the General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party prodded the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to convene a conference of all communist and workers parties to discuss strategies to save the socialist camp from the coming collapse. Many anti-war activists were themselves Vietnam veterans, as evidenced by the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Many people did not understand or agree with my act of public dissent. UNAUTHORIZED REPUBLICATION IS A COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONContent Usage Permissions. The truth of … The Vietnam War was also the first one in which the United States suffered a clear defeat. The protests against the Vietnam War were a series of demonstrations against American involvement in the conflict between North and South Vietnam. Read more, The Cold War International History Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. Latino and African American males were assigned to combat more regularly than drafted white Americans. Roads were blocked and ROTC buildings were burned. Through an award winning Digital Archive, the Project allows scholars, journalists, students, and the interested public to reassess the Cold War and its many contemporary legacies. Any sign of non-intervention from the United States might encourage revolutions elsewhere. The Vietnam Protest Movement began slowly, grounded in the Cold War scare itself. Of all the lessons learned from Vietnam, one rings louder than all the rest — it is impossible to win a long, protracted war without popular support. Antiwar demonstrations were few at first, with active participants numbering in the low thousands when Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Many have collapsed, including the once mighty Soviet Union, and most survivors have made peace with their former Western enemies. Nevertheless, even small revolutionary states had tremendous impact on world politics in their heydays. Innocent Vietnamese peasants were being killed in the crossfire. Director of Asian Studies and professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon. It exists as an outline and a collection of documents; a place to start with what people in Labor did. Revolutionary states—whether large like the Soviet Union and China, or small like Cuba and Nicaragua—might have hindered the West, but they were never able to defeat it. a revolutionary [Vietnamese] government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. Forced to stay in cooperatives, the free farmers of North Vietnam were turned into a kind of serfs or indentured workers. Robert Meloon, newspaper article about student protests against the Vietnam War at the University of Wisconsin, “Legislators Demand Stiff Penalties for Dow Chemical Protesters… The Vietnam War lasted nearly two decades, and during that time women negotiated a shifting terrain when it came to their role in the public sphere. Overall, protesting the war was very patriotic because people risked there lives for everything to be okay in there country. World War II fathers split with Vietnam generation sons over a war that was tearing us apart -- and split, particularly, over our responsibilities during a time of war. What both advocates for and critics of the Vietnam War got wrong about North Vietnam: its radical commitment to communist revolution. Revolutionary impact aside, America’s failure at hands of North Vietnam also led to changes in US military strategy and caused the US to retreat from nation-building missions abroad in the subsequent two decades—a self-restraint that was only partially lifted with the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. Doves clashed with police and the National Guard in August 1968, when antiwar demonstrators flocked to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to prevent the nomination of a prowar candidate. Both sides in the Vietnam War debate misunderstood the nature of the Vietnamese revolution because they failed to grasp Vietnamese leaders’ profound commitments to communism. Dr. Martin Luther King, in a famous address in 1967, similarly took issue with the US government for rejecting. The Vietnam anti-war movement was one of the most pervasive displays of opposition to the government policy in modern times. Regarding America’s role in the Vietnam War, the myth-making began long before North Vietnamese tanks overran U.S.-backed South Vietnam in April 1975. The following is an excerpt from LIFE’s new special edition, 1968: The Year That Changed the World, available in the TIME Shop, on Amazon and at retailers everywhere. The draft was another major source of resentment among college students.

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