The first group the American public at the beginning of the war agreed with the fact that Us was helping South Vietnam, this because the president of the united States in this year told the people that they need to go to war and they have to go even if they don´t like the idea. The president ask
Another event that impacted the public’s view of government dishonesty during this time was President Nixon’s involvement with the infamous Watergate scandal which eventually led to his resignation on August 9, 1974. Furthermore, when President Nixon began his presidency, people believed he would work to bring an end to America’s involvement in the Vietnam. Yet, this was not the case as Nixon increased bombing raids and authorized the invasion of Cambodia. When the war started, the American people were led to believe that the war was a necessity to ensure the protection of the nation as a whole.
However, Johnson believed that it was important to end the conflict in Vietnam. According to him, if such disputes were allowed to continue, the whole world would not be peaceful. This reveals that his desire to end the Vietnam conflict was aimed at ensuring global peace. His critics state that during this time the United States experienced domestic problems, which would have been the priority for the president. The crime rate in the United States soured during the Vietnam War with numerous street protests.
Richard Nixon’s election to Presidency of the United States in 1968, marked a turning point in American foreign policy and a new strategic approach to the war in Vietnam. It was a war he had inherited from his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. Domestic support for the war had diminished significantly, with national outpourings of opposition. This prompted Nixon to make his famous ‘silent majority’ speech, where he outlined his position on Vietnam, “After all, we became involved in the war while my predecessor was in office. I could blame the defeat which would have been the result of my action on him and come out as Peacemaker…But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election.
At the same time they tried to create a strong non-communist South Vietnam under the leadership of Diem. By the late 1950s, the communist rebels in South Vietnam declared a revolutionary struggle against Diem, so as to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. In turn, by the 1960s the USA became more and more alarmed at this prospect, leading to further intervention in Vietnam to stop this. When Kennedy was inaugurated he inherited many crises around the globe, the most pertinent was the loss of Cuba. After the well known Bay of Pigs fiasco, he felt he was advised that he needed a foreign policy success.
You have to explain which one you think best represents the way in which people in the USA reacted to the Vietnam War. At the start of the Vietnam war, many Americans were eager to stop the spread of communism in South East Asia. The three sources represent some of the reactions that the public in the USA had towards the Vietnam War. It can be seen by the media coverage whether by newspaper article, cartoon or song that people in America at the time of the Vietnam war had strong views about what was going on. The content accuracy and objectivity of the representations must be analyzed and evaluated before a judgment can be made about which one best represents public opinion in the USA to the Vietnam War.
All previous wars that Americans were part of could actually be traced back to the actual cause of the war in the first place (Peter). During the time of the Vietnam War, the media began to give the movement a fiercer stance against the war because people were able to see actual war footage. It can be said that if other wars Americans were involved in leaked actual war footage, there would have been a stronger stance taken against those wars as well. The Vietnam War was dissimilar to other wars because there was no actual prompt or threat that could have harmed the American people. The government wanted to continue its firm engagement against communalism.
This compelled a sense of unity, which in turn helped groups organize to change how the nation viewed the war. Country Joe McDonald’s song emphasizes a misunderstanding between the young radicals of society and their leaders, “And it’s 1,2,3, what’re we fighting for? / Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn” (14-15). An increasingly noticeable ‘generation gap’ started to widen as U.S. News & World Report “assured its readers that Vietnam was a “local war... Big war is not threatened” (Lynskey 89). However, when President Johnson and other military advisors mixed-up events, possibly deliberately, to claim that North Vietnam had just attacked the US naval force in the Gulf of Tonkin- an incident which later proved to be a minor naval clash (Prados 1) and used this conflict as a premise to launch a full scale invasion of the communist state, the antiwar movement consolidated with great speed.
Soon after, various evaluations of the war dictated that USA and the “western” supporters (i.e. Capitalist governments) were to blame. As far as Modern World History states, I am led to believe that both sides were “belligerents” of equal contribution to the war’s happening. Russia (USSR) and its Communist Allies have been frequently discarded with the blame of the Cold War’s development but is this harsh judgment really a correct interpretation of the events? Because of allegations leading up to the 1960s, the ordinary western resident would most probably blame the USSR for the war’s happening (obviously the element on pride and patriotism are to be taken into account) but to the more historically taught persons, further elements can be taken into account.
This coverage was thought to have had a powerful influence on public opinion and therefore on political decision making”. This evidence also explains how the media influenced many Americans by making them realize that the war was bad and it had to end. The last two evidences fit together with each other because they both show how the media has changed the way people saw the war and it also shows the importance of the media during the Vietnam War. “