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Throughout the makings of what is seen as the world today, struggles and disagreements that have led to wars have irrevocably been repeated and carried out in one way or another. As countries and their political and global power and influence have grown, so has their involvement in other countries, and so on. The United States of America is a nation that was born out of the need for freedom from a dominating country that was no longer serving them in a way they felt was just and fit. The United States was built on the idea that it would be the land of the free and the home of the brave. It has trademarked itself as a nation where one can come to and have all the opportunities deemed for creating a better life for oneself. The United States cherishes its constitution as one that inarguably delivers human rights to its people, with equity for all being included. All of this, but not limited to it, has granted the United States with a false sense of superiority and the role of a mediator in countries around the globe. The Vietnam War was a war that took place from 1955 to 1975 in Vietnam between what was then communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Although Vietnam was fighting for itself for freedom from France, the United States did not understand this at the time and was blinded by its fight against anything and everything having to do with communism. As a result, the U.S. alliance with South Vietnam and the Vietnam War, in general, serves as a perfect example of U.S. involvement in foreign affairs that was not necessary, and as a backfire, the lack of support for the war by Americans in the United States. The lack of popularity and support of the Vietnam War by Americans in the United States can be accounted for by the protest movement ambiance that overtook American society during the 1960s, the widespread media coverage of the war, and the growing mistrust by the public in the U.S. government, leading to the lost trust between American citizens and U.S. leaders.
The United States and its involvement in the Vietnam War were influenced by a number of factors, the Cold War in Asia being a main one. The Cold War was a metaphorical term used to explain the long-lasting tension between the United States and the Soviet Union after WWII, lasting from 1947-1991. This tension was due to the United States fear and thus the effort to “contain” communism from spreading beyond the Soviet Union. The U.S. feared that the Soviet Union would overpower and influence countries all over the world and that the world would be overruled by communism. Consequently, this led to a ripple effect of events that would happen due to the U.S. efforts of containment against communism, in this case, the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War being one of those events. The U.S. would not have deemed it necessary to intervene in the Vietnam War, had it not been because they thought the war was happening as a direct result of the influence of communism. Moreover, the Cold War can be countered as a direct influencing factor that led to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, and all the events leading thereafter. The Cold War also just fueled the already inflated feelings of superiority and righteousness the United States took on. The U.S. took it upon itself to continue to get involved in foreign relations backed by the motive that they’d be saving the world from the greater evil that was communism. This was not overlooked by the American public, and soon, there grew a greater critique of the United States government and its involvement in the Vietnam War.
Tension in the United States was already growing during the 1960s. When history is retold, the 60s are remembered as a time flooded by protest movements from everything like the Civil Rights Movement, the Chicano Movement, the American-Indian Movement to the Gay Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movement. Citizens of the United States were taking to the streets to protest the wrongly justified mistreatment of human beings in a country that claimed to be the land of the free and a place where all men are created equal. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses this very hypocrisy in his speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” by stating, “There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America…The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments that were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform.” Dr. MLK Jr. felt the need to deliver this speech to urge the American public to open their eyes and take a stand against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War being that it was only harming the Vietnamese people, nowhere near bringing the aid and peace that it was claiming.
Powerful protest movements in the United States during the 1960s accompanied by the now widespread media coverage of the Vietnam War due to television now being a more common thing in households is what really influenced the opposition to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Up until this point in time, people had been receiving their news through radio broadcasts or newspapers, but now that television had become something almost every household owned, there was more access to media coverage, and also a new form of it- visualized media coverage. People could now see images of what they were listening to, and as a result, the Vietnam War became the first war to be covered by televised news. In These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore includes a picture captioned, “Americans watched the war in Vietnam From their living rooms.” (Lepore, 620). Lepore is highlighting the huge role widespread media had in Americans’ opinion of the Vietnam War. They were now seeing real-life coverage of the horrific war, making it inevitable for people to feel removed from it since they were watching the unfoldings in their very living rooms. Although the war was not being fought at home, in a way it was being brought to people’s homes as they were watching firsthand all the cruel happenings and lives lost in the war. The American public was then, inevitably brought to the conclusion that the occupation the United States held in Vietnam, backing South Vietnam against North Vietnam, was unnecessary, and so the anti-war protests began along with the decline in the support for it. With a nation already trodden with human rights protests, protesting the Vietnam War, and the U.S. involvement in it, unquestionably came about almost as a given. Being that the American public had actual images of what they were fighting against, the sentiment against the war came strong and what had once been supporting the war, had become just a memory.
The growing mistrust by American citizens in the U.S. government along with powerful protest movements in the United States during the 1960s and widespread media coverage of the Vietnam War is what led to the lack of popularity and support for the Vietnam War in the United States. The Vietnam War was a war that lasted quite a long time and as a result, it saw multiple U.S. presidencies before it finally ended. This added to the dynamics of the American public is informed about the advancement of the war and as a consequence the exposure of the false reports being made. When Lyndon B. Johnson came into the presidency in 1963, he was not immediately clear on what his stance would be on the Vietnam War. When he did finally decide to continue U.S. occupation though, he chose to steer from telling informing the public with the complete truth. In These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore writes, “He [President Johnson] lied about American involvement, and his administration lied about the war itself…Johnson deliberately hid the cost of the war.” President Johnson failed to give the American public something that should be the easiest thing to deliver while holding a presidency, and that is the truth. This shattered the blind trust the American public had had in its leaders and their decisions on foreign relations in an irrevocable way being that now the whole U.S. government had been put into question by its citizens. Furthermore, in a “Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement,” John Kerry states, “Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn’t have to admit something that the entire world already knows so that we can’t say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be, and these are his words, ‘the first President to lose a war.’ John Kerry is a Vietnam War veteran giving a firsthand retelling of what the U.S. military presence was really like in Vietnam. Kerry confirms that the U.S. occupation in Vietnam is completely unnecessary not only through just his mere opposition to the war itself but also by his clearly and outrightly calling out President Nixon’s selfish, egoistic motives behind his reluctance to withdraw from the war.
In conclusion, the Vietnam War was a war that was magnified by U.S. interference when it could have been left to play out on its own. The United States distorted perception of itself as a global power needing to go about prying its hands into foreign affairs that could have gone without them led to its inevitable involvement in the Vietnam War. Mass media coverage, protest movements, and the loss of trust of U.S. leaders by the American public fueled the Vietnam War’s lack of support by citizens in the United States, marking it as one of the most unpopular wars in U.S. history.
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