When did public opinion begin to turn against the Vietnam war?

[rumguy]

When did a clear majority begin to oppose it? Or was it murky back then, and hard to gauge what the majority felt?

[wuushew]

1. seems to be correlated with casualty rates

[rumguy]

2. thanks for that - fascinating

[wuushew]

5. This one is also interesting

Iraq differs from Vietnam in many ways, but only time will tell the effect on public opinion.

[rumguy]

14. How did Nixon win, with the war so unpopular?

I mean he won two terms...it's wierd

[Jacobin]

25. Nixon said in his campaign that he had a "secret plan" to end the war

When he got elected, he escalated it.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

3. Following the Tet Offensive public opinion began to really turn sour

mostly because Americans actually thought they were or COULD win the war up until that point and then the casualties in those few weeks shifted sentiment.

Nixon even campaigned stating that if one could not end the war in 4 years they didn't deserve to be re-elected. That line as of course used on him 4 years later to no avail...but 67 was the turning point...Americans' approval for the war continued to drop precipitously following that time althoug of course we were engaged for several years following.

[Mountainman]

4. I think the Tet offensive of 1968 had a lot to do with it.

Americans were told that we were winning the war but in the first part of 1968 it looked like we were losing.

The peace talks were getting no where. Then Nixon lied about having troops in Cambodia. That's when the lid blew off. Kent state happened because of that. Nixon said he had a secret plan to end the war but the plan he had was to bomb the North into seeking peace. That didn't work. On Christmas 1972 I think it was he ordered round the clock bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. That brought the North back to the peace table but by then Americans wanted out of the war. Nixon started the Vietnamization program which meant we were turning the war over the the South Vietnamese and we were going to get out. When we left the South could not hold the North back and then it was all over.

I may have some facts a little wrong because it was some time ago.

[rumguy]

18. thanks - that's very interesting

[Jack Rabbit]

6. There was no straw that broke the camel's back

Public opinion came around slowly to opposed the war. At the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (August 1964), everybody was behind LBJ. The war was going to be quick and easy. It wasn't. The steady drip-dirp-drip of opposition began.

By late 1967, discontent over the war encouraged Senator McCarthy to enter the early presidential primaries to give voice to the opposition in the poilitical arena.

The Tet Offensive in February 1968 was technically an American victory, but Bunker Hill was technically a British victory. It showed that opposition to the US-backed regime in South Vietnam was stronger than Americans were led to believe. McCarthy showed well in New Hampshire and Senator Robert Kennedy entered the presidential race as a more formidable challenger to Johnson.

Meanwhile, General Westmoreland requested more troops in light of the Test Offensive. Johnson knew he could not fulfill Westmoreland's request without calling up the inactive reserves. That was the line he would not cross. On March 31, he went on television to announce a peace initiative and halted his re-election campaign.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

12. It was technically a victory but with the largest casualties in such a

small time frame to date....and back then we had the body bags and actual images of war on TV every night.

[revcarol]

7. When the Buddhist priest set himself on fire

and when a POW was shot on television by a S. Vietnamese leader.We saw ourselves as supporting the corrupt government of S. Vietnam and against the people of Vietnam. Then add in Tet, a lot more casualties, more lies by Nixon, and we'd had it.

[Mountainman]

8. The picture of the burned naked little girl running from a napalm attack

was very moving to people. I think that's when people began to get out of the denial and admit that innocent civilians were being killed by us.

[Jack Rabbit]

10. That was at the very end of the war

That happened during the Communists' final push toward Saigon.

[Columbia]

13. Picture was of a S. Vietnamese bombing

Not U.S.

[ConsAreLiars]

17. Oh, nothing to do with the US invasion and occupation then?

What grotesque hair-splitting.

Of course the facts of the war as revealed in photos like this made a difference. Most Americans are not butchers and sadists, and most Americans were not able to ignore events like this and feel no shame, and most Americans knew that the "South Vietnamese" military were created and funded and controlled by and served the US. And most Americans were horrified as they began, one by one, to realize the utterly vicious crimes that were being carried out in our name.

[Jack Rabbit]

9. I can't agree, revcarol

Those events were almost five years apart.

The self-immolation of the Buddhist monks was in protest of Diem's repression of the majority faith of the Vietnamese. It took place in 1963. The execusion by General Loan of the Viet Cong prisoner took place during the Tet Offensive, February 1968.

[Mountainman]

11. More than one Buddist monk set himself on fire.

I happend all throughout the war. What you say is also correct.

[revcarol]

15. It was all cumulative, IMHO.

Or piling on, if you prefer.

The most important things against the war were the IMAGES. The image of the priests calmly setting fire to themselves, the image of Nixon sitting at his desk in the WH saying we were not in Cambodia when Air America was conducting operations there and so were our troops and we all knew it, the images of the helicopters bringing in wounded and Americans in retreat,the IMAGE of the man getting shot-live on TV...

That's why I despair of bringing a quick end to this war. THE IMAGES IN LIVING COLOR OF THE LOVE, HATE, DEATH, DESTRUCTION HAVE BEEN CENSORED.Dry figures of the number of wounded or overflowing Iraqi hospital statistics just do not have the impact, which is, of course, what Bush wants.

[Mountainman]

16. I was in Vietnam during Tet and I sure wished then that we would just get

hell out of there. I had three months to go and I was not feeling at all sure I would make it. The site on Armed Forces TV of Marines fighting on the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon was shocking to us.

I think of the soldiers in the Iraq war and feel that I know some of what they are feeling. Many of them feel that if they die it will be in vain. Others are gung ho but not the majority if they were like me and my friends.

I want this war to end now and to bring the troops home now. I don't want another person to die for the greed of the repukes.

[EndElectoral]

19. When the Vietnam Vets against the war marched

The Iraq vets are silenced....Until they speak out, people are afraid to criticize.

Also the casualty list currently in Iraq is very small compared to Vietnam, and people haven't seen enough body bags yet.

[SoCalDem]

20. When lots of young guys started coming back in bodybags.

For my community, it was around 1966.. I guess it varied from place to place, but by late '67 it was pretty intense..

[OneBlueSky]

21. there was an issue of "Life" magazine . . .

don't remember the year . . . but the whole thing consisted mainly of page after page after page of photographs of American soldiers killed in Vietnam the previous week . . . I don't remember the number of pages or the number of photos per page, but the total was in the hundreds . . . it was a devastating indictment of the war, as moms and dads throughout the nation viewed the faces of young men who were now dead . . . probably wasn't the single thing that turned American opinion on the war, but it certainly was a contributing factor . . .

[dbt]

22. Uncle Walter did it!

The night he came into our living rooms and told us the "war" was unwinnable was when the majority of Americans turned, IMO.

Note that a similar piece of Journalism has zero chance of occurring in 21st Century Murka.

Watch TV
Be Afraid
Consume
OBEY

:argh:
dbt

[RainDog]

27. Walter Cronkite/The Tet Offensive

...is what I've been told was the turning point. don't know if that's actually true or not.

but I was told that Cronkite made comments when the footage of the Tet Offensive came in. The Tet Offensive was when Viet Cong breached the walls of the Embassy and were shooting into the windows of the Embassy.

Cronkite commented on the footage, something like...I thought we were winning this war...

I was too young to personally remember that moment. What I do remember is that people on both sides were angry at each other, and more and more people lived as though they no longer had faith in the American government to either tell the truth or to do the right thing.

I saw an old rerun of Dick Cavett on c-span last month or so, and people in the audience were divided b/t Kerry, who was there as a veteran against the war, while another guy was there as a military guy supporting the war.

They both had supporters in the audience. The pro-military guy was seething...his anger was barely contained against Kerry, while Kerry came across as someone who was righteously indignant but who kept trying to use facts and reason to show that what was happening was wrong.

At this point, I see that our govt is totally entrenched in the ideological position that we cannot allow Iraq to become "a failed state" for the consumption of the American masses, while the politicians also do not make any effort to inform Americans about the provisions of the June 30 handover, or about the 14 bases we are building, or the huge embassy...

in other words, none of the mainstream politicians on either side of the aisle are willing to say to Americans that we plan to be an occupying force in the country who will only "allow" Iraq to be independent to the extent that they allow us to use them as a colony for oil and for further wars against other nations.

The Americans who do realize this are either those who are totally against the occupation or totally for a world war in the ME and the idea of overturning the govt of every nation in the region.

This second group has no qualms about killing massive amounts of civilians in order to establish those goals, nor do they seem to care about the blowback from this plan, in terrorist attacks in America for generations to come.

After all, they call this a "generational war."

[LizW]

23. It took a hell of a long time

Years.

I've been talking with my mother about this. She says right now, we're in about 1964 or 65, as comparable public opinion on the war goes. Seems that we're also about there as far as number of troops committed.

The turn in public opinion was not achieved only because of what the national media showed, but because of what people began to see and hear in their own communities. It was only when every community and small town had several sons over there, and when many, many communities and small towns had seen a funeral of one of their own, that things really turned.

[mopaul]

24. Television itself did it.

it was the first fully televised war. i remember preparing dinner with my mom and watching actual frontline battles, and people like dan rather right there in the line of fire. dead and dying soldiers, dead viet namese, copters, machine guns, napalm, all of it being shown on the evening news. i actually got used to it, and we only had 3 channels and it was the same on nbc and abc.

but after a while, it was hard to ignore all that horror going on. and then walter cronkite started speaking his mind.

it's the old, 'when is someone finally going to say it' routine.

[Iceburg]

26. May 4, 1970 Kent State -- Turning Point in History

The protest against the war was brewing/gathering momentum for 4-5 years. While the intensity, coordination and timing of the Tet Offensive in 1968 awakened and some would say surpised the US homeland and its allies, I think the real turning point for America and world opinion was May 4, 1970.

http://dept.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/lewihen.htm

[go fish]

28. There was a civil war going on

here in the U-S, too. The country was being ripped apart. Protesting students were being shot and bayonetted on college campuses by the National Guard. Soldiers were being told that the protesters hated them - the protesters hated the war, not the soldiers. Things were happening in Viet Nam that people will not discuss to this day. It was a horrible time and it is in the air again.