Anti-War Movement During the Vietnam War

Anti-War Movement During the Vietnam War

As the Vietnam war heavily covered by the media, the devastating

images were broadcasted across the globe. People were able to watch

the war from their armchair and many American people were disgraced by

the images of children dying and innocent people being shot dead in

villages. A perfect example of this, is the My Lai massacre which took

place in 1968. The images appalled people all over the world,

especially American people who felt ashamed of their country's

soldiers. 'Middle America' began to realise the harsh consequences of

the Vietnam War.

I believe that the media coverage sparked the protesting across

America, however there were individual groups who protested against

the war, they all had different beliefs about the war and had

different methods of protesting, but they all had one thing in common,

they wanted to stop the war in Vietnam. Hippies, blacks, students and

veterans were amongst these groups of protesters.

I will use the sources, with the aid of my own knowledge in order to

attempt to come up with an answer to why there was an anti-war

movement in the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Source A was taken from the book 'four hours from My Lai'. It was

written by Michael Bilton and published in 1992. The source allows me

to understand that the American soldiers lacked intelligence. "An

increasing number of recruits scored so low on intelligence tests that

they would never have been let into the peacetime army." This passage

suggests to me that the U.S army was inefficient, as with low

intelligence, the likelihood that a soldier would survive in th...

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...-war protest in America. The images were seen by all

different kinds of people throughout America and the images caused

huge protest amongst many groups and 'middle America'

From evaluating the sources, and using my own knowledge, I am able to

conclude that they do not give sufficient evidence to explain why

there was an anti-war movement in the United States during the late

1960s and early 1970s. The sources do not give enough information,

they do not show how particular groups react to events. For example

none of the sources mention how hippies reacted to the use of chemical

weapons, or how black people protested about being sent to Vietnam.

The sources do give some evidence to explain why there was protesting,

however, there is definitely not sufficient evidence to explain the

anti-war movement during this period.