Historical Information

"Our purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression. It is not conquest, it is not empire, it is not foreign bases, it is not domination. It is, simply put, just to prevent the forceful conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam." -Lyndon B. Johnson.  This quote is from when President Johnson was in office, just a short time after declaring war on Northern Vietnam.  Conflicts in Vietnam began in World War II, when Japan invaded Vietnam which had been under French administration since the 19th century.  Ho Chi Minh was inspired by Chinese and Soviet communism and  formed the Viet Minh, a group striving for independence from other countries' power.  They later fought against the United States and Southern Vietnam in the Vietnam war.  After Japan withdrew from Vietnam in 1945 Minh and his forces immediately rose up and seized power of the North, beginning the civil dispute. 

Many American citizens thought that the war in Vietnam was wrong and pointless.  Protests began in late 1964-- it began in colleges across the US.  When the United States started dropping bombs more regularly in 1965, concerns and protests grew.  The group protesting the War included famous and influential people, like Muhammad Ali, who at the time was the World Heavy Weight Champion.  Ali was so eminent that he attracted a lot of attention when he refused to go into the war draft, he took a three year ban from boxing and recieved a jail sentence which was later overturned.  Muhammad can be quoted saying that he was a "conscientious objector," which represented the view of the protesters.  

By 1967 some 40,000 soldiers were being drafted every month, this enraged the protesters and gave them more reason to object to the War on communism.  The protesters were arguing that the US was being democratic in the way that they approached the war.  On October 21, 1967 over 100,000 protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial and hundreds to thousands were later arrested by marshals.  This same year Martin Luther King Jr. made his opinion on the war public, saying that the war was a waste of funds, that could and should have been used domestically.  He also questioned why the ratio of African-American deaths to occasions was so unbalanced-- this also put the US government under more criticism.  

1968 however, brought about the most intense war protests to this day.  It started in January when the Northern Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive.  The Tet offensive was a series of coordinated surprise attacks across all of Southern Vietnam-- more than 120 cities were attacked that day.  This video goes into some detail about the Tet offensive.  Although the US technically won the attack, the Vietnamese still succeeded in Swaying the public opinion of the war dramatically.  The beginning of the next month found that only 35 percent of people approved of the presidents decisions regarding the war, while 50 percent did not approve, the other 15 percent did not have an opinion.  Members of The Vietnam Veterans Against the War organization, many of whom were in wheelchairs and crutches joined the cause, speaking out to raise awareness about their discontent with the war.  

At the climax of the war there were more than 500,000 US soldiers involved in the conflict.  More than 58,000 Americans were killed out of the total of three million-- more than half of those three million were Vietnamese civilians.  

In 1968, Richard Nixon began the process of withdrawing ground troops from Vietnam, and focusing on air bombardment; leaving ground duties to South Vietnamese troops.  North Vietnam wanted complete noninvolvement from the US in order to have peace.  The men that were not withdrawn at the beginning became angry and tens of thousands of soldiers received "dishonorable discharge" because they deserted.  Also throughout the war over 500,000 men in the US were "draft dodgers."  In 1972 the US and North Vietnam tried to reach a peace agreement, but it failed and led to the "Christmas bombings."  In 1973 however, the US and North Vietnam reached an agreement to stop conflict.  The war between South and North Vietnam continued though, until 1975.  By the end of the war 2 million Vietnamese people had been killed, 3 million were injured and 12 million had become refugees of war.  In that sense, the war was like the Holocaust because it displaced and killed many people, many times in their own homes.  

This event is still very much effecting the population of both the US and Vietnam.  In the US their are about 850,000 veterans still alive today that are all afflicted with some sort of damage from the war, whether it be physical or mental.  Many of these veterans are so messed up that they are homeless and have just given up on life.  Although we may not notice them, veterans are struggling everyday and the war is still a very real thing to them.  Organizations are working to help them however.  There are many organizations working to feed veterans and provide them with basic needs that they are unable to manifest themselves.