The Anti-Vietnam War Movement (United States)
The anti-war movement in the West began as a small and vocal minority, but reached its zenith in
the late 1960. In the first years of the war, United States military intervention in Vietnam was backed
by strong levels of public support. Years of Cold War paranoia and Domino Theory propaganda had
shaped the American mindset: they feared communist aggression and backed strong action to halt
it. Americans were supportive of South Vietnamese sovereignty, outraged by reports of Viet Cong
terrorism and angered by the Gulf of Tonkin attacks on United States naval ships. But while most
Americans remained committed to Vietnam, there was growing dissatisfaction with the way their
government was handling the war effort. President Lyndon Johnson’s approval rating slipped
gradually from mid-1965. The turning point was the Tet Offensive, which humiliated the White
House by thwarting their optimistic predictions that the war was being won. By March 1968, public
satisfaction with Johnson’s overall presidency was at an all-time low, a factor in his decision not to
seek re-election.
The movement grows and widens
The years 1967-69 produced a gradual but steady growth in anti-war organisations. Movements
opposing the war had been around since the early 1960s but their membership was mostly filled by
university students, radical political groups and some churches. Around 25,000 people had marched
against the war in Washington in April 1965; similar numbers attended a protest in New York City in
March 1966. There were comparable protests in dozens of cities around the world, including
London, Paris, Rome and Melbourne. By 1967, the anti-war movement had been joined by some
high-profile figures, including celebrities and intellectuals. In March, almost 6,800 academics and
teachers put their signature to a three-page advertisement in the New York Times, condemning the
war and calling for American withdrawal. Some of the other notable figures to publicly speak out
against the war included:
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The philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Satre, who claimed that the US had
breached international and human rights law with regard to Vietnam. In 1967, Russell and
Satre organised and convened a hypothetical ‘war crimes tribunal’ in Sweden, in which
American policy and alleged war crimes in Vietnam were ‘put on trial’. The US government
ignored these proceedings.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who had been a vocal critic of the war since 1965. King
argued that American involvement in Vietnam was an act of neo-colonialism, and that the
billions being channeled into the war would be better spent on social services for ordinary
Americans. In April 1967, King delivered a speech, ‘Beyond Vietnam’, that called for a
spiritual and moral questioning of America’s foreign and domestic policy.
Heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, who had recently converted to Islam, declared himself a
conscientious objector and refused military service. He did so with characteristic
outspokenness, announcing that he was “not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and
burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark
people the world over.” Ali’s refusal to be drafted led to a criminal conviction and five-year
prison sentence, though this was later overturned by the US Supreme Court.
Numerous academics, intellectuals, writers, actors and musicians criticised the war, both in
statements and in their art. Among them were Joan Baez, Noam Chomsky, Judy Collins, Bob
Dylan, John Fogerty, Jane Fonda, Allen Ginsberg, Charlton Heston, Albert Kahn, Norman
Mailer, Joni Mitchell, Carl Sagan, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Donald Sutherland and
Howard Zinn.
The ‘five-o’clock follies’
Until mid-1967, American reporting on the Vietnam War was, for the most part, pro-government.
The war was portrayed as a just cause, against the malevolent and destructive forces of North
Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Most information on the war came from press correspondents and
camera crews in South Vietnam, some of whom accompanied American troops on combat
operations. But US military hierarchs implemented strict controls on reporting: regulating where
Western journalists could go, who they could speak to and what information they were to be given.
Reporters in Vietnam referred to official MACV briefings as “the five-o’clock follies”, since they
contained nothing of substance other than pro-war propaganda and feel-good stories.
By the summer of 1967, the war in Vietnam dominated news reports, taking up three-quarters of
television bulletins and several pages in daily newspapers. The tone of these reports also began to
change. There was growing scepticism about the government’s road map for victory – and
pessimism about whether victory was even possible. The Johnson administration briefly recalled
William Westmoreland from Vietnam, to deliver good news and shore up the war effort, while
Johnson’s national security advisor, Walt Rostow, announced that he could “see light at the end of
the tunnel”. Yet the deaths continued, and by Christmas 1967, more than 16,000 Americans had
been killed in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive of early 1968 humiliated the government and boosted the
ranks of the anti-war movement. Where they had once been filled with students, left-wing radicals
and peaceniks, anti-war groups now attracted large numbers of ordinary Americans: workers,
housewives, policemen, high school students, even some politicians. The trusted CBS newsreader
Walter Cronkite seemed to speak for many Americans, when he said after the Tet Offensive:
“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the
optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is
to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the
only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off-chance that military and political
analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case
this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this
reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as
an honourable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the
best they could.”
The Washington moratorium
Although never able to create enough pressure on decision-makers to end US involvement in the
war, the anti-war movement served as a major constraint on their abilities to escalate. The
movement played a significant role not only in Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 decision not to seek another
term, but also in the Watergate affair that brought down President Richard Nixon. In many ways, the
movement’s greatest importance was its legacy… For a quarter of a century after the end of the war,
American presidents worried about creating another powerful anti-war movement that would
oppose the interventions they contemplated.
Melvin Small
The anti-war movement reached its zenith in late 1969. On November 12th, Associated Press
journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre, which had been concealed by the
US government and military for 18 months. Three days later, approximately two million Americans
joined in a national day of protest. It was by far the largest organised protest in American history.
Across the country, civilians strung up banners, wore black armbands, held candlelight vigils, said
prayers and chanted the names of dead soldiers. This protest was most concentrated in Washington,
where more than 400,000 people gathered. They lingered on the steps of the Capitol building,
outside the White House and other Washington landmarks, listening to prominent speakers and
musicians such as Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie and Peter Paul and Mary. President Nixon’s response
was to remain in the White House and declare that he was “not affected” by the protest. General
Earle Wheeler, the US’ highest-ranking military officer, dismissed the protestors as “interminably
vocal youngsters, strangers alike to soap and reason”.
The anti-war movement would never again command these numbers, but it was re-agitated in May
1970 with the news that US and ARVN troops had invaded Cambodia. Rather than its promised
‘winding down’ of the war, the government was expanding it across borders into other nations. This
was met with an explosion of protest around the country, some of the most radical taking place on
university campuses. At Kent State University in Ohio, students protested and rioted for four days,
damaging property and setting fire to a building used to train military reservists. The Ohio governor
responded by calling in the state’s National Guard. On May 4th they confronted 2,000 protesting
students in a car park, and around two dozen troops began firing weapons. Four students were
killed, another was struck in the spine and paralysed, while a further eight were wounded. A Pulitzer
Prize-winning photograph taken shortly after the shootings showed a female bystander next to one
of the dead victims (see picture, above). It was a stark image that to many was evidence of a
government out of control, more willing to shoot its own citizens than withdraw from a disastrous
foreign war.
The Pentagon Papers
The Kent State University shootings increased militant protests around the country. Many colleges
closed in protest: students went on strike and professors refused to teach. Demonstrations became
more radical, confrontational and violent. Meanwhile, support for the war in opinion polls continued
to plummet. A May 1971 Gallup poll suggested that 61 per cent of Americans now thought that US
involvement in the war was wrong. The Nixon administration could not afford another scandal, yet
one quickly followed. In June, the New York Times began publishing excerpts from a 7,000 page
Department of Defense document. The Pentagon Papers, as they became known, were leaked to the
press by Daniel Ellsberg, a former advisor to Robert McNamara. They contained a thorough history
of America’s political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1968, along with relevant
memoranda, briefings, diplomatic cables and other official communiques.
Analysis of the Pentagon Papers confirmed what the anti-war movement had long been saying about
US involvement in Vietnam. Washington did not have precise war aims and its military strategy was
inconsistent and often ineffective. US intelligence on Vietnam had been proved fatally wrong at
several points. The government had not always informed the public of military and political
developments in Vietnam, and in some cases information was deliberately misrepresented or
concealed from the press and the people. It was a searing indictment of America’s involvement in
the Vietnam conflict and how four different presidents had handled it. Nixon was largely immune
from these criticisms, since his administration did not begin until a year after the Pentagon Papers
were compiled. But he was outraged nevertheless, concerned that the leaking of the Pentagon
Papers would undermine America’s mission in Vietnam. Nixon ordered White House lawyers to
suppress further publication of the papers, a move that the Supreme Court ultimately declared to be
unconstitutional. When Nixon’s attempt at legal suppression failed, the CIA went in search of
incriminating information about Ellsberg, breaking into the office of his psychiatrist.
J. Llewellyn et al, “The anti-war movement”, Alpha History, accessed [11/09/14],
http://alphahistory.com/vietnam/anti-war-movement/.