The War That Never Ends: New Perspectives on the Vietnam War

11. Vietnam Is Here: The Antiwar Movement

11 Vietnam Is Here The Antiwar Movement Terry H. Anderson In October 1967, during the events ofStop the Draft Week in Washington, DC, the activist Dave McReynolds declared, "Vietnam is here:' He was right; opinion polls at that time demonstrated that Vietnam had eclipsed civil rights as the nation's top problem. The war in Southeast Asia was overwhelming America. The antiwar movement, however, had developed slowly during the first part of the 1960s. That was because the United States was involved in a cold war with the forces of communism-the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies, and China and its Asian neighbors North Korea and North Vietnam. Since the late 1940s, and especially since President Harry Truman sent troops to defend South Korea in 1950, the United States had practiced a policy of containing Communist expansion. Most citizens throughout the 1950s and until the late 1960s agreed with Truman when he told the nation, "We are fighting in Korea so we won't have to fight in Wichita, or in Chicago, or in New Orleans, or on San Francisco BaY:' Thus, during the first part ofthe 1960s, most Americans saw the war in South Vietnam as stopping the flow of communism from North Vietnam ; taking a different stance from the government's position resulted in scorn or charges ofdisloyalty. Initially, events in South Vietnam bolstered support for the war. In August 1964, North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked an American de245 246 Terry H. Anderson strayer, the USS Maddox, in the Tonkin Gulf. The president declared that our ship had been assaulted in international waters and that he was retaliating by ordering air strikes on naval installations in North Vietnam. The nation rallied around the flag. The New York Times declared that the attack on the warship was the "beginning of a mad adventure by the North Vietnamese Communists" and that the United States must "assure the independence of South Vietnam:' The president's approval rating soared to over 70 percent, and Congress overwhelmingly passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which supposedly gave Johnson authority to use U.S. armed forces in South Vietnam. Two-thirds of the public supported the resolution , including at least that percentage ofcollege students. The editors ofthe Michigan State News were happy that LBJ had not "patted North Vietnam's leaders on the head for launching an unprovoked attack on our ships:' Next spring, the Viet Cong intensified their attacks on American forces, this time a U.S. base at Pleiku, and that angered Johnson. "''m not going to be the first president to lose a war;' he declared, and he changed U.S. policy by ordering Operation Rolling Thunder-air strikes against North Vietnam-which also was popular in the United States. Yet the bombing provoked some citizens. Throughout the first half of the decade, a few peaceniks had spoken out against military action in Southeast Asia. Dr. Benjamin Spock, a founder of the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and A. J. Muste, who often volunteered with the Committee for Non-Violent Action, held rallies that attracted small crowds. In those gatherings were members ofolder peace groups, such as the American Friends Service Committee, Clergy and Laity Concerned, and the War Resisters League, or newer organizations, like Women Strike for Peace and Students for a Democratic Society. LBJ's bombing during spring 1965 also aroused some other Americans, especially on university campuses. At the University of Michigan, professors decided to hold a "teach-in:' Inspired by civil rights sit-ins, two hundred professors took out an ad in the Michigan Daily appealing to students to join them in an attempt to "search for a better policY:' Throughout the night of March 24-25, more than three thousand students and faculty participated in lectures, debates, and discussions, an idea that spread to other campuses. Some thirty-five universities, from Columbia to Oregon, from Rutgers to Berkeley, held teach-ins that semester. In April, the budding peace movement arrived in the nation's capital. Bused in from campuses all over the Vietnam Is Here 247 country, twenty thousand protesters appeared on a warm, beautiful Sunday . They picketed the White House, marched to the Washington Monument , sang with folksingers Judy Collins and Joan Baez, and eventually walked to the Capitol, where they presented Congress with a petition: "The problems ofAmerica cry out for attention, and our entanglement in South Vietnam postpones the confrontation...