MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English language and literature

Changing attitudes: Depiction of Protests against Vietnam War through generations Master’s thesis

Brno 2017

Supervisor: Written by:

Michael George M.A. Bc. Michaela Ciprysová Prohlášení:

Prohlašuji, že jsem diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, a že jsem použila pouze uvedené zdroje. Souhlasím s uložení mé práce na Masarykově univerzitě v Brně v knihovně pedagogické fakulty a s jejím zpřístupněním ke studijním účelům.

Brno, 25. března 2017 Michaela Ciprysová

Declaration:

I declare that I have worked on my thesis independently and that I have used only listed sources. I agree with the deposition of my thesis at Masaryk University, Brno, at the library of Faculty of Education and with making it accessible for study purposes.

Brno, 25th March 2017 Michaela Ciprysová

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor Mr. Michael George for his kind, patient and valuable advice and the guidance that he provided during my work on the thesis.

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Abstract

This master‟s thesis analyses changes in attitudes of American citizens, traditional media and government towards the anti-war protests against the Vietnam War through six decades. The first part of the thesis focuses on the description of the anti- war movement, counterculture movement and other protest groups which disagreed with the government‟s war policies in Vietnam. There are also referenced the most significant protests events such as demonstrations, marches, sit-ins or illegal conducts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The chapters of the second part of the thesis evaluate the changes in the attitudes of the citizens, the traditional media and the government in each decade starting with 1960s and ending in 21st century.

Key words

Vietnam War, protest, demonstration, students, attitude, media, anti-war movement, 1960s, 1970s

Anotace

Tato diplomová práce analyzuje změny v postoji amerických občanů, tradičních médií a vlády k protiválečným protestům proti válce ve Vietnamu během šesti desetiletí. První část této práce se soustředí na popis protiválečného hnutí, kontrakulturní hnutí a dalších protestních skupin, které nesouhlasily s vládní válečnou politikou ve Vietnamu. Jsou zde také popsány nejdůležitější protestní akce jako demonstrace, protestní pochody, sit-in a nelegální činy na konci 60. let a začátku 70. let. Kapitoly druhé části práce hodnotí změny v postojích občanů, tradičních médií a vlády v desetiletích počínaje 60. lety a konče 21. stoletím.

Klíčová slova

Válka ve Vietnamu, protest, demonstrace, studenti, postoj, média, protiválečné hnutí, 60. léta, 70. léta

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Table of contents 1. Introduction ...... 6 2. Protests against the Vietnam War ...... 8 2.1. Early days of the war ...... 8 2.2. Situations at universities ...... 11 2.3. Demonstrations ...... 13 2.4. Illegal activities ...... 20 2.4.1. Illegal activities by conscripted men and soldiers ...... 20 2.4.2. Illegal activities by civilians ...... 27 2.5. Veterans ...... 31 2.5.1. Vietnam Veterans Against the War...... 31 2.5.2. America‟s fighting men ...... 32 3. Reactions and attitudes in 1960s ...... 34 3.1. Attitudes of civilians ...... 34 3.2. Attitudes of media ...... 35 3.2.1. Television ...... 35 3.2.2. Newspapers ...... 36 3.3. Attitudes of government...... 44 4. Reactions and attitudes in 1970s ...... 47 4.1. Attitudes of civilians ...... 47 4.2. Attitudes of media ...... 48 4.2.1. Television ...... 48 4.2.2. Newspapers ...... 49 4.3. Attitudes of government...... 52 5. Reactions and attitudes in 1980s ...... 55 5.1. Attitudes of civilians ...... 55 5.2. Attitudes of media ...... 55 5.3. Attitudes of government...... 56 6. Reactions and attitudes in 1990s ...... 58 6.1. Attitudes of civilians ...... 58 6.2. Attitudes of media ...... 59 6.3. Attitudes of government...... 60

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7. Reactions and attitudes in 21st century ...... 62 7.1. Attitudes of civilians ...... 62 7.2. Attitudes of media ...... 63 7.3. Attitudes of government...... 64 8. Conclusion ...... 66 9. References ...... 68 9.1. Printed sources ...... 68 9.2. Online sources ...... 70 Appendices ...... 77

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1. Introduction The aim of the thesis is to describe the ramifications of the protests against the Vietnam War on the American culture and society. The portrayals and opinions on the protests by the media of that time strongly influenced the citizens in this era and the responses of the citizens brought consequences for the future generations. It is thus important to understand how these ramifications influence every generation of the Americans. The protests against the war were one of the first expressions of disagreement with the government by the vast number of the citizens since the Civil War. Before this time it would not had occurred to a majority of people to disagree with the official stand of the government. However the World War II and the War in Korea removed many restraints which had halted the citizens in expressing their opinion. The idea that people could publicly disagree with the government was novel and disconcerting for many people. As is the case with every revolutionary idea the artists reacted to the situation in their works and the media offered their comments. This thesis attempts to provide synoptic account of the matter of the protests and public reactions through generations and their influence on the society.

Among the main materials which will be thoroughly studied and compared will be history books related to the topic, newspaper and magazine articles depicting the events, or television reports informing on the matter. A significant number of materials is offered by various libraries in Brno and more importantly by the libraries at Masaryk University. Some of the materials are available in online archives of some American universities, magazines and newspapers. Contributions of many historians or sociologists may be found in online periodicals.

The main method used in the creation of this thesis will be a study of the materials regarding this topic and era, drawing comparisons between the different attitudes of the media on this subject throughout the last six decades and referring to the not as obvious consequences on the American culture.

The author‟s hypothesis states that the influence of the protests against the Vietnam War has had more significant consequences on the American culture than historians usually presume and the notion of the anti-government protests has influenced generations throughout the last five decades. The expected result is a better

6 understanding of the evolution of attitudes of Americans towards their government and the metamorphosis of the depiction of the matter in different aspects of the media.

This study will provide to lawmen but also to experts another point of view on the matter of the protests. It will also demonstrate that the phenomenon of public disagreement with the official government‟s stand was one of the main stepping stones for American society as it is viewed today and without this prevailing symbol of a struggle for the right of speech and the right of opinion the world may have been very different today.

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2. Protests against the Vietnam War

2.1. Early days of the war The history of resistance and opposition towards war did not begin with the start of the Vietnam War. The history of the USA is full of cases of opponents against wars nevertheless until the 1960s the resistance was never on such a scale and that much spoken about. Various religious groups such as Quakers or pacifist organizations had expressed their opinions on the war long before the main events of the war began in 1965 (Anderson 94).

According to Samuels pacifists during the McCarthyism of the 1950s were dubbed Communists by many because they did not agree with the U.S. military involvement in the Cold War. If they were not in agreement with the government on this issue, it meant that they had to be sympathizers with the enemy (567).

It is not possible to fully separate the anti-war movement from the civil rights movement because they had become so intrinsically linked to one another that many of their actions, slogans, philosophies were one and the same. Many of the groups supporting the civil rights beliefs participated in the anti-war protests and vice versa. Many of the ideals of both groups were identical and would be able to apply on both concepts (Freeman 573). Among the many principles which both movements employed was the prime practice of non-violence. Inspired in a great part by the non- violent actions and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian struggle for independence from the British, the American youth, people of non-Caucasians origins and homosexuals were inspired to find a new and more importantly different way to express their discontentment with the status quo (Norton 861).

There were rallies, symposia, marches, petitions, draft protests, publications and other expressions of dissent. Many slogans originated in this decade proclaimed the importance of love and peace in direct opposition with war. The most common type of protest that could be seen every day and did affect the biggest spectrum of people was indirect protest through the change of visage. The revolution was swift and far- reaching. The fashion industry had to completely change to accommodate the new needs of the American youth. The young protesting generation were trying to look the opposite as the enemy generation of their parents. The prototype member of the

8 older sort was a person with short hair and clean shaven wearing dark plain clothes. The youth found symbols in long hair, facial hair, colourful clothes and beads of various kinds proclaiming their affiliation to the counter-culture and/or anti-war orientation. Some of the most politically active started to equal the middle-class cleanliness and straight lines with enemy‟s propaganda. Thus Weiner and Stillman describe the counter-culture members as “those who did reject the middle-class notion of cleanliness and those who were most engaged in the rites and rituals of the counter-culture were those most involved with politics and drug use” (42)

It is questionable if self-immolation is the most extreme or brave form of protest. Be that as it may as early as 1965 there were noted three cases of self-burning in the protest of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The first one to set herself on fire was a member of organization Women Strike for Peace, Alice Herz (Tucker 483). On November 2, 1965, Quaker Norman Morrison set himself on fire below the windows of the office belonging to the Secretary of State, Robert McNamara, in Pentagon. Morrison was holding his infant daughter moments before he set himself on fire (775). Few days later on November 9 Roger Allen LaPorte, member of Catholic Worker Movement, imitated the action in front of the United Nation Headquarter in New York City. It is probable that both of the men were inspired by the self- immolations of the South Vietnamese Buddhists protesting the same cause. There were four more cases of self-burning, two of which by American citizens, a South Vietnamese and a Japanese citizen (484).

Ones of the most frequent and daring of the non-violent acts were the sit-ins. The protestors would sit in places where they were not welcome be it a restaurant appointed as only serving to white people or around a police car which had been taking away a draft dodger suspect (O'Connor, Schwartz, and Wheeler 716).

The media had been playing an immensely important role in influencing the masses for a long time but the 1950s and the rapid growth of the number of televisions in American homes was the point of no return. The protests, marches or police violence had been only words for a common American who did not study at a university and had never visited a town with a bigger African-American minority. The newspapers had offered some mild pictures illustrating the acts which they wrote about. But the

9 television provided the images the common American could not fathom even if one read the newspaper. People sitting in front of the televisions in safety of their homes saw the often violent treatment of peacefully protesting groups of young people by the police force (McWilliams 14). They saw unfairness and the unfairness usually generates sympathy. The sympathy brings support and the support led to more members of the movements and a greater influence on the politics and an involvement in the decision making process.

As Richard Samuels wrote in Encyclopaedia of United States National Security, ”The willingness of civil rights leaders to suffer abuse, jail, and even death to advance their cause peacefully eventually won the day and resulted in far-ranging civil-rights legislation in the 1960s” (567).

If the 1960s saw the rise of campus based protestors against the war, the early 1970s generated the strongest voice of protest from the middle class and working class citizens (Freeman 576). It was partly caused by the longevity of the conflict and the military lack of success in the war but also as does every military confrontation the war gave birth to a new generation of veterans many of which were not afraid to speak about their experiences in the war and its uselessness (Gitlin 418). The American society had enough of war and dead sons and could no longer see why their army and their children had to risk their lives thousands of miles away from home and for people who did not even want them there. The regular American had enough and wanted a quick end of the war. That was promised by the newly inaugurated president, Richard Nixon, but even he could not make the miracle he had promised in his election campaign come true as quickly as the society demanded (O'Connor, Schwartz, and Wheeler 731).

It did not take long before someone named the two biggest fractions in the American society. Those who supported the war and regarded the American involvement as something bigger than a meddling in a civil war were called the Hawks according to their perceived aggression and military decisiveness. Their opposition was appropriately called after their opposite in the animal kingdom and the eternal symbol of peace – the Doves. The supporters or the hawks counted in their ranks many Southern Democrats and a majority of Republicans. They saw the military

10 actions in Vietnam as an effort to stop the expansive politics of the communism and a military aggression of the countries already under the communist rule, i.e. the Domino theory (Coben 319).

The doves on the other hand questioned the basic idea of the war in other land from the beginning. According to Samuels, “Many regarded North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist rather than a Chinese or Soviet puppet. They felt that the Vietnamese people should be free to choose the form of government they wished, regardless of what form it took. The doves also had major doubts about the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. Although Ho Chi Minh seemed to have genuine support in North Vietnam, Diem came to power improperly and maintained his position through corruption, violence, and American aid” (319).

The doves saw no point in leading the war and no successful outcome for any party. The U.S. army simply could not win the war even if they used all its military might. They wanted the bombings to stop and the peace to be negotiated. They saw the war as an internal conflict and saw no reason why their own country should be involved. The arguments of the opposition, that the war is a tactic to stop the communist expansiveness, were disregarded. The doves felt that the U.S. is in the role of a bully instead of their more renown and more appreciated role of a hero. The international sentiment and soviet propaganda was definitely leaning in this direction. “By mid- 1967, only about one-fourth of the people supported Johnson. Even the hawks were upset because they felt Johnson was restraining the Army and not letting it win the war” (320).

The numbers of members in both camps were changing as the war efforts were seemingly leading nowhere. Many hawks started siding with the doves even if they did not publicly state their new affiliation.

2.2. Situations at universities The 1960s symbolised for the American society the end of rebuilding after the destructive 1940s and the paranoid 1950s. The baby boom is a term strongly

11 associated with this period. After the World War II many people celebrated the victory by starting a family therefore there was a substantial increase in population with the post-war babies reaching adulthood in the 1960s (Freeman 572). Those young people were not scarred with the war or the economic depression like their parents and thus were much more open to a change. With prosperity came the possibility for the young generation to study further and fulfil the dreams the older generation had not dreamed to voice (Gitlin 17).

Coben comments on the rapid increase of the higher education enrolments thus, “The higher education had evolved from a privilege of elites to a right of masses: in the 1960s enrolments grew from 3.5 million to nearly 7.5 million” (268).

The expansion of the student body, the literal millions of students from the societal classes not customarily present at the universities before and the loss of the perceived right of the wealthy were all factors which created an atmosphere that was an excellent breeding ground for the ideas of inadequacy, injustice or unfairness (Gitlin 21).

The real beginning of the organized anti-war protests can be dated to the year 1965 when the first American combat troops were deployed for Vietnam (Freeman 574).

One of the most prominent activist movements which helped ignite the students‟ unrest was the Student for a Democratic Society (SDS) established in 1960 at the campus of the University of Michigan. Its real prominence was cemented by the 1962 with issuing their manifesto Port Huron Statement which proclaimed their self- labelled New Left beliefs. This manifesto expressed their attitudes towards everything their viewed as agents of the Establishment, i.e. the business colossus, the government and the universities. One of their earliest successes came in 1965 when they organized a rally against the war in Washington, D.C., which attracted around 20,000 people (Anderson 94).

The universities offered perfect opportunities for the inception of teach-ins and open forums where the students could gather and discuss their opinions on the involvement and the actions of the USA in Vietnam. Many of these gatherings welcomed university professors, guest speakers and even veterans. Each mentioned

12 group was expressing their attitudes and inflaming the passions of the enthusiastic and impressionable crowds of the listening students (Freeman 54).

The University of California, Berkeley, became to be known as a synonym for the campus unrest of the 1960s. The charismatic leader of the Free Speech Movement operating at the campus, Mario Savio, and his acts against for what he and similarly thinking students saw as an unfairness and impersonality of a big university inspired thousands of students across many campuses in the USA; many sympathised with the movement called the New Left which connected students with the same opinions on racism and the Vietnam War (Norton 952 - 953).

Clecak comments on the New Left,“...the Movement was a multifaceted critical response of elements of a new postwar generation and radicalized or reradicalized elders to emerging shapes and imagined trends: the persistence of social injustice in American society; the growth of a relatively affluent consumer culture in America and throughout the West; the quasi-imperialist stances of both superpowers, especially the United States; the rigid, sclerotic, authoritarian “socialism” of nations in the Soviet sphere; and the deep unrest and revolutionary ferment in the third world” (266 – 267)

This all helped to start a new cultural phenomenon later called the counterculture which was trying to fight the pre-existing way of life of the American society. The students had tried to reform the culture and when they saw that a change on a national scale is impossible they ventured to establish a new culture which should have reflected a new world with all the ideals of the youth. Where the older generations preached order, tradition and control, the youth saw hypocrisy, rigidity and tyranny (268).

2.3. Demonstrations The stereotypical notion that a small number of the younger members of the society represented the majority was more perception than reality. The image of the 1960s frequently came from mass media distortions and the tendency to focus on the

13 volatile behaviour of a very small minority of a large demographic group (McWilliams 12).

It was true that thanks to the remarkable number of children born in the late 1940s and early 1950s there was the highest number of college and university students in the history of the USA. Nevertheless they represented only very small percentage of all citizens of the country (Gitlin 21).

Until the 1965 the public saw very little of the opposition of the war. Demonstrations were localized and on a small scale largely unnoticed by the media or the administration. The deployment of the military troops changed the perception not only by the government but also by the media followers (Farber and Bailey 40). Few demonstrations were sponsored by the National Committee for A Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), which would later on become one of the most prominent anti-war organizations; the organization was one of the first ones which publicly called for the withdrawal of the American troops in 1963 (31).

There were other small scale demonstrations during 1963 which at least partly endorsed the withdrawal. The march commemorating the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki organized by the Student Peace Union or the Catholic Worker Movement in New York devoted part of their attention to the current political issue the same year (Samuels 795). After the deployment of the troops in 1965 and the bombardment campaign the war that many saw as a happening somewhere in South Asia, which did not affect the common American, became an American war. The demonstrations and marches converted from pacifist in character into national in the nature. Student organizations assumed the leading role in the anti-war movement and organized marches and rallies, the first of which held in Washington in April 1965 (Murphy at al., March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam).

By 1967 anti-war rallies, speeches and demonstrations were held all across the U.S. In April 1967, a coalition of anti-war activists organized two simultaneous marches in San Francisco and New York. The enormous number of people who arrived to express their opinion reached almost to 250,000. The goal of the protesting masses was to force President Johnson to negotiate a peaceful removal of American troops

14 from Vietnam. The dominating element among the rallied numbers was nonradical, nonmilitant protesters that thought that the American military presence was just a tragic mistake (Farber and Bailey 41).

Another big march was organized only few months later, October 21, 1967, in Washington D.C. More than 50,000 protesters more militant than usual were rallying and gathering near the building of Department of Defense. In symbolic gesture against military propaganda and secretiveness the demonstrators trespassed on government property and more than 600 of them were arrested. Additional 50 were hospitalized due to injuries caused by teargas and the soldiers (Simmons 607 – 608).

McWilliams summarizes that “in the first half of 1968, 221 major anti-war demonstrations at 101 colleges and universities involved approximately 39,000 students, or less than 1 percent of the college population. Between 1965 and 1968, when the war in Vietnam escalated and White House war planners dramatically increased the monthly draft quotas, no more than 3 percent of college students considered themselves activists, and only 20 percent of the college population participated in one demonstration” (12).

One of the most significant marches in relation with public apprehension occurred in August 1968 after death of two prominent opponents of the war, Martin Luther King, jr., and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago a group of about 10,000 protestors refused to accept that they cannot enter the premises of the convention and protest President Johnson‟s policies at the convention. It was one of the most damaging days for the police public image as the protestors rejected the order to disperse and the police started to attack not only the protestors but also the journalists and innocent bystanders. Hundreds of people were injured (Norton 957–958). Their chants “The whole world is watching!” were broadcasted via the television cameras at the scene and the public was horrified. Despite the violence the majority of American people believed that the police was in the right to react to the refusal to disperse (Washington, The Whole World Was Watching).

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After the Tet Offensive in 1968 and the election of the new president, Richard Nixon, many had presumed the situation to be improving but the war colossus could not be stopped on a dime and thus the demonstrations continued (Freeman 585).

One of the most prominent demonstrations of the 1960s most historians see in the Woodstock music festival in 1969. More than 400,000 people gathered to peacefully protest the war and enjoy the peace and love they proclaimed the world needed. Next to many popular artists of the era and some politically directed songs there were also several speakers who addressed the crowd with speeches about love and peace (King 693).

The biggest demonstration recorded in the history of the USA at that point occurred on November 15, 1969, in Washington D.C. The early reports stated that the crowd of protestors reached a number of 250,000 people. However the actual number of the protestors could have been as high as 600,000 people. The march was a culmination of a week full of smaller scale protests and organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The newspaper articles spoke of “a solid moving carpet of humanity” that assembled in front of Capitol and marched several blocks to the customary gathering place for important demonstrations, the hill of the Washington Monument. Among the government officials actively participating and openly supporting the cause were the defeated presidential candidates, Senators McCarthy and McGovern, previously running for the office on the anti-war platform (Herbers, 250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later).

The demonstration started with theatrical performance of the demonstrators who carried 11 coffins each with a name of soldier killed in combat past the White House, followed by a man holding sizable wooden cross and then rows after rows of protestors carrying various banners, placards and signs with anti-war slogans and appeals. The march was observed by war supporters many of which with their own placards stating their attitude towards the war, the government and the anti-war protestors. The whole event was policed to some degree by units of the police, Army and Corps reserve troops but most importantly by the marshals of the Mobilization Committee of which was humorously said that their numbers were almost the same

16 as the actual protestors (Herbers, 250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later).

After President Nixon on April 30, 1970, admitted that the war was no longer fought only in the country of Vietnam but also in neighbouring Cambodia, where many of the enemies were hiding and sending support from, the universities were in a state of shock. Not only the war was not ending but it was expanded into an area of another country. The massive demonstrations were held by university students with renewed determination to end the war by any means necessary. More than a hundred campuses went into strikes across all the USA. Most of the demonstrations remained peaceful but there were some campuses that encountered violence either with the police, the National Guard or among students themselves (Norton 922).

Such unpleasantries occurred at the campus of the University of Kansas. During the evening hours on April 20, 1970, fire fighters had to rush to extinguish fire which was caused by an unidentified arsonist. The conclusion of the arson was a nearly total destruction of the Student Union building and damages reaching around one million dollars. It was astonishing that nobody was injured during the fight with the flames even though around one hundred student volunteers were involved. Nobody claimed the crime and there were no primal suspects though many suspected that the Weather Underground organization was the culprit. The incident was a shocking conclusion of a very turbulent week marked by racial unrest, vandalism at a local high school and smaller scale fires in other parts of the campus (Towns, Fire and smoke).

The most prominent case of the campus violence occurred on May 4, 1970, and influenced the government proceedings and attitudes for a considerable time after the piercing critique by the media and public. The four days which proceeded after the announcement of the Cambodia incursion were very turbulent in Kent, Ohio (King 686). The students of the local Kent State University started protesting the incursion the next day and in the evening some vandalism was caused by the students influenced by alcohol. The police forces were employed to maintain the situation and the mayor of the city contacted the Ohio governor. The next day disturbances continued and escalated into the burning of the Reserve Officers‟ Training Corps

17 building by the crowd of demonstrators. By that time the National Guard units were on their way to the city after the mayor‟s request was granted by the governor. A curfew was placed upon the city and the National Guard was enforcing the order. A smaller scale rally was assembled on May 3 to reach a deal between the students and the city officials albeit the state governor was against to negotiating with the students‟ organizations which he saw as unpatriotic and revolutionary groups. On May 4 another demonstration was called. The university officials tried to order the students to disperse but to no avail. The National Guard then proceeded to disperse the crowd of about two thousand people. The students began throwing rocks at the soldiers and taunting them. After the tear gas proved non-effective the Guards started to push the students from the gathering space and the demonstration started to disperse. Until this day it is not completely clear why some of the guardsmen started to shoot from their guns. Some of the shots were directed into the air but several found their target in the unarmed students. Four students were killed and additional nine were wounded. Tragic irony being that two of the killed students were not participating in the demonstration at all but only walking across the campus between classes. The students were stunned and were eager to answer the violence with their own attack. Fortunately one of the university officials stepped up and calmed the crowd before there were more fatalities (Newsweek, 'My god! They're killing us').

There were many journalists and news reporters who documented the demonstrations and the National Guard proceedings. Thereof there were many images and film material which displayed the horrors of the shooting. All newspapers across the USA and many abroad reported on the incident and the public was in uproar. Over 1,200 campuses across the country erupted in non-violent and also violent protests. More than 450 campuses with about four million students went into strikes and were closed (Farber and Bailey 50–51).

Some thirty Reserve Officers‟ Training Corps buildings were burnt down or bombed and the National Guard was called to 16 more university campuses to deal with the riots and the demonstrators. The tension and protests escalated five days after the shooting into a massive demonstration in Washington D.C. assembling more than 100,000 people who rallied, vandalized and in some cases violently engaged with the

18 police and the National Guard. The country‟s demonstrations no longer seemed as protests against unpopular government action but rather it gave an impression of a civil war where people where fighting with those who were sworn to protect them (Farber and Bailey 51).

On May 14, just ten days after the Kent State killings, another campus was under scrutiny. The Jackson State College campus, Mississippi, was a witness to killing of two students and injuring of twelve others by the police in very similar circumstances (King 686 – 687). Following the second shooting at a university campus and the reinvigorated wave of campus protests the President established the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest with the goal to investigate the justification of the shootings and the committee reached a verdict which decided that the killings were unjustified in their report (Morris 836). The several hundred pages long review of the campus unrest and the shootings stated:

“The actions of some students were violent and criminal and those of some others were dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible. The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable” (The President's Commission on Campus Unrest, and William W. Scranton 289).

President Nixon and his administration met with the leaders of the demonstrations after the shootings in Washington but their meeting ended unsatisfactory on both sides as both the government officials and the student leaders had opposite opinions on the shootings. After the shootings the Gallup poll announced that 58% of respondents answered that the students were to blame for the shootings. It was one of many indicators which showed that even though the anti-war movement was prominently displayed in the media and vociferous in regards to their demands it still was in minority when compared to opinions of the silent majority of the American citizens who believed in the rightness of the war (Kornbluth, May 4, 1970: National Guardsmen Kill Four Students At Kent State, „The Most Popular Murders Ever Committed in America‟).

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Those who believed strongly in the government‟s approach to the tension in the Southeast Asia assembled near the New York City Hall in a counter-rally on May 8, 1970, to protest against the anti-war movement and show their support to the government (Freeman 604). The counter-rally was organized by Peter J. Brennan, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. The majority of the several hundred government supporters consisted of construction workers. They angrily engaged with the students and stormed the City Hall. Around seventy people needed to be hospitalized after sustaining injuries from the workers. Because the workers used their hard hats as weapons this incident was later called the Hard Hat Riot. Few days later on May 20 the government supporters assembled again on Manhattan to show their support in the war policies and President Nixon in much greater crowd accumulating approximately 150,000 people. The crowd presented signs with slogans declaring their devotion to the country such as “America – love it or leave it!” carrying American flag or calling derogatory sentences directed at New York City Mayor John Lindsay. The mayor had criticised the police for inactivity during the first riot on May 8 and thus was labelled in turn as a “Red Mayor” or “Commy Rat” or “Traitor” by the angry crowd (Bigart, Thousands in City March to Assail Lindsay on War).

2.4. Illegal activities

2.4.1. Illegal activities by conscripted men and soldiers Drug consumption or a drug addiction of the soldiers was not a problem that was greatly discussed or focused on publicly during the war. The unpopularity of the war created enough trouble for the government and military commanders and the addition of addicts among the army personnel would hardly be commanded. It is nevertheless important to mention that the soldiers possessed the same weaknesses as the homebound protestors who were in length criticised and looked with contempt upon by the war supporters (Freeman 576).

The Vietnam regulations and drug prohibition were not nearly as strict as the laws in place in the USA. For some the narcotics represented the only reprieve from the nightmares of the everyday warfare life that could be found in the campaign. There is

20 no say that the soldiers‟ drug addictions started exclusively in Vietnam. Many soldiers, especially draftees, carried their drug use from home and it might have been strengthened thanks to the availability of the drugs in the country. “In Vietnam, however, marijuana, hashish, and opium were widely available, and thousands of American soldiers became addicted to heroin that was 90 percent to 98 percent pure, as compared to 2 percent to 10 percent purity in the United States. American military commanders estimated that in 1970, 65,000 GIs were using narcotics” (McWilliams 17).

However serious the problems with the narcotics may have been the main issues that plagued the army public image were intrinsically associated with the Selective Service System.

The Selective Service System or colloquially the draft was a way to supplement the voluntary military enlistment. It became one of the most controversial aspects of the Vietnam War. The military conscription in the Civil War, World War I and World War II helped established rules according to which the draft for the Vietnam War was conducted. The draft legislation passed in 1940 provided the basic outlines for the military conscription system and was still in place when the Johnson administration issued the command to deploy combat troops in 1965. According to the system the drafted had to reach at least eighteen years of age. The men conscripted were natural born citizens or legal immigrants. The men had to report to draft boards which conducted physical, mental and occupational tests which decided who was suitable for the service and who could have had deferment on a basis of education or job-related skills the nation would need (Samuels 20).

“By the end of 1965, there were 180,000 American troops in Vietnam, a figure that rose to 350,000 by the end of 1966 and to approximately 500,000 by the end of 1967” (McWilliams 7).

The system of the national lottery was inducted on December 7, 1969. The lottery should have presented more fair and just conditions according to which the men drafted would come from. They no longer came from specific social classes but from various social groups and the draft officers would not discriminate for ethnical or

21 economic reasons as it had been before. Every man born between the years 1944 and 1950 could have been conscripted. There were several conditions which prohibited significant number of men from the active duty. Among the main conditions was criminal record, health problems, having children or studying in higher education (Erikson and Stoker 221).

The year 1973 signified the end of the draft system completely and it was substituted by all-volunteer service. President Nixon saw the end of the draft as one of the approaches to undermine the war opposition. Nevertheless, it was not possible to end the draft immediately after his inauguration because of the opposition in the Senate. After much discussion in the Congress it was decided to seek a two-year extension of the draft, the law was expiring in February 1971, to June 1973 (Samuels 20).

Between August 1964, when Congress ratified the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to the withdrawal of the last U.S. forces from Vietnam in March 1973, 27,000,000 American men were of draft age. Of this number, 8,600,000 served in the military, and 2,150,000 of those were assigned to a tour of duty in Vietnam. Of all the eligible for military duty during the Vietnam War, only 32 percent served in the military, and only 8 percent of that number spent time in Vietnam. Most boomers were part of a silent majority who neither participated in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam nor fought in it (McWilliams 13).

“Most young men did not serve in Vietnam, but almost all faced the possibility” (Anderson 113). Thus the majority of illegal activities are closely linked with the drafted men who refused to follow the law and enter the basic training. Their reasons for refusal varied as only a portion of them were pacifists. The majority of the men did not agree with the official government stand and did not want to lose their lives in a war which did not affect them. As the war progressed and the media started to publish the horrific images of the war damaged Vietnam and the dying soldiers more men started to search for ways how to avoid the draft.

There were two set of methods the conscripted men used if they wanted to avoid the war. The legal avoidance consisted of several legal laws and measures in place that helped the men to stay home with their families (Foley 52). The draft evasions were

22 actions by the drafted men who did not reach their goal of avoidance by legal waiver or deferment for any reason and pursued the mitigating of their responsibilities by illegal means (Kindig, Vietnam War: Draft Resistance).

There were several ways how men could avoid being drafted. Among the most sought upon was the deferment on medical basis. Hepatitis, ulcers, diabetes or anaemia are common health issues, which are fairly treatable but were seen as reasons why the potential soldier would not succeed in training or combat. The military were looking for soldiers with a clean bill of health (Military.com, Medical Conditions That May Prevent You From Joining the Military). The drafted could undergo their medical examination and falsify their medical results by consuming illegal drugs or substances, which would make them appear generally unwell (Weiner and Stillman 149).

The man could be pardoned for attending the military service if he was a conscientious objector; in other words if he was a clergyman or a missionary or a member of several religious organizations known as Peace Churches which prohibit fighting such as Jehovah‟s Witnesses, the Amish or the Quakers. Some of the members still served during the war but only in a civilian capacity (SCN, Who is a Conscientious Objector?).

Both, men who were married or had children, were exempted from the service. Hundreds of men chose to quickly enter the holy matrimony in order to avoid the service. According to the draft law married men were not to be drafted into active service. Unfortunately for them President Johnson in accordance with the war demands changed the law to encompass the married man on August 26, 1965. Married men without children were moved to the end of the national lottery lists but nonetheless there was still a chance to be drafted (Orvedahl, Prime Time: Marrying to Avoid Draft).

The national draft also excluded men who were studying at colleges or universities. The census of college and university applications held the status of increasing tendency throughout the 1960s and the 1970s. Many of the young men perceived the college studies as a mean to evade the conscription but also to be a part of the anti-

23 war movement, which tried to fight against the conscription in the first place (Anderson 114).

One of the other less used options was to announce at the medical examination that the potential soldier was a homosexual. This would be seen today as a discriminative conduct but in the 1960s and the 1970s it was acceptable to ask a person about their sexuality and refuse them entrance to the military service on its basis. If the man wanted to evade the deployment through this loophole and was afraid he will not be asked he would have worn women‟s clothing to guarantee questions (Scott, Draft- dodging in the US now socially acceptable).

All of the aforementioned methods of avoidance were not seen as illegal in a sense but were frequently taken advantage of by thousands of men. Today many politicians are criticised because they utilized one these methods and did not serve when the call came.

The most popular illegal method of the evasion of the draft was to flee north of the borders. Canada was quite welcoming to American draft evaders and thousands were living there till the end of the war. Canada was the most popular place to flee but other countries saw a number of illegal immigrants from the USA too (Zinn 484).

“By the end of 1972 more than 30,000 draft registers were living in Canada, an additional 10,000 had fled to Sweden, Mexico, and other countries, and 10,000 more were living under false identities in the United States. During the war half a million men committed draft violations, including an estimated quarter-million who never registered and another 110,000 who burned their draft cards in protests” (Norton 954 – 955).

After the war there was a great debate how to solve a question of draft evaders and army deserters many of which were still living abroad. The thousands of men living abroad were usually well-educated people missed and needed in many fields. On September 16, 1974, the new president Gerald Ford introduced a conditional amnesty program which promised amnesty to those young men who fulfilled the requirements needed for the pardon. The President Proclamation 4313 also known as the program for the Return of Vietnam Era Draft Evaders and Military Deserters established a

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Clemency Board to review the records and offer recommendations for receiving a Presidential Pardon and a change in Military discharge status. The draft evaders could reach the pardon if they registered before January 31, 1975, to a United States Attorney, pledged their allegiance to the United States and served alternate service under the auspices of the Director of Selective Service in a period of twenty four months if not mitigated in special circumstances by the Attorney General (Proclamation No. 4313).

However, it was not until the inauguration of the 39th president of the USA, Jimmy Carter, that the draft dodgers were given full pardon. On his first day in the office January 20, 1977, President Carter fulfilled his campaign promise and issued an executive order declaring unconditional amnesty for Vietnam War-era draft evaders (Exec. Order No. 11967). However, some of them stayed and those living in Canada became Canadian citizens.

Some of the conscripted men created groups which falsified the Reserve Components of the United States Armed forces identification documents which categorized those men who possessed them as already enlisted and thus exempt from the draft. These practises were highly illegal and men who were caught in the act were sentenced to prison sentences (Scott, Draft-dodging in the US now socially acceptable).

It cannot be omitted to address the deserters as a frequent part of any war. The Vietnam War bears not a very flattering distinction of being one of the most unpopular wars in the world‟s history in a relation to the enlistment of the soldiers. The high number of the soldiers once patriotically fighting in the jungles of Vietnam later pursued a safe haven in Canada. The country so near their home and in many ways similar to their homeland had appeared as an unknown and strange to the American people despite of the long intertwined history, cultural similarities or the same language. Nevertheless, it was the closest safe place outside of the homeland for the would-be soldiers and deserters (Valiente, Vietnam War draft dodgers left mark in Canada).

The US government demanded that the deserters were stopped on entering the borders of the country and the Canadians officials agreed on the common approach.

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Thus any deserter who had qualified for the status and was apprehended by the Canadian authorities was returned to the USA. Nevertheless, thousands of servicemen, despite the possible return to their homeland and waiting punishment, left their posts and sought asylum in Canada and other countries during the longest American war (Zinn 484).

As was the case with the draft evaders both President Ford issued policies according to which the deserters could return to their home country. The deserters were to comply with the same conditions as the draft evaders after the President Ford Proclamation albeit they were more restricted by other laws still applicable on their individual situations. Their status if compliant with all of the conditions changed from a deserter by reason of unauthorized absence to an undesirable discharge with no entitlement to benefits administered by the Veterans Administration (Proclamation No. 4313).

However, the Proclamation of unconditional pardon by President Carter did not incorporate the same pardon for the military deserters. To this day the US policy states that the desertion is to be punished as a court-martial see fit. In other words if the deserted soldiers entered the US soil and were apprehended by officials they would stand a trial even today (10 U.S. Code § 885 - Art. 85. Desertion).

This was evidenced by cases of detained deserters Richard Allen Shields or Allen Abney in 2000 and 2006 respectively. Both men were former Vietnam War deserters living in Canada since the war. Peninsula Clarion states that R. A. Shields deserted his post in Alaska in 1972 and became the Canadian citizen in 1978. He was working as a truck driver and during routine crossing of the border he was arrested because of the old arrest warrant by the U.S. Customs Service agents. After two weeks of incarceration he was released with the ”other than honourable discharge” and returned back to Canada and his family (Jewell, Man Who Deserted in 1968 Is Arrested).

According to the L.A. Times article, Abney was arrested after crossing the U.S. borders to attend a social gathering in Reno. His daughter stated that her father regularly travelled to his former homeland but during a routine computer check

26 showed a valid arrest warrant for the man and he was taken into custody (Perry et al., Man Who Deserted in 1968 Is Arrested). A week later Canadian news station CBC reported that Abney, who was a Canadian citizen since 1977, was generally discharged by the U.S. army and sent home (CBCnews, U.S. deserter back at home in B.C.).

Desertion or draft evasions were the extreme forms of the anti-war thinking. Many men before that started to consider the draft evasion proclaimed their opinion upon the war in a form of demonstrative burning of the draft card. Usually they burnt it in public place where they could ignite a discussion. Even though the men responsible for burning their cards tried to argue it was a form of a free speech, a constitutional right guaranteed by the First Amendment, the court decided it was against the law, which had prohibited destroying or damaging of the draft card. The burning of the draft card became one of the distinctive features of the anti-war program. It became a powerful symbol of the anti-war movement featured in hundreds of newspaper articles, television news reports, films and documentaries. It is arguable that the image of the burning draft card was to the anti-war movement the same as the peace sign for the Hippie movement (Zinn 476).

2.4.2. Illegal activities by civilians As the main force behind the anti-war movement was the university students the most illegal activities committed in this era were closely connected to them. At the beginning of the protests the students were trying to stay within the legal actions. Even though they wanted to express their opinions all of them wanted to find a good job and live uncomplicated life one day and this is not usually compatible with a criminal record. That gradually changed with the progression of the war and the seriousness of the movement‟s leaders to see their cause to reach the absolute goal (Samuels 795).

One of the most common illegal acts was the consumption of illegal substances. The drugs of various kinds are frequently associated with the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s and the subculture of the Hippies. It would be remiss to insist that both groups, the Hippies and the students, did not participate in recreational drug usage and in fact

27 the former advertised the drug consumption as an instrument to explore altered states of consciousness (Wiltz 756). The majority of users preferred drugs such as marijuana, LSD, peyote and psilocybin mushrooms and looked with disdain at dangerous and harmful drugs like heroin or cocaine. Especially LSD was promoted by educated people such as Harvard university professors Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary who claimed that the drug had had vast application in psychiatry (Davidson 856). The common stereotype concerning the Hippies, the counterculture and 1960s dictates that all people associated with these movements were drug addicts who did not know what they were saying or doing. This was mainly propaganda and the influence of media who wanted to exploit the weaker points in both movements and scare away potential new members (Norton 954).

According to the Gallup poll administered in 1969 only 4% of American adults had any experience with marihuana but 43% of adults believed that many of the high school aged teenagers were using marihuana (Robison, Decades of Drug Use: Data From the „60s and „70s).

Trespassing was one of the most common misdemeanours committed by the protestors. Whereupon they tried to act in accordance of the free speech right and the right for assembly they still sometimes assembled in places they were not permitted to enter as was the case with the trespassing during the 1967 protest march on Washington D.C. or the occupation of administrative buildings on the Columbia university campus by the SDS leaders who objected to the school‟s involvement in defense research in April 1968 (Gitlin 306).

The new president elected in 1969, Richard Nixon, claimed in his pre-election promises that when elected he will end the war swiftly and the American soldiers would come home after the peace would be signed with dignity. However it was more than obvious after the Tet offensive that the end of the war was nowhere near close (Samuels 796 – 797). When some of the members of the anti-war movement were faced with this frustration because of the non-resolution of the war by the late 1960s they felt that it is not enough to just loudly albeit peacefully ask for peace and the end of the war. Thus some of the members of the New Left student radical groups started to use more aggressive methods to reach their goals. They became more

28 confrontational and on occasion openly violent during their protests against the war (Norton 962). These groups started to advocate a revolutionary ways and commended the Communist regimes in countries such as Cuba, China and North Korea. The most extreme began openly support the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese (Gitlin 188).

The most well-known group of this kind was named the Weather Underground Organization or colloquially the Weathermen. It was established sometime in 1969 when some of the members began to be dissatisfied with the efforts of the New Left organisation Students for a Democratic Society and created their own group. They identified with the ideals of the revolutionary Communists and hoped for a war against the government. Their actions escalated around the end of the decade. On October 8, 1969, was called a beginning of a program called a National Action. Through this event the Weathermen aimed to state their resolve to engage the United States government in a war on the American soil. In reality this pre-planned event consisted of fighting with police, property damage such as breaking windows, destroying cars, vandalizing homes and painting anti-government slogans on walls. Collectively those three days were written in history books as “The Days of Rage.” Dozens of people were injured on both sides of the conflict and more than two hundred of the violent demonstrators were arrested. The group encouraged by what they saw as a necessary success increased their efforts. The next step in their program represented bomb attacks. This undoubtedly violent course of action was not halted even in a face of deaths of three of their own collaborators. On March 6, 1970, a home-made antipersonnel bomb detonated in a townhouse in Greenwich Village killing three of its five occupants and reducing the house into a ruin. All of the bombings were aimed as a form of a protest thus they were not meant to kill people but to damage properties which the Weathermen felt helped their opposition. Most of their targets were government buildings and the group was not shy to attack such secure buildings as United States Capitol in 1971, Pentagon in 1972, or United States Department of State in 1975. Though much property damage was caused, these attacks were always preceded by warnings and evacuations were called so nobody died in any of the attacks. The warnings were also accompanied by the reasons behind the attacks. Usually they were explained by negative actions directly

29 or indirectly influenced by the USA. The group was active even after the end of the war and reacted to news associated with the area where the war had been fought. The leaders of the group, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, were objects of a manhunt but the charges against Ayers were dropped on the basis that the collected evidence by the FBI was gathered illegally. Dohrn was fined and was on probation for three years. In its own time the group was widely regarded as a domestic terrorist group and admitted to being responsible for two dozen bombings between their separation from the SDS 1969 and their disbandment in 1977 (Varon 174).

The actions of the Weathermen were not the only violent events during the war years on the American soil. Close to the first anniversary of the Kent State shootings was organized another series of protests in Washington D.C. Many of the protestors could no longer see how the end of the war could be reached by non-violent means and the demonstrations in the capital city were planned to encompass some semi-violent actions. The city and government officials prepared for the demonstrations by calling on additional units of the police, the National Guard and other federal officers. The preparation for the demonstration began on May 1, 1971, with arrival of the protestors to the city. The main event was to be held on May 2 but the city cancelled the permission to hold the demonstration. The many angry protestors left the city and those who stayed convened to take revenge on the government. The plan was to combine massive traffic disruptions with marches on the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Capitol over three days. The answer of the government was swift and organized. More than 12,000 people were arrested but not all of them were protestors. As the city was not prepared to hold that many prisoners those arrested were ushered to stadiums and halls without much beforehand preparation from the government troops. Except a few dozen people who were convinced of wrongdoing the rest of the arrested were released without charges being filled. The mass arrest was highly criticised and the US Congress later resolved that it was a violation of the constitutional right of the free assembly. It was one more instance which draw very unflattering public image for the government forces (Leen, Washington Comes of Age; When Worlds Collided Series).

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One of the most serious crimes committed against the one‟s country is treason. Daniel Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy, espionage and theft of government property when he decided to release what we now call the Pentagon Papers, series of reports cataloguing the actual progress of the war. Ellsberg was a government employee and the assembling of these reports for the highest government officials was his main task. However, upon a change of attitude towards the war in a face of the actual war horrors, he gave copies of the files to several Congressmen and also to The New York Times as a form of a protest against the war. Both the Congress and the public was scandalized that it was not fully informed of the scale of military actions of the U.S. troops. Ellsberg was tried but his charges were dropped in the light of the Watergate investigation (Zinn 478 – 479).

2.5. Veterans

2.5.1. Vietnam Veterans Against the War

The students were in the majority among the protesting crowds for duration of the war but as the war progressed the public got used to the pictures of young people with long hair and colourful clothes with anti-war signs. A picture of a grown man in a wheel chair with a medal on his chest holding a sign with anti-war slogans was sure to obtain a different reaction. As the war continued and the end was nowhere near many of the veterans were embittered and frustrated with a war they could not see a point in leading. Thus several anti-war veteran organizations were founded (Davidson 875).

The most prominent of the veteran organizations was Vietnam Veterans Against the War organisation. It was founded in April 1967 after an anti-war march in New York City when several veterans joined the protesting crowd. The main program of the organization, next to the demands of peace, was to help the soldiers who returned from Vietnam to acclimate back to the civilian life, assisting the victims of chemical agent attacks and advocating amnesty for the draft evaders and avoiders (Vietnam Veterans Against the War).

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Hunt states that the organization‟s main goals resided in supporting or arranging many anti-war events such as Operation RAW in September 1971 to approximate the attacks the soldiers commonly performed in Vietnam in many American cities (54). They tried to investigate and prove that war crimes were committed by the US army in the Southeast Asia in what they called the Winter Soldier investigation (55). To help promote their cause and organization they occupied several well-known buildings for some time, the most famous symbolically being the Statue of Liberty. They occupied the famous American monument for three days (NPS, Liberty Island Chronology).

The most memorable and highly publicised event took place on April 23, 1971, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, Washington D.C. Several hundred former soldiers threw their medals, ribbons, commendations on the steps as a symbolic gesture to express their guilt and disenchantment with the war. This memorable episode in anti- war protests shocked many American citizens as it was documented in vivid detail by the news reporters and the omnipresent cameras (Hunt 116).

2.5.2. America’s fighting men The immense problem of the military forces during the Vietnam campaign was the morale of the fighting soldiers many of which were not willingly participating in the combat. The war was not popular to begin with and its continuous decrease in popularity could be observed every month. Many new soldiers brought a word of tension and unrest in home to the front and the anxiety seethed. Gitlin in his book cites an article from the Armed Forces Journal written by a former marine colonel in 1971 and further demonstrates the inner problems of the U.S. military forces, “the moral, discipline and battle-worthiness of the U.S. armed forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States” (418).

The soldiers fighting in the jungles of Vietnam were becoming increasingly frustrated with the war which had no tendency to end and with many who saw themselves as villains killing innocent people instead of heroes defending innocents. Many soldiers believed that risking one‟s life for a righteous cause or a noble ideal

32 while protecting lives is far preferable to maintaining a goal to reach peace with imaginary dignity. The result was that many soldiers while serving overseas and encountering the realities of the everyday warfare changed their attitudes and grow embittered with their duty (Farber and Bailey 52).

In numerous scenarios the soldiers deserted while on leave or refused to fight. The commanding officers were hated, disrespected and in extreme cases the soldiers hurt or killed their training or commanding officers to avoid the combat orders. The exact number of killed officers by their own soldiers is impossible to state accurately but it was estimated that the number of the attacks which resulted in killing or wounding a senior officer reaches several hundred attacks (Doyle, Hardy and Lipsman 36).

By 1972 several hundred of magazines or newspapers written by the former soldiers were published and distributed. One of the most widely circulated was published by the initiative of the prominent veteran anti-war organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, under a name 1st Casualty in 1971, then renamed Winter Soldier in 1973 (Vietnam Veterans Against the War, The Veteran).

The soldiers who enlisted voluntarily or chose a career in the army were dismayed with the reactions they encountered after their return home. The anti-war oriented citizens showed disdain or contempt for the people who everyday risked their lives in an enemy territory. For a while being a soldier, a police officer or a member of other government force ceased to be an honourable and prestigious profession in eyes of many young people. Derogative terms were created to describe those who helped the establishment, the most repeated one being “the pigs” (McWilliams 60).

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3. Reactions and attitudes in 1960s A change in an attitude is a very individual process and cannot be applied universally on a whole nation. However in the next chapters, this thesis will attempt to describe the gradual evolution of the attitudes, opinions, stands and overall portrayal of the anti-war movement during the last five decades. As some characteristics of the evolution are more typical for certain groups of people those changes will be described in three main categories. The largest group which have gone through the evolution are the civilian citizens of the USA. Each of them touched in some way by the war or the protests. It is this group which ultimately was fought over by the two other groups, the media and the government, sometime in collaboration with each other, sometimes in a direct opposition to win the approval of the public.

3.1. Attitudes of civilians When the prominent research-based consulting company, Gallup, conducted a public opinion poll about a desire to demonstrate in 1965 the results were not surprising nevertheless foretold the events that would later become the daily bread of the newspapers.

The researchers asked a question: “Have you ever felt the urge to organize or join a public demonstration about something?" and only 10 percent of the answers were positive. As to what cause they would be demonstrating for the most common answer was the civil rights. The next most common cause was the Vietnam War. The would-be demonstrators wanted to show their support to the government. In other words they would go out and demonstrate against the anti-war demonstrators (Gallup, Gallup Vault: The Urge to Demonstrate).

The majority of Americans disapproved of the anti-war protesters. Despite there being doubts that something was wrong with the American policy in Vietnam. “At the beginning of 1968 about 56 percent of Americans polled said they were “hawks” who believed that America should increase or maintain its involvement in Vietnam. Only 28 percent advocated troop withdrawal.” In spite of the increasing number of Americans who were tired by the longevity of the war, most citizens in mid-1968 still disapproved of the anti-war movement in all its forms. It did not matter if the protestors organized peaceful rallies or more aggressive events. The public felt that

34 protesting against the war was unpatriotic or in a fact traitorous. It was also inconsiderate towards the soldiers who were risking their lives in the combat. Farber and Bailey argue that the “Anti-war protests tested American conception of the nature, purpose, and limits of free speech and free assembly” (41 - 42).

Shortly after his arrest, when a newspaper interviewer's questions hinted that older communists might be orchestrating the student protest, one of the Free Speech movement leaders, Jack Weinberg, uttered what would be later shortened into a mantra for activist youth of the day: "We have a saying in the movement that we don't trust anyone over 30." (Ricci, From Berkeley, challenge to authority spreads)

3.2. Attitudes of media

3.2.1. Television The number of television sets constantly grew and, next to a car and a house, became a new necessity to own. The networks which operated in those days, CBS, NBC and ABC, each provided news programmes. The programmes, pioneers in news coverage, and their reporters were present at many important moments in history such as Martin Luther King‟s bus boycott in Alabama or the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas (History of American Journalism, The 1960s). For the first time viewers could watch events at the same time as they happened such as President‟s inauguration or Neil Armstrong‟s walk on the moon.

McWilliams further explains the nickname of the Vietnam War “living room war” in this fashion, “But the same audience also witnessed film replays of Kennedy‟s assassination, the arrests of 668 persons during the bloody confrontation between protesters and the Chicago police outside the democratic convention, Birmingham police dogs attacking civil rights protesters, and nightly footage of the „living room war‟ in Vietnam. Television coverage of the war in Southeast Asia, which was more extensive than any other subject, had a powerful impact on public opinion, though admittedly it is difficult to document precisely how television coverage alone affected attitudes in the 1960s when most Americans relied on newspapers rather than television as the principal source for news” (14).

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The newspaper was still regarded as the trustworthy source of information principally by the older generations who took pleasure in watching the enjoyable programming the networks offered but took it as not as respectable as the newspapers precisely because of the same reason. It was however indisputable that the images and live action reports were shocking and very difficult to deny. The newspaper editors could write about the heroism of the soldiers fighting in the jungles of Vietnam but the news segments slowly began to demonstrate that the reality is somewhat different. As McWilliams further indicates, “The camera captured the trepidation on the faces of defenceless Vietnamese civilians as they watched their homes being destroyed and the painful, terrified expressions of American GIs in combat” (15).

The reality of the warfare and the actual conditions of the soldiers and the civilians in Vietnam were put into a very upsetting light.

3.2.2. Newspapers The newspaper has signified one of the most important sources of information for public since the first publication of the very first newspaper issue. That is an undisputable fact. However during this chaotic historical period the television news coverage with news reported 24 hours of a day as we are able to acquire now was still a vision few years in the future. The newspaper was still regarded as the most respectable, dependable and popular news outlet.

Among the most respected newspapers published during that time was The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times or Chicago Tribune. The most popular news magazines have been for many decades Newsweek or Time. Some of the mentioned leaning left on the political spectre, some of them leaning right and several trying to maintain neutrality between the two rivalling sides.

There was also almost infinite number of underground counterculture newspapers and pamphlets that were distributed on a local level. The oldest and most regarded were members of a network known as The Underground Press Syndicate formed in 1966. The founding members were the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free

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Press, the Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and Fifth Estate. Other newspapers and magazines joined the network and within a few years it listed over two hundred papers in the United States, Canada and Europe. These papers concentrated their attention on political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing anti-war movement, the sexual revolution, gay liberation, or the drug culture (Weiner and Stillman 59-60).

Each article in a newspaper or a magazine tried to inform their readers of the events occurring either home or abroad. Nevertheless, the attitudes of the contributing authors were not always the same. Some were stressing different aspects of the news or omitting parts that would paint the event they were endorsing in a negative light. Most of the time the details the author did not mention were more revealing of the author‟s opinion than the ones he did. Todd Gitlin argues that, “the American media either repeated U.S. government claims or, when they were sceptical, failed to convey how the world looked to „the other side‟” (265).

The next paragraphs will attempt to analyse and compare articles reporting on important events that had direct connection to the anti-war movement and protests during the Vietnam War.

Congress grants power to the President

One of the most important newspaper articles during Vietnam War and the protests against the U.S. involvement was the New York Times contribution by E. W. Kenworthy informing of the Congress‟ decision to grant power to the President to use “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against United States forces and to prevent further aggression” (Congress Backs President on Southeast Asia Moves; Khanh Sets State of Siege).

The vote could have been seen as unanimous but even at the very starting point of the greater involvement of the U.S. military forces in Vietnam the opposition toward an official war declaration was present in the Congress. The House of Representatives voted in unity but among the senators were two men who did not believe that the U.S. military intervention was the right choice, going as far as to proclaim that a resolution based on the proposed President‟s privileges was

37 unconstitutional. Several other senators expressed some doubts about the magnitude of the privileges as it could have been seen that the Congress was agreeable to joining the war in South Vietnam. The phrasings of the senators‟ misgivings about the amendment were careful and expressed their support for the President if not support for the cause (Congress Backs President on Southeast Asia Moves; Khanh Sets State of Siege).

The overall message of the article is that of careful description of the events taking place in the Senate the previous day without any input of opinion from the author of the article. That lack of a presence of an opinion is in itself telling as the author chose to focus in the article on the misgivings and doubts of some senators and highlighted how the senators were reassured that the U.S. will not enter into an internal war of another nation. The phrases such as “general agreement”, “unity”, “did not reflect a unanimity”, “without giving an impression of disunity and non-support,” all reflect author‟s attempt to give an equal measure of reasonable doubt and a strong support at the same time (Congress Backs President on Southeast Asia Moves; Khanh Sets State of Siege).

The military newspaper Stars and Stripes informed its readers about the Congress decision regarding the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in very few words. The main focus was on the logistics to be expected of the military involvement. Nevertheless some information can be extracted upon the attitudes of the author who compiled the article. The author offers no doubt regarding the approval of the resolution. He names only one senator who had been against the proposition which illustrates how small chances opposition had in the opinion of the author (Stars and Stripes, "Fight- If-We-Must" Resolution Backed).

Berkeley sit-in

The first arrests at the Berkeley university campus were documented in an article written by Bob Robertson in the San Francisco Chronicle. The author offers detailed descriptions of the arrested and also their statements on why they were participating in the protest. The attitude of wonderment upon the involvement of the predominately unassuming, excellent students in this kind of an event is very easy to

38 read from the author‟s comments. His statement in the opening paragraphs further demonstrated his incredulity: “...the amazing students-rights demonstration...It can be objectively stated that the people who precipitated this Topsy-like conflict are not a bunch of crazy beatniks. Beatniks don‟t care. These people care very much” (Robertson, The Rebels Tell Why Whey Care).

An interesting perspective on the arrest at the Berkeley campus offers the Berkeley‟s own student newspaper. The author‟s commentary vocalized more the students‟ determination to continue in the protest programme than to describe the events happening at the campus. Other appealing fact for the student protestor was the mention of the active involvement of the faculty members and the graduate students. The author indirectly encourages the protest actions to continue and the students to not lessen their efforts in demonstrating (The Daily Californian, Police Arrest 800 Demonstrators; Faculty Support for FSM Protest).

John Roise tries not to ignite passions of the newspaper‟s student readers in his article about the mass arrest during the Berkeley‟s sit-in but attempts to convey facts which faithfully describe the events on the campus (Roise, Police Arrest 750 Student Protesters At Berkeley Sit-In).

The author decided to place the statement of the governor Edmund G. Brown in the very first paragraph of the article which offers a guarantee that it will be read and remembered by the readers. The statement of the governor gives an uncomplimentary impression of the governor‟s character which was undoubtedly the aim of the author (Roise, Police Arrest 750 Student Protesters At Berkeley Sit-In).

There are not used the words as “young”, “youth” or “youngsters” throughout the whole article as was a common practice in other articles written on similar topics in this era. However the choice of words, which the author used when describing the events, were quite similarly aimed. Such words as “dragged”, “jeers”, “siege”, ”demands” or “debris” were used to explain the events and its immediate consequences. They have strong negative connotation which should induce appropriate emotional reaction in the readers (Roise, Police Arrest 750 Student Protesters At Berkeley Sit-In).

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March on Washington D.C.

The New York Times has been renowned to be predominantly neutral when informing the public of important political matters. That was also the case when describing the biggest march that Washington D.C. had seen at the time of the publication of the article on November 15, 1969. The headline of the article stated “250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later” and the author, Joan Herbers, had even in the head title concentrated on the dominant characteristic of the rally. That it was nonviolent (Herbers, 250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later).

The author pointed to the impeccable organization of the forces that should have ensure that there will be no violent confrontations between the two opposite groups and no criminal actions towards or by the marching crowd. The forces were prepared for major violence but it was expected that the demonstration would not be aggressive in nature. Some minor injuries were caused by the tear gas and there were few arrests but overall the author emphasized that the demonstration was peaceful. That it was in opposition to the violent altercation between the militant protestors and the police the previous night (Herbers, 250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later.).

There were several notions which promoted the moderate nature of the protestors describing the slogans at one point as “humorous” and giving example of only one threatening motto (Herbers, 250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later).

As it the case of most articles it must present both negative and positive attributes of every event or story. The author several times stressed the predominant characteristic of the majority of the protestors. That to say they were young. It was not written with condescending connotation, nonetheless, it was stressed that there were only small groups of middle aged people and even less of the older people than middle age. The message carried from the article would be that the march was comprised by immature youth and not wise, experienced, older generation (Herbers, 250,000 War Protesters Stage Peaceful Rally In Washington; Militants Stir Clashes Later).

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Paul Cantor offers very interesting reflection on the anti-war efforts in 1969. Shortly after the marches in Washington D.C. and San Francisco, the author meditates on the next actions of the president after what the author saw as a definitive proof of public disapproval with the government‟s South Asian policy. Cantor states that: “It‟s Nixon‟s move. Is he going to order all United States troops home from Vietnam now, or is he going to ignore the demands of the November 15 anti-war demonstrators? If he ignores the demands he will be calling the movement‟s hand” (Cantor, Now that the march is over).

He continued in the article with philosophical reflections on the reasons, accountability and future of the anti-war movement. His thoughts are on the inevitably imminent end of the war but on the other hand on the pointlessness of their efforts. His uncertainty of the effectiveness of the movement‟s efforts explains in these words: “And the war goes on. And we pay our taxes. And we go to school and we go to work and we dance and we screw and we listen to news reports of people being killed and we get mad and wait for the next big march or the next big rally” (Cantor, Now that the march is ove).

The Woodstock Festival

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair is by some historians considered to be the biggest anti-war demonstration spanning three days, introducing dozens of performers and welcoming several hundred thousand people. There were months dedicated to the organization of the festival and negotiating with the would-be performers. The author of the article in New York Times describing exodus of the festival attendees, Barnard L. Collier, focused mainly on the unpleasant side of the assembly (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

A typical comment in any articles of that era concerning the anti-war demonstrations was to remark upon the age of the participants and the author did not forget to mention that the attendees were young, youngsters or kids (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

The core of the article is the description of the many ways in which the festival was dangerous and how risqué attending it was for the children. Any caring parent after

41 reading the article would never let his child anywhere near this type of gathering. Therefore it is not very surprising that the rates of runaway children exponentially grew in the late 1960s and the early 1970s (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

The very first paragraph usually informs the readers of the most important part of an article before it begins with progression of the story. According to this journalistic rule the most important message of the article was the “two deaths and 4,000 people treated for injuries, illness and adverse drug reactions over the festival's three-day period”. It would be erroneous to mark deaths of two young people as something not worth mentioning. However the author‟s main aim in this article was to paint the festival in menacing light and not to inform the public of two very unfortunate deaths (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

The effects of narcotics on the participants were described in detail and also their availability among the crowds. The tone that the author used in the sentence about the announcements of the festival organizators, that harmful and impure drugs were circulating, implied the exact opposite of the organizators‟ statement. There was also stressed that many young people needed to be taken to the hospital by a helicopter because of a drug overdose. On the other hand there were referenced births of two babies and several miscarriages. This was another point in the dangers threatening to the children of the readers (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

There were other remarks concerning the atypical behaviour of the members of the crowd. Because of the cold weather it was destroyed and burnt everything the fans had found. The fans were impervious to the weather and eventual outpour and stayed to listen to the performers despite the ever worsening conditions. The medical specialists in the attendance were concerned but the author states that it seemed as the fans were not contemplating the perils of influenza and other illnesses. Vandalism and improper behaviour could be seen everywhere according to the author. People were walking naked, sleeping outside together and everyone was smoking marihuana. The author used in the title a Christian reference, the exodus of millions of Israelites from Egypt to Canaan, and it could be understood from the description of the three day marathon of music and sinful behaviour as allusions to the Dante‟s second and third circle of Hell (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

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The startling change of topic comes in the account of the aforementioned exodus. The title would suggest that thanks to the number of the attendees of the festival there were significant problems in traffic and possible collapse of infrastructure. It is said that the traffic situation was challenging as there were tens of thousands of cars leaving after the fair but there were also accounts of the praises of the employees of the public transportation for the polite and behaved participants. One going as far as characterise the attendees as “beautiful people” (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

The Woodstock festival marked the highest point of the popularity of the Hippie movement and peaceful anti-war movement demonstrations. Therefore the article‟s critique, partiality towards the more restrained culture and emphasis on the negative image of the festival can be attributed to the effort to halt the spreading of the counterculture. As the history often shows people tend to remember only the positive recollections and forget the opposite (Collier, Tired Rock Fans Begin Exodus).

The first difference the reader notices while reading the article written by Joseph Modzelewski in New York Daily News is the use of the informal language and the high number of idioms and metaphors in the article. The author directed his contribution at a different spectrum of audience than the author of the New York Times article describing the same event (Modzelewski, Traffic Uptight at Hippiefest).

The author focuses his attention on the many inconveniences of the enormous festival be it problems with traffic jams, shortage of food and water or scarcely clad young people. There are mentions of participants in hospitals with minor injuries and “unfavorable drug experiences.” There is a short paragraph conceding that the smoking of marihuana and hashish were done publicly and without any kind of recourse. There are no mentions of dead attendees (Modzelewski, Traffic Uptight at Hippiefest).

There is no mention of the program, the performing artists, no message of the festival. Were it not for the phrases of the “hairy and hip crowd” or “ a group of shaggy males and bra-less females“ the author could have been describing any

43 musical festival in the world in any decade since. It seems that the author attempted to strip the festival of all its symbolism and focused only on the mundane and practical issues concerning the three day proclamation (Modzelewski, Traffic Uptight at Hippiefest).

3.3. Attitudes of government Lyndon B. Johnson may have done for the country extraordinary things such as his fight against poverty or his efforts towards racial equality but history will forever remember him as the President who started the longest American war. Many historians ascribe a part of his unpopularity in the later years of the presidency to his unconvincing appearances on a television screen. His credibility was seriously damaged with his speeches about peace when he ordered additional troops, reports about military success when the enemy‟s capacity to inflict damage remained unabated. Milton Viorst summarizes in his tome the president‟s attitude towards the anti-war movement during the first years of the war, “As for his countrymen who had doubts about the war, he dismissed them haughtily, calling them “nervous Nellies,” and he impugned the loyalty of the anti-war movement by contending that its protests encouraged the enemy and prolonged the fighting” (385).

President Nixon‟s opinions and statements before and after he was inaugurated into the office did not make him a popular figure among the counterculture members or the anti-war movement members. The movements‟ goals of ending the war may have been same as were the promises Nixon made during his presidential campaign but his opinion on the anti-war protestors was a completely different topic. According to Rex Weinner and Deanne Stillman it made him, “...one of Woodstock Nation‟s biggest villains during the sixties and early seventies, not only because of the war he waged in Vietnam, but because he seemed intent on waging war against counter- culture. He was epitome of the “uptight square” whose misunderstanding of youth was so prodigious that, in the early hours before a Washington protest rally, he visited some protestors who were camped in a park and astounded them by venturing to discourse about college football” (94).

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The statements against anti-war movement, which had the most effect on public in the late 1960s and early 1970s, came from the Vice President, Spiro Agnew. His frequent speeches against the anti-war activists and political opponents were often deeply critical and derogatory. He described the Vietnam Moratorium in 1969 as “a senseless demonstration by youth blinded by a spirit of national masochism and encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who call themselves intellectuals.” He criticised the disloyalty of the protesting youth and called the demonstration as ”a massive public outpouring of sentiment against the foreign policy of the President of the United States” (Chicago Tribune, Agnew Blasts Moratorium as 'Senseless').

Most historians speak about a generation gap between people born before the World War II and those born after. The perspectives and opinions of both groups were usually diametrically different from the older generation (Zinn 526). Both presidents during this era, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, had already started their presidency with an inevitable handicap of belonging to the adversary category on the simple basis of their age. It might have been their age that made them look at the protesting crowds and initiatives as spoiled children, addicts and overall nuisance. It was the decision of the Congress to grant additional powers to the President and it was its decision to send an increasing number of troops into Vietnam. The Congress has been traditionally comprised of middle-aged white males with short-cropped hair and wearing dark suits, symbolizing everything the movement stood against. It was no surprise that the negative notion was fully reciprocated by the members of the Congress. It would not be correct to uniformly call all the members of the Congress as supporters of the war and opponents and critics of the movement. However, the overwhelming majority of the congressmen in the 1960s were patriotic supporters of the President‟s policies in Southeast Asia and thus critics of the non-supporters (Weiner and Deanne 48).

The presidents Johnson and Nixon and their more trusted advisers needed to present united front in their conviction about the rightness of the war. However, there were many opponents in the both major parties and in several minor political parties. Among the most prominent politicians were senators J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of Idaho, Vance Hartke

45 of Indiana and finally presidential candidates Robert Kennedy of New York and Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. Senator Fulbright might have been the most prominent because of his status of the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his accusations that the president Johnson exceeded his constitutional authority. They took part in the anti-war rallies and openly spoke against the war. However, their number was small in comparison with the rest of the Senate (Wiltz 750).

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4. Reactions and attitudes in 1970s

4.1. Attitudes of civilians The public was still wary towards the movement but the demonstrations, sit-ins or commentaries by celebrities on the subject became something that was a part of everyday life. People were dressing in colourful clothes with long hair, rebelling in a face of an authority and discussing politics on daily basis. It was not a generation of young people that just want to have fun and be young, it was a generation who wanted to change the world and in their optimism they thought they could. In a sense they succeeded.

Several companies regularly carried opinion polls regarding the public opinion on the anti-war protestors. President Nixon commissioned the Opinion Research Corporation to determine the attitude of the Americans towards the anti-war protestors. The study found that 71% of the interviewees disapproved of the demonstrators and only 18% of the citizens approved of the anti-war movement efforts. The study confirmed the longstanding trend of the disapproval of the citizens towards war protestors and little tolerance for internal dissent. A surprising fact was ascertained during a poll managed by the Harris Poll company. It announced that 37% of Americans said that anti-war protests should be made illegal. As it has been always seen as an act of the free speech, it would be against constitution to prevent people from utilizing their constitutional rights (Herrnson and Weldon, Going Too Far: The American Public's Attitudes toward Protest Movements)

As the public was more used to the anti-war protest, the movement itself had calmed its fervour. The Time magazine commented the situation reminiscent of the quiet before a storm with the words, “Anti-war fever, which President Richard Nixon had skillfully reduced to a tolerable level last fall, surged upward again to a point unequaled since Lyndon Johnson was driven from the White House.” The storm in this situation being the Kent State shooting which inflamed the somehow fainting passions of the anti-war movement members and added throngs of new supporters to the cause (Time, At War with War).

The opinion of the faculty members was clearly stated after the shooting at the Kent State campus. It offered an additional perspective on the blame behind the tragedy

47 that claimed four innocent young lives. The government officials put the blame at the shoulders of the students who attacked the guardsmen with rocks and an alleged gun. The students claimed that the shooting was unprovoked and the guardsmen were murderers. The faculty members identified the people who called the National Guard in the town and the commanding officers as the real guilty party in this statement, "We hold the guardsmen, acting under orders and under severe psychological pressures, less responsible for the massacre than are Governor Rhodes and Adjutant General [Sylvester] Del Corso, whose inflammatory statements produced these pressures" (Newsweek, My god! They're killing us).

4.2. Attitudes of media

4.2.1. Television Television programming started to change slowly but the prevailing trends were difficult to transform. The most common among the television programmes were still comedies with not much social or political commentary like Bewitched or Beverly Hillbillies, or variety shows such as The Andy Griffith Show or The Lucy Show for the whole all-American family. However the networks made a few valiant efforts to encompass some resemblance of the turmoil of that day‟s nation into some of their programming. Foremost among them was NBC‟s Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. It offered a political and social commentary even in its name as it was derived from the numerous “–ins” popular during the war such as sit-ins, be-ins or later John Lennon‟s bed-in (McWilliams 20).

The predecessor of the long running Saturday Night Live, the format of the show was very similar in the format to its contemporary successor. The credo of the writers was to fit as many jokes as possible into the hour comedy show. In the article published after the death of one of the main characters in 2015 the author of the article explains the goal of the show in this fashion, “And in this it is contemporary. It‟s attuned to the times…This show is right for the times, darling, when an hour of laugh, laugh, laugh is a sorely needed thing. You watch the news and you‟re getting the body count in Vietnam, you‟re watching a helicopter crash, you‟re watching a Czechoslovakia, a France, a Biafra go to pot. People want to laugh much more now,

48 so you reach out and make them laugh, quick!” (Murphy, Remembering „Rowan & Martin‟s Laugh-In).

The prerogative of both shows, the SNL and the Laugh-In, was to make a social and political commentary on contemporary issues but in the case of the Laugh-In there was also not to radiate a wrath of the television censors. A writer of a show was restricted by that day‟s television policies and overall society rules which dictated what could be said or shown on a national network (Murphy, Remembering „Rowan & Martin‟s Laugh-In).

4.2.2. Newspapers As the anti-war camp grew larger even the newspaper media started to slowly print articles which were not completely in favour of the government policies. Samuels called it “the divide between government and the press.” The press thought that the government misled the nation about the goals, success and purpose of the Vietnam War. The negative stories that the press was publishing made them in the eyes of the military an enemy. The tension between the government and the journalists regarding misleading information and withholding information about the war grew into court charges and countercharges (398).

In May 1970, the New York Times reported from Washington: “1000 'ESTABLISHMENT' LAWYERS JOIN WAR PROTEST.” Corporations began to wonder whether the war was going to hurt their long- range business interests; the Wall Street Journal began criticizing the continuation of the war (Zinn 478). The New York Times sought at court to publish the Pentagon Papers. The media and the citizens started to lose trust in their government (Samuels 398).

Kent State Shooting

One of the most distressing moments during the anti-war protests and the 1970s can be dated to May 4, 1970, to Kent State University. The New York Times article reporting on the shooting offers the basic facts in the first paragraph. Four students were killed by the National Guard and eleven others were injured. Principal

49 information without any opinion or emotion from the author, John Kifner, was given on the matter (Kifner, 4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops).

The author of the article was among the journalists at the scene monitoring the protest. According to his statement the shooting of the Guardsmen was not provoked by a sniper as the officials were defending the actions of the shooters (Kifner, 4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops).

Then the author points that the guardsmen arrived armed and chased the main body of the demonstrator, implying that the military men were ready for an altercation and welcoming it. The author does not conceal the fact that the students were answering the guardsmen‟s attempt on dispersing the group with throwing stones or oral taunting. He notes how the students were struck with terror and shock as the soldiers started to shoot, not believing that they opened the fire. Then he describes the wounded girl just a few meters from him. Behind the author‟s words can be heard the incredulity of the events transpiring in front of his very eyes (Kifner, 4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops).

Generally the author did not attempt to promote the anti-war cause or to defend the actions of the soldiers but tried to convey the disbelief and shock of the student body and his. In direct opposition he offers in the opening paragraphs the official declaration of the president and the National Guard officials who were supporting the actions of the soldiers and nearly accusing the students of the wrongdoing (Kifner, 4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops).

The magazine Newsweek conducted a poll among the readership which asked if the actions of the guardsmen were correct or not. 56% of the interviewed agreed with the action and blamed the students for the deaths. Only 11% put the blame on the guardsmen (Newsweek, A Newsweek Poll: Mr. Nixon Holds Up).

The second, newer article published in the Newsweek magazine chose a different approach to the event that divided the USA. It did not only describe the events in chronological order or stated the actions leading to the tragedy but also commented on the consequences ensuing from the turbulent week. The author comments, “The bloody incident shocked and further divided a nation already driven by dissent over

50 the war in Indochina. More than that, the shots fired at Kent State were taken by some as a warning that the U.S. might be edging toward the brink of warfare of sorts on the home front” (Newsweek, My god! They're killing).

The author then continues to offer arguments from both sides of the imaginary palisade. Albeit the stronger emphasis is put on the refuting of the guardsmen‟s and guardsmen‟s commanders‟ claims that they had fired in self-defence (Newsweek, My god! They're killing).

President Nixon‟s reaction to the deaths of four young American citizens on American soil carries his negative opinion on the dissent and his support of the military forces, "This should remind us all once again that when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy. It is my hope that this tragic and unfortunate incident will strengthen the determination of all the nation's campuses, administrators, faculty and students alike to stand firmly for the right which exists in this country of peaceful dissent and just as strong against the resort to violence as a means of such expression" (Kifner, 4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops).

Mass arrests in Washington D.C.

The second paragraph of the article by Richard Halloran illustrates the delicate changes in the anti-war movement strategies and uses more fervent words to describe its more forceful actions. The slight difference between “asks” and “demands” clearly shows the shift that the movement had gone through at the beginning of the decade. No longer had the protestors relatively calmly asked for things but the passions of the most zealous supporters of the end of the war transformed pleas into demands for the immediate end of the war as if it was their right to be granted every wish by the government (Halloran, 7,000 Arrested in Capital War Protest; 150 Are Hurt as Clashes Disrupt Traffic).

The author commented that the once peaceful rallies and marches had escalated into many forms of civil disobedience and stresses the misfortune and the great sense of duty of the government employees who were harassed by the protestors (Halloran, 7,000 Arrested in Capital War Protest; 150 Are Hurt as Clashes Disrupt Traffic).

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In surprisingly light manner was commented the age of the protestors and those arrested. The authors of the newspaper articles from this era most commonly stress the youth of the protestors as to disregard their actions presumably fuelled by youthful indiscretion. It is arguable if the protestors during the long years of the war finally matured enough to be counted among the adults or if their actions were serious enough not to be dismissed as only rebellious or if the author did not want to shift focus from the protestors‟ crimes and appeal on the emotions of the reader. The only point in which the youth of the attendees is stressed is in the middle of the articles when the author informs the reader that among the attendees was also a group of young veterans (Halloran, 7,000 Arrested in Capital War Protest; 150 Are Hurt as Clashes Disrupt Traffic).

The author names all the government forces which were employed to protect the citizens of the city and to help disperse the hypothetical problematic groups. It is curious why he decided to incorporate into his article the Administration‟s direction for the troops to be “firm” with the demonstrators. It is possible that it could also be an evasive technique to shift the attention from the fact that the police forces arrested over 7000 people and held them in places which were not prepared in advance for such an overwhelming number of people. The statement by the Justice Department official, "We couldn't just keep those people indefinitely. We had to do something with them,” more than implies that there were no detailed plans of action before the mass arrest was executed (Halloran, 7,000 Arrested in Capital War Protest; 150 Are Hurt as Clashes Disrupt Traffic).

4.3. Attitudes of government The attitudes of the government were slightly more favourable towards the anti-war movement at the very beginning of the 1970s than were the predecessors in 1960s. As the war became more and more unpopular, people in or close to the government began to break out of the circle of assent (Zinn 478). The opinion polls conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation company for President Nixon at the beginning of the decade show that “found support for anti-war demonstrations in Washington ranging from 30% while the protests were in the planning stages to 18% during the

52 event, with between 64%-71% disapproving“ (Herrnson and Weldon, Going Too Far: The American Public's Attitudes toward Protest Movements). The movement and the government were agreeable on the topic of the necessary end of the war but the stand and the attitudes of the government officials were still very critical towards the movement. There was always slight disdain and condescension when speaking about the actions of the members of the movement and the sympathizers towards their cause.

In the overwhelming majority, the government‟s stand towards the movement was negative and it tried to disregard the protestors initially as inexperienced youngsters then as rebels, revolutionaries or Communists. Vice president Spiro Agnew offered his own description of the protestors, “Over privileged, under disciplined, irresponsible children of the well-to-do blasé permissivists” (NBCLearn, Remembering Kent State, 40 Years Later).

The president, the cabinet and the members of the Congress often offered opinions commenting the domestic conflicts. The 1970s represented a change in the strategy of the anti-war movement. The heralds of peace and love among people started to proclaim words, which requested peace at any cost.

On the eve of the tragedy which further divided the country and helped escalate the progression from the peaceful protesting into something far more violent which arguably at times resembled a civil war, the orchestrator of the events blamed by many, Ohio Governor James Rhodes, made a pledge to eradicate the problem when he attributed the violence at the Kent State campus to students, “(The protesting students) worse than the 'brownshirt' and the Communist element and also the night- riders in the vigilantes...the worst type of people that we harbor in America (Newsweek, My god! They're killing us).

After the tragedy at Kent State and Jackson State campuses the congressmen were more receptive to the anti-war movement. The president seemed to be in isolation with his mostly unpopular attitude towards the students. President Nixon was caught off camera with remark at the Pentagon by an NBC News microphone, “You know these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the

53 college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world.” His careless words angered the public, most importantly the family members of the killed students (NBCLearn, Remembering Kent State, 40 Years Later).

Despite his belated efforts to be more sympathetic to the cause. the public and the protestors saw his actions as “too little, too late.” The congressmen in opposition to the president saw this situation as an opportunity. The other group who utilized the opportunities which the unpopularity of the president had brought were the college and university presidents. Many of them now openly supported the movement and even helped them with preparations of the demonstrations and rallies (Time, At War with War).

The Time article further comments on the heated atmosphere among the student protestors as this, “On far more campuses, though, tens of thousands of moderate students brought a new seriousness coupled with a kind of wounded pride to the revived anti-war movement...And the almost awesome pervasiveness of the student uprising, with its new sense of outrage, imparted, for the moment, a truculent confidence” (Time, At War with War).

And it was the outrage which propelled the new wave of the protestors. The attention which the government officials now showed to the students revitalized the confidence of the protestors. The government could no longer dismiss the activists as hairy Hippies high on drugs when hundreds of students were now seen clean-shaven wearing suits and working in offices of many prominent public and government officials. “More than ever, there was a feeling among the dissidents that they formed a coherent bloc capable of exercising political muscle” (Time, At War with War).

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5. Reactions and attitudes in 1980s 5.1. Attitudes of civilians The Time magazine in collaboration with the research company Yankelovich, Skelly, White/Clancy Shulman conducted a series of opinion polls, which should have researched the view of the American people on the effect that the anti-war movement had had on the Vietnam War. The 1986 poll showed that 28% of the interviewees believed that the protests helped bring the war to the earlier end, less than half of this number, 12%, had the opposite opinion. The majority of the asked claimed that the anti-war movement‟s efforts over the years of the war had no effect on its longevity. These numbers are similar to the numbers gained during the same opinion poll in 1973. However, slight change can be ascertained. People who viewed the anti-war movement as a reason of the earlier end of the war grew in numbers and the group with the opposite attitude became smaller. (Herrnson and Weldon, Going Too Far: The American Public's Attitudes toward Protest Movements).

It is interesting that even few years later after the end of the war and the anti-war movement there came this admittedly slight change. Part of the reason might have originated from the fact that the war was ultimately unsuccessful. Many people saw the North Vietnamese 1975 invasion as a validation of the futility of the war.

5.2. Attitudes of media Since there were only few years separating the end of the war and the beginning of the new decade, the media did not commence with publishing the usual articles written at the occasions of important historic events from the war period. The newspapers in 1980s were writing about the issues of the era such as of Iran hostage crises, presidential elections or Summer Olympics in Moscow.

The article by Stephen Gillers published in the magazine The Nation in October 1984 offers neutral contribution describing the first Berkeley sit-in in 1964. The author explains the sit-in as “politically conscious student activism” which was a spontaneous reaction to the ban issued by the university authorities (Gillers, Berkeley Memories).

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The media coverage of the tenth anniversary of the Kent State shooting was not given as much attention as in the later decades. The events were still fresh in the memories of the witnesses. However, there was a commemoration march and rally of 10th anniversary since the tragedy (Remember Kent State).

The Vietnam War Memorial was a controversial monument since the inception of the idea. It was paid from private donations, sponsored by The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and built on a government property in Washington D.C. Less than a decade after the beginning of the unpopular war it was plagued by controversies over the design, dedication and objections from critics. The name of an article in The Economist presents the undecided opinion describing the opening ceremony of the memorial - “Vietnam Memorial; Monumental Doubts.” It further commented on the sculpture and what it represented, "Ambivalence and embarrassment have dogged the memorial from the beginning... Opinions about the Vietnam War are still so divided that it would be impossible to represent them in a single sculpture (The Economist, Vietnam Memorial; Monumental Doubts).

5.3. Attitudes of government Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State during Richard Nixon‟s presidency and then during Gerald Ford‟s presidency. For his part in the negotiations of the ceasefire and the withdrawal of the US troops from Vietnam, he was controversially awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize as was the North Vietnamese politician Lê Đức Thọ, who had ultimately declined it (Feldman 315). After the 1975 final resolution of the war Kissinger felt that he had not deserved the prize and tried to return it (Horne 195). His three memoirs offer interesting views on the events that shaped the second part of the 20th century (Kissinger, Biography).

His first memoir published at the very end of the 1970s can be easily sorted into the next decade because it was written with a distance far greater than the few years it actually had been since the end of the war (Kissinger, Books). He recalled the days when the country had looked as if there were lead two wars, not only the one overseas but also a second war at home, "When on May 4, four students at Kent State University were killed by rifle-fire from National Guardsmen dispatched by Ohio

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Governor James Rhodes, to keep order during several days of violence, there was a shock wave that brought the nation and its leadership close to the point of physical exhaustion...The momentum of student strikes and protests accelerated immediately. Washington took on a character of a beseiged city” (Kissinger, Ending the Vietnam War, 168).

He commented on the strength of the public disagreement immediately after the Kent State and Jackson State shootings, “A pinnacle of mass public protest was reached... Police surrounded the White House; a ring of buses was used to shield the grounds of the President's home...The tidal wave of media and student criticism powerfully affected the Congress” (169).

His unique view as a high-level member of the government offers rare insight into the inner workings of the government during the stressful and chaotic days, “The very fabric of government was falling apart. The executive branch was shell- shocked. After all, their children and their friends' children took part in the demonstrations...The President saw himself as the firm rock in this rushing stream, but the turmoil had its effect on him as well. Pretending indifference, he was deeply wounded...Nixon reached a point of exhaustion that caused his advisors deep concern” (170).

His words would suggest that the president was under much more pressure by the anti-war movement than it had seemed during the public functions. Kissinger‟s words would suggest that he was more sympathetic towards the anti-war movement than it was believed during the war. Moreover, he almost apologises for the government actions after the tragedy.

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6. Reactions and attitudes in 1990s 6.1. Attitudes of civilians Gallup has not repeated the opinion poll administered in 1968 when they asked, “Have you ever felt the urge to organize or join a public demonstration about something?" However, the company asked in 1990: "Looking back, do you wish that you had made a stronger effort to protest or demonstrate against the Vietnam War, or not?" Twenty-five percent wished they had (Gallup, Gallup Vault: The Urge to Demonstrate).

This number can be interpreted in several ways. The interviewees who answered negatively could either have thought they had done everything they could to halt the war or they could have not wished to participate in the anti-war efforts at all. Nevertheless, a quarter is very high number if we think about how a small number of the people actively protesting the war actually was. The media portrayal gave the impression that the anti-war movement had superiority over the public opinion but in reality, the silent majority of citizens who openly did not support the end of the war was the majority in the pro-war camp (Gallup, Gallup Vault: The Urge to Demonstrate).

Similar opinion polls conducted in the 1990 found public evenly split in their opinion about the anti-war protestors. Both categories, groups of people who viewed the protestors favourably or those who had the opposite attitude, had accumulated the same percentage of 39%. This shows a significant change in the attitudes of people. The research offers two theories why the change had occurred. Firstly, they speculate that the disappointing end of the war helped some people to view the protests as correct in retrospect. Secondly, the once menacing students no longer looked as dangerously as they had used to. Both or neither of these reasons can be true. However, it is obvious that a typical human reaction occurred during the decades. The distance of time makes people remember majority of events in more positive light than when originally experiencing it (Herrnson and Weldon, Going Too Far: The American Public's Attitudes toward Protest Movements).

The opening words of Michelle Locke‟s article in The Buffalo News describe the overall sentiments of the sympathizers of the counter culture movement on the time

58 that had passed since the first sit-in instigated in 1964 and de facto beginning of the counter culture, “It's hard to remember there was a time when the free-spirited University of California at Berkeley banned political activity on campus. It's easy to forget that, before student protests of the '60s and '70s culminated in sometimes violent denunciations of the Vietnam War, young people in dresses and ties staged a sit-in, got arrested and made a powerful institution change its mind. Thirty years ago, the Free Speech Movement became a catalyst for a decade of political upheaval on America's college campuses.” Her contribution remembers with positive melancholy the events of the 1960s and the Free Speech and anti-war movements” (Locke, 30 years ago, sit-in launched campus turmoil Free Speech Movement veterans to mark anniversary at Berkeley).

6.2. Attitudes of media The opinion, which Kip Dellinger presents in his statement in Los Angeles Times, is fundamentally different from articles, which melancholically remember the war years as a point of freedom and free speech in the American history. His statement is a reaction to an article by Louise Yarnell and highly criticizes her romanticized vision of the 1960s. He asserted that the taunts “Commie” or “Red” where reserved for those who deserved them and points to an alleged hypocrisy of that day university campuses which proclaimed Free Speech movement ideals but in a spirit of political correctness were even more restricted. His words about conservatives further demonstrate his negative attitude towards the protests, “These are the same folks, mind you, who accuse conservatives of living in the past while they celebrate what looks increasingly like lifetimes of adolescent self-indulgence misrepresented as "protest" and "activism" (Dellinger, Activism: Remembering Berkeley's Free Speech Movement).

Michelle Locke viewed the events at the Berkeley campus in 1964 from the opposite perspective as Kip Dellinger. She describes the movement as “victorious” and “free- spirited”. The attitudes of the interviewees differ in the level of support for the past cause. Some maintain carefully nostalgic stand, some slightly critical such as an opinion of the first faculty member to support the movement John Searle, "The

59 saddest thing was that it gave a whole lot of people a model of political life which is totally unrealistic. They wanted to keep sitting in buildings and then finding that policies change." But there were also those who saw the movement as “one of the shining moments of the history of the '60s“ (Locke, Free Speech Movement, the Spark for a Decade of Upheaval, Turns 30: Universities: Berkeley event was a harbinger for such issues as environmentalism and affirmative action).

The prevailing theme of the UPI article on the 20th anniversary of the shooting at the Kent State University campus is of anger. The article offers statements of the wounded by the guardsmen Jim Russell and Alan Canfora. They complained that insufficient steps were taken to commemorate the ones killed and were angered by the perception the public had towards the tragedy. They accused the government of a cover-up and denying of the tragedy, going as far as calling the guardsmen murderers. The author offers a perspective of the protestors and does not counteract the statements with any opposite arguments. This on its own states the stand of the author and the message he wanted to convey to the public (Exner, Anger remains 20 years after Kent State shootings).

The New York Times article commenting the same event chooses more neutral stance albeit remarks have been made on the atmosphere of anger among the ones assembled at the commemorating ceremony. The author of the article describes the sombre dedication thus, “There were candles held in a cold spring rain, bitter memories recalled, an apology from the Governor of Ohio and a small, silent protest by students and others who said the monument was too little and too late” (New York Times, Kent State: In Memory of 4 Slain, 1970).

6.3. Attitudes of government The stance of the government official could not be more in direct opposition to his predecessors as it was at the ceremony dedicated to a new monument unveiling on the 20th anniversary of the Kent State shooting on May 4, 1990. Governor Richard F. Celeste delivered a more direct apology than any of the previous governors had offered. ''Speaking your mind, casting a stone or hurling an obscene comment - none

60 of these deserve death,'' he said, ''To all those who were wounded and all who have suffered, I am sorry'' (New York Times, “Kent State: In Memory of 4 Slain, 1970").

Robert McNamara, a former Secretary of Defense serving under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was widely believed to be one of the earliest opponents to the President Johnson‟s Vietnam policies even though he was considered to be one of the orchestrators of the policies (Berkin and Wood 735).

Robert McNamara spoke in a C-SPAN interview about his new biography, which he had co-written with historian Brian VanDeMark. The main points covered during the interview were Cuban missile crises and the Vietnam War. On the account of the protestors, he claimed that he has had a great sympathy for the protestors on the account that his wife and children shared many of the views of the protestors against the war. He spoke about the man who set himself on fire under the windows of his office in protest of the US involvement in Vietnam in 1965. He commended the widow of the man and praised her statement about the need of forgiveness and its healing power. “And with that understanding, I hope she, and all of our citizens and certainly our leaders, will behave in ways and act in ways that'll prevent a similar tragedy in the future“(McNamara).

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7. Reactions and attitudes in 21st century 7.1. Attitudes of civilians How many years have to pass until events stop being events but become history? It is impossible to say the exact number of years or decades. However, the average age of the protestors in 1970 was 20 years old, which would mean that they were more than fifty years old at the beginning of the 21st century. Thus they were the same age as the people against whom they had protested decades earlier.

Tom Engelhardt was active in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. He reminisced the period and the protestors as idealists and believers. “Those young people were convinced that, if you spoke up loudly enough and in large enough numbers, presidents would listen. They also believed that you, as an American, had an obligation to step forward, to represent the best in your country, to serve” (Engelhardt, Where did the Antiwar movement go?).

The somewhat improved status of the counter-culture and the anti-war movement over the years can be discerned from an interview of CNN correspondent and several students attending the University of California, Berkeley. The author of the article, Meriah Doty, notes that protests are still staged in front of the campus' administration building Sproul Hall to this day - the very place where Free Speech Movement student leader Mario Savio stood on a police car in December of 1964 and gave a famous speech before leading a sit-in inside the building. One of the students she interviewed gave this reason why he chose Berkeley as a place to study, "The Free Speech Movement and everything that happened here in the '60s was a big reason I wanted to come out here... I wanted to come out to Berkeley because it has this huge reputation for forward thinking" (Doty, Examining Berkeley‟s Liberal Legacy).

Jack Weinberg was arrested during the well-documented event that caused the first sit-in at the Berkeley campus. In the 2004 Los Angeles Times article he comments the events forty years prior and contemplates the effects the movement has had on the development of the US society. His reflection of his 30-hour incarceration in a police car clearly shows the non-violent atmosphere of the protest, “This was not a hostile scene, in any way. This was different from the later time when hostility to police was a theme of activism“ (Ricci, From Berkeley, challenge to authority spreads).

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The overall view on the protest event during the Vietnam War era at the campus are now remembered as a historic event which helped establish free speech rights at the university campuses and in the country itself. It celebrates the events as one of the landmarks, which helped establish liberality and democracy across the nation (Doty, Examining Berkeley‟s Liberal Legacy).

The military magazine Stars and Stripes published an article commemorating the beginning of the Free Speech movement in 2015. Part of the article was also a short interview with one the former leaders of the Student for a Democratic Society movement, Tom Hayden. He said about the movement, “Aside from the abolitionist movement, this was the most many-sided, disruptive, destabilizing movement in American history. It changed everything. It echoes today in countless ways. It‟s lessons learned, and lessons that are lost” (Montgomery, Budding anti-war movement 'changed everything')

A Gallup company presented another interesting statistics in November, 2000. The poll conducted found that nearly seven out of 10 Americans (69%) believe that sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. “This level of opposition is slightly lower than that recorded in a 1990 Gallup poll on the 15th anniversary of the end of the war, when 74% considered it a mistake. However, it is consistent with other Gallup polls on the subject conducted in the past 15 years”(Gallup, Americans Look Back at Vietnam War).

7.2. Attitudes of media The Newsweek magazine opened the remembrance article on the 40th anniversary of the Kent State shooting with these words: “The horrific massacre is regarded as a historic moment of public unrest during the Vietnam War” (Newsweek, My god! They're killing us).

The 40th anniversary of the Kent State shooting was an occasion commented on by almost every major newspaper, television or internet news platform in the country. Shortly before the anniversary memorial, the site of the shooting was pronounced as a historic site and thus important for the history of the United States citizens. The

63 article published at the CBSNews site was written without emotions just as a simple description of events without an offer of an opinion by the author. From the detached attitude of the writer it is possible to ascertain his lack of interest in the topic. The article offers two short quotes by one of the attendees of the memorial who was also one of the wounded during the shooting. The selected quotes present the only emotion in the otherwise succinct text (CBSNews, Kent State Marks 40th Anniversary of Shootings).

The author of the CNN article provides a unique perspective as Kent State alumni and a member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at that time. The author felt that the vehement actions of Governor Rhodes were principally influenced by the proximity of the next election and that the suppression of “the destructive protests was seen by many as the politically expedient thing to do“ (CNN, Remembering Kent State, 40 years later).

He writes about the effects that the event had had on the public, “it amazed me that the events unfolding at this small university could affect people‟s opinion of their country and their government” (CNN, Remembering Kent State, 40 years later).

7.3. Attitudes of government The most spoken about issues associated with the 21st century politicians and the anti-war movement is in relation to the deferments during the war. Every hopeful politician is asked about his role during the Vietnam War and those, who were the appropriate age for being drafted and were not, are put under a media scrutiny and a public critique. The prevailing opinion on the issue of politician‟s involvement in the war is firmly given. Those politicians who served in the war are praised, those who received deferment on education basis are excused and those whose deferments were in some way tampered with are indicted of wrongful doing.

From the four presidents and four vice presidents serving in the 21st century six were age eligible to serve in the war. Only two of the group enlisted in the war. President George W. Bush chose to join the National Guard and qualified as a pilot (Lardner Jr., Romano, At Height of Vietnam, Bush Picks Guard). The fact that he chose to

64 join the National Guard and was almost guaranteed not the join the combat in Vietnam was criticised during his presidential campaign. The same critique from media and public was oriented on Presidents Clinton and Trump and vice presidents Cheney and Biden for their determents.

Vice president Cheney applied for the deferment on educational basis, then marital status basis until he ceased to be age eligible (Seelye, THE 2004 CAMPAIGN: MILITARY SERVICE; Cheney's Five Draft Deferments During the Vietnam Era Emerge as a Campaign Issue). President Trump received student and medical deferments (Eder, Philipps, Donald Trump‟s Draft Deferments: Four for College, One for Bad Feet). Vice President Biden received also the student and medical deferment. He did not support nor participate in any anti-war movement actions saying “I wore sports coats...not tie-dyed” (Taylor 96). All of the above mentioned politicians were principally part of the silent majority supporting the war even if some of them legally avoided the service.

However, former President Clinton and Vice President Gore are well known for their anti-war attitudes in the 1960s and 1970s. President Bill Clinton was active in the anti-war movement and also helped organize the 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam event (Clinton 131). Nevertheless, after the expiration of his student determent he registered for draft (121). Even more interesting figure in relation to open disapproval of the war was the former vice president Al Gore who opposed the war but willingly enlisted when his student deferment ended in 1969. His father, also a politician, was one of the few politicians who openly opposed the war. However, Gore jr. did not participate in the anti-war protests “while he agreed with their antiwar sentiments, he found students who were protesting the presence of R.O.T.C. on campus wrongheaded and even kind of juvenile. He thought taking anger about the war out on the university was plain illogical.” Instead he thought by “going to war that he could probably best support the antiwar movement -- by helping his father, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, win re-election” (Henneberger, On Campus Torn by 60's, Agonizing Over the Path).

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8. Conclusion The aim of this thesis was to offer a detailed account of the protests against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s and the 1970s in the USA. The war was extremely unpopular among the citizens for a series of reasons. Among the most significant was the draft, which forced young men who could not obtain deferment by legal means to join combat in Asia. Other critics pointed at the economic demands the war had on the citizens. Nevertheless, the majority of the protestors disagreed on the simple moral principle of fighting with people who had not hurt them. The opponents of the war claimed that the war was between the citizens of Vietnam and thus internal conflict and the US troops should not interfere. They did not believe in the proposed domino effect presented by their government and the possible Communist threat. The passion of the protestors was strengthened by images that television would bring into the domestic lives of the civilians. This period recorded the first significant conflict between the traditional news media and the government when the newspapers accused the government of delivering untrue information about the progression of the war.

From the point of view of a contemporary person one decade seems to be such a brief period of time for such a dramatic change. Nonetheless, we need to contemplate that even for the people living in that period the change itself looked only as a fashion, a fleeting fever that would pass quickly. It was not regarded as an utmost change of lifestyle that would influence every aspect of a person‟s life. The lifestyle changes might be most visible in the fashion industry or in a view on the personal relationships. However, the political aspect can be still discerned in today‟s world. The disagreement with the president‟s policies had probably never been on such a scale as was with the policies of President Johnson and President Nixon since the abolition of slavery by President Lincoln. The full trust in the government‟s policies has not been acquired since this time.

The war was a dividing element amongst the citizenship of the USA. The opponents of the war were always the less numerous group but they were much louder in their demands thus making them appear as a force to be reckon with. The majority

66 supporting the government and its policies were not nearly as vocal in their endorsements thus making them the eponymous silent majority.

The memory of the tumultuous years of the war carried its inheritance into the subsequent years and as is the common habit of humans, we generally select from our memories the more positive aspects of events. Thus the protests are now remembered with more melancholy and sentiment than were the reactions of public towards the movement during the war. The interesting contradictions are the attitudes of the media. On one hand they describe the era as a time when free speech was born and the war was halted by the efforts of the anti-war groups but on the other hand every politician who aspires to a high position is severely criticised for a possible lack of involvement in the war.

This thesis focused on the analysis of the attitudes of the traditional media and the government and thus it would be highly interesting to analyse the effects of the anti- war popular culture on the citizens. The topic of Hippies and other subcultures was only marginally concentrated on but it would certainly prove a remarkable point of view in an overall study. As would be the relationship between the anti-war movement and the other protests linked to the Civil Rights Movement, Gender Equality movement or LGBT-rights movement which helped prolong and ignite the fluctuating flames of the anti-war movement. It would be erroneous to stress that only the anti-war movement was the force behind the social change of the 1960s and the 1970s as it was all of the mentioned movements and groups which helped shape the second half of the 20th century.

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Appendices

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List of appendices

Appendix 1 - Selective Service Draftees percentages of those examined

Appendix 2 – Gallup poll 1965

Appendix 3 – Gallup poll 1965-2000

Appendix 4 – Vietnam Troop Levels

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Appendix 1

Selective Service Draftees

Examined by Military Service

60

50

40

% accepted 30 % disqualified-medical

20 % disqualified-mental

10

0 1960 1965 1970 1971 1972

(Farber and Bailey 384)

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Appendix 2

Gallup poll conducted Oct. 29-Nov. 2, 1965

(Gallup, Gallup Vault: The Urge to Demonstrate)

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Appendix 3

Gallup poll 2

Looking back, do you think the United States made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?

Yes a mistake No, not a mistake No opinion % % % 2000 Nov 13-15 69 24 7 1995 Apr 21–24 71 23 6 1993 Jan 24-26 68 29 3 1990 Mar 15-18 74 22 4 1985 Mar 25-31 63 27 10 1973 Jan 12-15 60 29 11 1971 May 14-17 61 28 11 1971 Jan 8-11 59 31 10 1970 May 21-26 56 36 8 1970 Apr 2-7 51 34 15 1970 Jan 15-20 57 33 10 1969 Sep 17-22 58 32 10 1969 Jan 23-28 52 39 9 1968 Sep 26-Oct 1 54 37 9 1968 Aug 7-12 53 35 12 1968 Apr 4-9 48 40 12 1968 Feb 22-27 49 41 10 1968 Feb 1-6 46 42 12 1967 Dec 7-12 45 46 9 1967 Oct 6-11 46 44 10 1967 Jul 13-18 41 48 11 1967 Apr 19-24 37 50 13 1967 Jan 26-31 32 52 16 1966 Nov 10-15 31 51 18 1966 Sep 8-13 35 48 17 1966 May 5/10 36 49 15 1966 Mar 3-8 25 59 16 1965 Aug 27-Sep 1 24 61 15

(Gallup, Americans Look Back at Vietnam War)

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Appendix 4

Vietnam Troop Levels

1960 900

1961 3,200

1962 11,300

1963 16,300

1964 23,300

1965 184,300

1966 385,300

1967 485,600

1968 536,100

1969 475,200

1970 334,600

1971 156,800

1972 24,200

By 1972, an estimated 70,000 draft evaders and deserters were living in Canada

(Landscaper.net, The Military Draft and 1969 Draft Lottery for the Vietnam War)

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