Such an atrocity rattled the very core of the American people. This massacre took the whole world by surprise and drew massive media attention. This moved Henry Kissinger to attempt to organize another peace talk with the North Vietnamese but this too failed. The Vietnam War had produced many political, social and military disasters for America. Lyndon Johnson kept spending money on the war without adequate funds to pay for the expenses.
Cambodianizing the Vietnam War A. Suddenly, on April 29, 1970, without consulting Congress, Nixon ordered American forces to join with the South Vietnamese in cleaning out the enemy sanctuaries in officially neutral Cambodia B. SO WHAT—Kent State Massacre- Kids at college were protesting and acting reckless and the national guard had to come and settle things, and they ended up firing and killed and injured some kids. C. Define: 26th Amendment- voting would be changed to 18 years of age D. New combustibles fueled the fires of antiwar discontent in June 1971, when The New York Times published a top-secret Pentagon study of America’s involvement in the Vietnam
One group of people felt that there were good ideas for getting involved in the conflict, however they thought it would be a useless battle with too much burden on the economy. The other group of people thought the United States had to get involved in Vietnam and that we needed to stay until we got the job done. The United States finally started pulling the troops out in the early 1970’s. Student unrest was a key aspect of the Vietnam War. Student activists brought about antiwar ideals and protested their opposition to the war.
They lost power, control, and respect as a nation, and the tensions between and with foreign countries and those within America itself persisted long after military attacks were made. Although the economic policies improved under the successes of Kennedy and Johnson, this war was crucial to the downfall of the economy that came in the 1970s. The social tensions still remain prominent today, and it is still a difficult topic of discussion and reflection for most. Politically, the pressures made people more aware and conscious of their decisions. Vietnam helped Americans draw from experience new lessons that drastically reformed the society during the 1960 and 1970s, and called to attention the questioning of beliefs and morals.
At the campus of Kent State University on May 4, 1970 protest against the war had erupted. The 300 students that had opposed the war so intensely that they had caused riot like damage in a nearby town only to return to campus to burn down the R.O.T.C. building. The local governor had ordered 750 National Guardsmen to the campus to “Eradicate the problem” also saying that the protesters were the “worst type of people we harbor in America” (Davidson−Gienapp−Heyrman−Lytle−Stoff, 2005, p. 2). After the protestors had refused to disperse after being ordered to do so the guardsmen had fired into the crowd killing four students and wounding nine others.
The end result of those protests was gunfire by police leaving four dead and nine others wounded. Of course not all protests end like this but this is an exception that is a memorable and tragic moment in American history. The reason that the Kent state students were protesting was in response to the Cambodian campaign that was presented by president Nixon the day before. The Cambodian campaign was basically another invasion
This made an impact in their speeches and music as well. The anti-war protests escalated and people began to lose respect for the soldiers who were returning home. They were no longer looked upon as heroes fighting for our country, but as murderers. One protest made a historical impact on the deep division between political and social viewpoint regarding the Vietnam War. In April, 1970 the United States had invaded Cambodia and this invasion had only broadened the Vietnam War.
Nixon • Republican president elected in 1968 and 1972; resigned from office in 1974 due to Watergate scandal • Promised he would reduce U.S. troop levels in Vietnam, but force levels remained high and Nixon actually expanded the war into Laos and Cambodia • Pursued a plan he called “Vietnamization” to push the South Vietnamese army to shoulder the bulk of the fighting • In the first months of his second term, the last U.S. combat soldiers left Vietnam EVENTS 1963 Buddhist Protests • Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, set himself on fire in protest against South Vietnamese government policies, including religious intolerance • Other Buddhists followed his example in the following months • His suicide shocked and confused many Americans and created doubt in their minds about U.S. support for the South Vietnamese government 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution • Gave President Johnson the power to take any military action he deemed necessary to defend South Vietnam against the Viet Cong • Passed in response to an unconfirmed attack on the USS Maddox off the coast of Vietnam 1968 Tet Offensive • Occurred on 31 January, beginning of Vietnamese Tet
Student activism had started to develop in the 1950s. The introduction of the Draft increased activism. Many young people believed that the Draft was against the human rights of young men. When the media exposed the My Lai massacre and the use of Agent Orange students began to protest against an “imperialist war” as un-American. The Kent State Massacre, May 4 1970, saw a peaceful protest by students turn violent when the National Guard was called in to disperse the protest.
In 1960, 40 million people of the American population were considered to be living in poverty out of the 176 million citizens in the United States. This staggering number was one of the facts that Michael Harrington revealed in his book The Other America (Meyerson). The book The Other America by Michael Harrington was significant in American History because it changed American society by exposing the amount of people in poverty in America and depicted their their lives in the poor urban ghettos to the middle and upper classes of society. The book made the impoverished Americans visible to the upper classes in American society and was attributed to dropping the poverty rate in America as the novel influenced Lyndon Johnson’s “War against Poverty.” In context, American college students were challenging the old ideas of how to make money. They protested against consumerism, materialism, and mania.