The+escalation+and+development+of+the+movement

One of the most important developments of the period between 1965 and 1968 was the emergence of Civil Rights leaders that advocated peace in Vietnam. On January 1967, The //Chicago Defender// published an article in which Martin Luther King Jr. expressed support for the antiwar movement on moral grounds. Martin Luther King Jr. later went on to say that the war was draining much needed resources from domestic programs and he also brought up his concern about the high casualties of African American in the war. King’s statements stirred up the African American community and expanded the spectrum of the antiwar movement. As the foundations of the foreign policy began to be more widely questioned, the entire nation began to take notice and the protest movement became stronger. Opposition to the war started to be seen within the administration itself. In 1967 President Johnson fired Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara after he expressed his distress about the moral justifications of the war. But even so, most internal opposition began to take shape in a different way; many began to focus not in the morality of the war but on the amount of money that it would cost the United States to win. Widespread opposition within the government itself was not seen until 1968 during the presidential elections. “Johnson faced a strong challenge from peace candidates Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy, and George McGovern, All Democrats, as well as the eventual successor, Richard M. Nixon. On March 25th Johnson learned that his closest advisors now opposed the war; six days later, he withdrew from the race (Barringer)”. With continuous bombings of North Vietnam an interest in peace activities rose dramatically. Things like the Tet Offensive and the lack of trust that Americans began to have on the authenticity in reporting war progress all contributed to Johnson’s decision to retire. But as the antiwar movement became more powerful between 1969 and 1973 it also started to diverge. As most Americans opposed the escalation of the U.S role in Vietnam due to the monetary costs (in November of 1969 a second march on Washington drew about 500,000 participants) many also began to disapprove of the counterculture that arose along side the protest movement. Movement leaders began to lose public respect as some were labeled as being “hippies”, cultural and political protest began to become intertwined within the movement itself. “New leaders became increasingly strident, greeting returning soldiers with jeers and taunts, spitting on troops in airports and on public streets (Barringer)”. It came to the point that most Americans supported the cause but disagreed with the methods, leaders and the culture of the protest.  But as US involvement in Vietnam escalated the movement solidified. The news of the My Lai massacre in February 1970 caused outrage throughout the nation, and Nixon’s announcement that U.S forces had entered Cambodia, even though he had initially committed to a withdrawal, caused almost instant outrage, protests and acts of violence. On May 4th, Ohio National Guardsmen fired at a group of people protesting at Kent State University. By the end of the incident four students were dead and sixteen were wounded. After this in episode of violence Americans realized that the war had finally hit home and it had cost the lives of four people on American Soil. “When the //New York Times// published the first installment of the Pentagon Papers on 13 June 1971, Americans became aware of the true nature of the war. Stories of drug trafficking, political assassinations, and indiscriminate bombings led many to believe that military and intelligence services has lost all accountability (Wells)”. Opposition to the Vietnam War soon became the norm and by January 1973 President Nixon declared the end of U.S involvement in the war.