Warning: If you think you will probably lose your temper while reading such a complete description, you may click here to view a brief description/the timeline of the Vietnam War .     

Response to the War in the United States Opposition to the war in the United States developed immediately after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, chiefly among traditional pacifists, such as the American Friends Service Committee and antinuclear activists. Early protests were organized around questions about the morality of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. Virtually every key event of the war, including the Tet Offensive and the invasion of Cambodia, contributed to a steady rise in antiwar sentiment. The revelation of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 caused a dramatic turn against the war in national polls. Students and professors began to organize "teach-ins" on the war in early 1965 at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California at Berkeley. The teach-ins were large forums for discussion of the war between students and faculty members. Eventually, virtually no college or university was without an organized student movement, often spearheaded by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The first major student-led demonstration against the war was organized by SDS in April 1965 and stunned observers by mobilizing about 20,000 participants. Another important organization was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which denounced the war as racist as early as 1965. Students also joined The Resistance, an organization that urged its student members to refuse to register for the draft, or if drafted to refuse to serve. While law enforcement authorities usually blamed student radicals for the violence that took place on campuses, often it was police themselves who initiated bloodshed as they cleared out students occupying campus buildings during "sit-ins" or street demonstrations. As antiwar sentiment mounted in intensity from 1965 to 1970 so did violence, culminating in the killings of four students at Kent State in Ohio and of two at Jackson State College in Mississippi. Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and other black leaders denounced the U.S. presence in Vietnam as evidence of American imperialism. Martin Luther King, Jr., had grown increasingly concerned about the racist nature of the war, toward both the Vietnamese and the disproportionately large numbers of young blacks who were sent to fight for the United States in Vietnam. In 1967 King delivered a major address at New York's Riverside Church in which he condemned the war, calling the United States "the world's greatest purveyor of violence." On October 15, 1969, citizens across the United States participated in The Moratorium, the largest one-day demonstration against the war. Millions of people stayed home from work to mark their opposition to the war; college and high school students demonstrated on hundreds of campuses. A Baltimore judge even interrupted court proceedings for a moment of reflection on the war. In Vietnam, troops wore black armbands in honor of the home-front protest. Nixon claimed there was a "great silent majority" who supported the war and he called on them to back his policies. Polls showed, however, that at that time half of all Americans felt that the war was "morally indefensible," while 60 percent admitted that it was a mistake. In November 1969 students from all over the country headed for Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization Against the War. Over 40,000 participated in a March Against Death from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House, each carrying a placard with the name of a young person killed in Vietnam. Opposition existed even among conservatives and business leaders, for primarily economic reasons. The government was spending more than $2 billion per month on the war by 1967. Some U.S. corporations, ranging from beer distributors to manufacturers of jet aircraft, benefited greatly from this money initially, but the high expense of the war began to cause serious inflation and rising tax rates. Some corporate critics warned of future costs to care for the wounded. Labor unions were also becoming increasingly militant in opposition to the war, as they were forced to respond to the concerns of their members that the draft was imposing an unfair burden on working-class people. Another factor that turned public opinion against the war was the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, by the New York Times. Compiled secretly by the U.S. Department of Defense, the papers were a complete history of the involvement of numerous government agencies in the Vietnam War. They showed a clear pattern of deception toward the public. One of the senior analysts compiling this history, Daniel Ellsberg, secretly photocopied key documents and gave them to the New York Times. Subsequently, support for Nixon's war policies plummeted, and polls showed that 60 percent of the public now considered the war "immoral," while 70 percent demanded an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. The Vietnam War cost the United States $130 billion directly, and at least that amount in indirect costs, such as veterans' and widows' benefits and the search for Americans Missing-in-Action (MIAs). The war also spurred serious inflation, contributing to a substantially increased cost of living in the United States between 1965 and 1975, with continued repercussions thereafter. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives in Vietnam. Over 300,000 U.S. soldiers were wounded, half of them very seriously. No accurate accounting has ever been made of U.S civilians (U.S. government agents, religious missionaries, Red Cross nurses) killed throughout Indochina. After returning from the war, many Vietnam veterans suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is characterized by persistent emotional problems including anxiety and depression. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 20,000 Vietnam veterans have committed suicide in the war's aftermath. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, unemployment and rates of prison incarceration for Vietnam veterans, especially those having seen heavy combat, were significantly higher than in the general population. Having felt ignored or disrespected both by the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs) and by traditional organizations such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion, Vietnam veterans have formed their own self-help groups. Collectively, they forced the Veterans Administration to establish storefront counseling centers, staffed by veterans, in every major city. The national organization, Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), has become one of the most important service organizations lobbying in Washington, D.C. Also in the capital, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982 to commemorate the U.S. personnel who died or were declared missing in action in Vietnam. The memorial, which consists of a V-shaped black granite wall etched with more than 58,000 names, was at first a source of controversy because it does not glorify the military but invites somber reflection. The Asian ancestry of its prizewinning designer, Maya Lin, was also an issue for some veterans. In 1983 a bronze cast was added, depicting one white, one black, and one Hispanic American soldier. This led to additional controversy since some argued that the sculpture muted the original memorial's solemn message. In 1993 a statue of three women cradling a wounded soldier was also added to the site to commemorate the service of the 11,000 military nurses who treated soldiers in Vietnam. Despite all of the controversies, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become a site of pilgrimage for veterans and civilians alike. While the United States has been involved in a number of armed interventions worldwide since it withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, defense planners have taken pains to persuade the public that goals were limited and troops would be committed only for a specified duration. The war in Vietnam created an ongoing debate about the right of the United States to intervene in the affairs of other nations. Effects and Recovery in Vietnam Although South Vietnam was ostensibly the U.S. ally in the conflict, far more firepower was unleashed on South Vietnamese civilians than on northerners. About 10 percent of all bombs and shells went unexploded and continued to kill and maim throughout the region long after the war, as did buried land mines. Vietnam developed the highest rate of birth defects in the world, probably due to the use of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants. The defoliants used during the war also destroyed about 15 percent of South Vietnam's valuable timber resources and contributed to a serious decline in rice and fish production, the major sources of food for Vietnam. There were 800,000 orphans created in South Vietnam alone. At least 10 million people became homeless refugees in the south. Vietnam's government punished those Vietnamese who had been allied with the United States by sending them to "re-education camps" and depriving their families of employment. These measures combined with economic hardships throughout Vietnam led to the exodus of about 1.5 million people, most of them to the United States as refugees. The children of U.S. soldiers and Vietnamese women, often called "AmerAsians," were looked down upon by the Vietnamese, and many of them immigrated to the United States. Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam, but the aid was never granted. Neither Gerald Ford, who became president after Nixon's resignation, nor Congress would assume any responsibility for the devastation of Vietnam. Instead, in 1975 Ford extended the embargo already in effect against North Vietnam to all of newly unified Vietnam. In the Foreign Assistance Appropriation Act of 1976, Congress forbade any assistance for Vietnam or Cambodia. President Jimmy Carter attempted to resume relations with Vietnam in 1977, declaring that "the destruction was mutual." Talks broke down, however, over the issue of American MIAs and over the promised reparations, especially after the Vietnamese released a copy of Nixon's secret letter of 1973, which promised aid "without any preconditions." Fearing that reparations would amount to an admission of wrongdoing, Congress added amendments to trade bills that also cut Vietnam off from international lending agencies like the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Normalization was suspended, deepening the economic crisis facing Vietnam in the aftermath of the war's destruction. The crisis was worsened by new wars with China and Cambodia in 1978 and 1979. Cut off from all other sources of aid, the SRV turned to the Soviet Union for loans and technical advisers. The SRV reasoned that, faced with widespread hunger and enormous health problems, restoring agricultural production was paramount. The government therefore seized private property, collectivized plantations, and nationalized businesses. About 1 million civilians were forcibly moved from cities to new economic zones. Mismanagement and corruption became common, and popular disillusion with the regime grew. At the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, the SRV leadership declared Communism a failed experiment and vowed radical change. Calling the reforms doi moi (economic renovation), the SRV opened Vietnam to capitalism. After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the SRV leadership was forced to move further in this direction. Stepping up efforts to find American MIAs and cooperating with World Bank and IMF guidelines for economic reform, Vietnam worked to improve relations with the United States. In February 1994 President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo, and on July 11, 1995, the United States formally restored full diplomatic relations with Vietnam.