{"id":2895,"date":"2017-04-19T00:58:18","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T00:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/?p=2895"},"modified":"2017-08-23T14:22:46","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T14:22:46","slug":"2895","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/2017\/04\/19\/2895\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vietnam War and the Shifting Tides of Public Opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"

“As the senior commander in Vietnam, I was aware of the potency of public opinion – and worried about it.” -GEN\u00a0William Westmoreland [1]<\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy of Politico<\/p><\/div>\n

To this day, the Vietnam War remains a strong memory in the American psyche. \u00a0The general\u00a0consensus of the American public on Vietnam seems to be that it was an unwinnable war, fought for a questionable cause that ultimately led to nothing but dead Americans and a loss of faith in the U.S. government. \u00a0For Melissa Woodbury, a Democrat with a political activist streak just coming out of college at the time, her own sentiment echoes the country’s memory:\u00a0“I still feel very strongly about the war… It informed a lot of my thinking, it changed this country, not necessarily for the better… I would like to be able to trust the government and have faith in my elected\u00a0officials… I would like to have fact be recognized as fact, but somehow we’ve lost all that.”[2] \u00a0Yet, despite the almost universally negative outlook America shares on the Vietnam War today, public opinion at the time was far more conflicted, with most of the nation supporting both the war and its escalation in the early years while the rising popularity of TV news broadcasts continued to muddy the waters throughout the war’s duration.<\/p>\n

Outbreak<\/strong><\/p>\n

The early years of the war are ones best categorized as years of indifference.[3] \u00a0In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when only a relatively small number of U.S. troops were deployed for the primary purpose of advising and instructing ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) units, the average American either didn’t know about the situation or simply didn’t really care. \u00a0However, for more politically aware individuals such as Melissa Woodbury, the situation in Vietnam was often discussed. \u00a0Having been recently married to Ronald Woodbury in 1965 after finishing school at Mount Holyoke College, Vietnam quickly became a common subject of discussion:<\/p>\n

“I was in college from 62-65 and the big push hadn\u2019t really started… so [my husband, Ronald] and I talked about it a lot.\u00a0 Interestingly my mother was all in favor of the war and [Ron] was all against the war and I was sort of in the middle [at the time] trying to explain my mother to [my husband]\u00a0and [my husband]\u00a0to my mother… I was just trying to make up my own mind and figure out what I thought…”[4]<\/p>\n

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Courtesy of The University of Utah<\/p><\/div>\n

The localized interest from more politically active individuals in the country is reflected in early\u00a0public opinion polls, as both withdrawal and escalation held higher percentages of support in 1964 than they did after the “big push” began during the following year (see image).[5]<\/p>\n

The reason that support for both withdrawal and escalation decreased in 1965 was the massive deployment of troops that same year. \u00a0By the end of 1964, U.S. ground forces numbered around 23,000, but by the end of 1965 that number had reached 184,000.[6] \u00a0This drastic increase in troop deployments brought Vietnam to the forefront of public interest and drastically boosted public opinion\u00a0as Americans “rallied around the flag” in support of the war effort. \u00a0However, since most knew very little about the conflict, they could not provide any input on the withdrawal vs. escalation question, causing both percentages to drop.[7]<\/p>\n

Escalation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy of Talking Proud<\/p><\/div>\n

As the American escalation process continued through the late 1960’s public opinion slowly began to mature and take shape. \u00a0By around 1967 public opinion reached a new mile marker, not only beginning to establish the general negative opinion Americans had of the war, but also a temporary one quite to the contrary. \u00a0Although support permanently dipped below 50% in 1967, escalation sentiment reached its all-time high, peaking at\u00a0around 55%.[8]<\/p>\n

The beginning of the fall in public support for the war was in many ways due to increased media coverage. \u00a0As the American troop commitment rose during the escalation period, so did the number of cameras and reporters. \u00a0With the rising prevalence of the television in American homes and news broadcasts increasing in length to 90 minutes a night, scenes from the Vietnam War regularly reached Americans during dinnertime.[9] \u00a0 With the general public becoming more familiar with the horrors of warfare, support for a conflict that seemed so far away from home began to slide, yet most Americans, including Melissa Woodbury, were positive that<\/p>\n

Dan Rather Reporting from Vietnam (Courtesy of Pinterest)<\/p><\/div>\n

the war would be over soon. \u00a0This also explains the peak in escalation sentiment and the significant drop in withdrawal sentiment (it’s lowest of the war at around 6-10%); although Americans did not support the war, they believed that it would not be long before victory was acheived, which meant that most either didn’t lean either way, or supported escalation to bring the war to a more rapid conclusion.[10] \u00a0Melissa Woodbury echoes this view:<\/p>\n

“It was awful.\u00a0 That was the first time that war came into our living rooms. Walter Cronkite reported every single night, we got the body count every night\u2026 Usually it was something like ‘we killed 7,000 of them and only 1,000 of us’… and then Westmoreland saying ‘just a few more, just a few more, just a few more’ and more troops went.[11]<\/p>\n

The Tet Offensive<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy of History.com<\/p><\/div>\n

On January 30th, 1968, the Vietnamese new year, with the words “Crack the sky, shake the Earth”[12] the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched their largest offensive operation of the entire war. \u00a0For the Americans and their allies, the offensive caught them completely off guard, as Tet was unofficially recognized as a day of ceasefire and American military analysts believed that the NVA and VC had nowhere near the manpower to conduct an offensive on the scale of Tet. \u00a0Although Communist forces initially made fairly significant gains, they were soon thrown back and by the end of the offensive their forces had been completely crushed by American firepower, with the communist casualties estimated to be around 10,000 in the first few days compared to 249 American deaths.[13]<\/p>\n

Yet from a public opinion standpoint, the Tet Offensive was a complete disaster for the United States. \u00a0For some time, both the American government and military establishment believed that the communist forces in Vietnam were on the brink of defeat. \u00a0NVA and VC activity had been on a steady decline since mid-1967 and American military analysts believed that it meant that the communists were rapidly running out of men and material. When Tet struck, this belief was completely crushed. \u00a0Although she was living in Argentina when the offensive started, for Melissa Woodbury, and many other Americans, Tet turned what was viewed as a soon-to-be winnable mistake into an unwinnable one:<\/p>\n

“…we kept getting the reports on how much progress we were making and then the Tet Offensive happened and everything suddenly became clear that we were not making any progress… [I felt they weren\u2019t telling the full story] and whether that\u2019s fair or not I don\u2019t know, but certainly we had so much mistrust in what the military and the President were saying that it was hard to believe their figures.\u00a0 It was all this rosy talk about \u201cwe\u2019re winning, we\u2019re winning, we\u2019re winning\u201d and obviously we were not winning and we did not win.” [14]<\/p>\n

Although the start of the Tet Offensive itself began to cause public opinion to waver, the final nail in the coffin came on the evening of February 27th, 1968. \u00a0Having recently returned home from on-site reporting in Vietnam, Walter Cronkite closed out the nightly CBS news report with the following words:<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/files\/2017\/04\/Report-from-Vietnam-1968.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

(Courtesy of YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n

“Walter Cronkite was probably the most trusted man in the country”, said Melissa Woodbury, “When he became convinced that the war was unwinnable and said it, that had a huge impact on his viewers…[15] lots of people rethought”[16]<\/p>\n

By November 1968, public support for withdrawal rose from 10% to 19% and public support for escalation dropped from 55% to 34%.[17] \u00a0By October 1968, 63% of the population believed that<\/p>\n

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Average Action Cycle in Vietnam (Courtesy of Thomas C. Thayer)<\/p><\/div>\n

Vietnam was as mistake.[18] \u00a0Even more drastic was the fall in support for the Johnson administration, which hit a record low of 26% by the end of \u00a0the Tet Offensive.[19]<\/p>\n

Despite the government and military stating that Tet was a landslide of a military victory, their voices were drowned out by the images on the television and the words of Cronkite. Military analysts soon discovered that Tet was part of an extremely predictable yearly pattern of communist activity, and subsequent\u00a0offensives in the following years continued to grow weaker, but it was too late. \u00a0“[Tet]\u00a0contributed to the breakdown in trust of the government\u2026 we certainly did not trust what they said.”[20] said Melissa Woodbury, showing how Cronkite’s broadcast had effectively completely discredited the military and the White House as reliable sources of information on the\u00a0conflict. \u00a0“[For] the fist time in American history a war had been declared over by an anchorman.”[21]<\/p>\n

Downward Spiral<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although U.S. intervention would continue until 1973, the domestic effects of the Tet Offensive sealed the fate of the American mission in Vietnam. \u00a0There were other public opinion disasters during Vietnam, but they simply served to increase the speed at which civilian support spiraled downward. Probably the most notable was the draft, which was re-instituted on December 1st, 1969.<\/p>\n

The draft brought men into the ranks of the military who had no wish to fight and the single, one-<\/p>\n

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American Deaths by Length of Deployment \u00a0 (Courtesy of Thomas C. Thayer)<\/p><\/div>\n

year deployment rule that was instated for draftees to try and improve public opinion did little more than to force the expansion of the draft and increase casualties, as the ranks of the military were flooded with inexperienced, green troops (40% of American deaths were men who were on their first three months in country compared to the 6% who were on their last three).[22] \u00a0As anti-war sentiment grew and the draft brought in the war’s protesters, incidents of “fragging” (intentionally killing one’s superior officer or NCO) increased drastically.[23] Fortunately, for Melissa Woodbury, her husband was never considered for the draft due to marital and parental status, but a friend of theirs was:<\/p>\n

“…one of our friends got a really good number and didn\u2019t have to go and he celebrated, he got drunk, he was so happy that he didn\u2019t have to go.”[24]<\/p>\n

Courtesy of The Northwest Veterans Newsletter<\/p><\/div>\n

Another event that further negatively impacted public opinion were the invasions of Laos and Cambodia. \u00a0Despite being part of Nixon’s “Vietnamization” program, which was meant to slowly withdrawal American ground forces in the region while building up the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), domestically they served little more than to trigger more protests (the invasion of Laos in particular was conducted primarily by ARVN units; however, they performed miserably).[25] \u00a0The invasion of Laos provided Melissa Woodbury with a strong personal memory:<\/p>\n

“…when Nixon went into Laos in 1971 one of [Ron’s] fraternity brothers killed himself over it.\u00a0 He\u2019d been working so hard in the anti-war movement that when Nixon upped it again and went into Laos he committed suicide he was so distraught.”[26]<\/p>\n

This small story, while no means the norm, reflects strongly how Americans at home felt about the war. \u00a0In 1973, American forces officially pulled out of Vietnam and on April 30th, 1975 Saigon fell to Communist forces. \u00a0Although it made the news, not many cared; the American people had had enough.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica<\/p><\/div>\n

Vietnam marks the first time in American history that a war was decided not on the battlefield, but in the minds of the American people. \u00a0According to military analyst Thomas C. Thayer: “The Americans couldn’t win in Vietnam but they couldn’t lose either as long as they stayed.”[27] \u00a0Had U.S. forces had more time to effectively implement Nixon’s “Vietnamization” strategy, it is possible that South Vietnam would have been able to hold its own once the American military left, but the nightly news broadcasts depicting scenes of violence like none that most Americans had ever seen before and the public statements of prominent figures such as Walter Cronkite served to shorten the fuse of the public opinion time bomb and ultimately bring the war to its unsatisfactory conclusion. \u00a0Although Vietnam was fairly casualty-light in comparison to other major wars fought by the United States, especially considering Vietnam’s length, direct TV exposure to the war made those casualties more human and less of a statistic, a fact that was exploited heavily by the North Vietnamese:<\/p>\n

“…For each additional day’s stay, the United States must sustain more casualties. \u00a0For each additional day’s stay they must spend more money and lose more equipment. \u00a0Each additional day’s stay, the American people will adopt a stronger anti-war attitude while there is no hope to consolidate the puppet [South Vietnamese] administration and army.” [28]<\/p>\n

Aside from simply costing the U.S. the war, public outrage caused a massive decline in both trust and support for the Federal Government, the effects of which are still being felt to this day. \u00a0“I would like to be able to trust the government and have faith in my elected\u00a0officials”, stated Melissa Woodbury at the end of her interview, \u00a0“…I would like to have fact be recognized as fact, but somehow we’ve lost all that.”[29]<\/p>\n

Timeline<\/strong><\/p>\n