Vietnam War 88

Throughout the 1960's and 1970's Americans became uneasy not only about the troubled position of the United States, but also about the disorder created at home by foreign involvements. Vietnam, either because of the intense war experience itself or because of the lessons Americans later drew from the experience, drastically altered society during the 1960's and 1970's. The belief in the right to influence the internal affairs of other countries led to disaster in Vietnam. This disaster was known as the longest war in the nation's history. In which the world's most powerful military, the United States, spent itself in a pointless attempt to conquer peasant people. Vietnam became another test in the containment of communism for the United States. Disregarding the native roots of the revolution and the determination of the people fighting for their own land, American leaders made the mistake of looking at Vietnam through a Cold War point of view. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, came to recognize this as their weakness in the war, he stated that the United States had "misconceived the nature of the war" (Doc. E). Eventually, the Vietnam War would come to heighten tensions in the social, political, and economic aspects of the United States during the mid-1960's and early 1970's.
            The chaotic social change along with the growing movement opposing the Vietnam War gave rise to black's and a revived women's rights movement. The Americanization of the war in Vietnam bothered growing numbers of Americans. Television coverage brought the horrid pictures of combat into families homes every night. Innocent civilians were killed and villages considered friendly to the enemy were burned to the ground. America's missions came out as counterproductive. Rather than winning the war, they were creating an ever-growing population of anti-American peasants who gave secret aid to the Vietcong. Brutal stories like the My Lai massacre sparked antiwar feelings in the United States. In...