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The Vietnam War's effect on public opinion
The Vietnam War's effect on public opinion
The Vietnam War's effect on public opinion
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Frustration is a normal aspect of any conflicts in the political problems worldwide. During with the Vietnam War, President Nixon had to be careful because the American public was becoming more cynical based on involvement with Vietnam. President Nixon had the ability to understand the language along with content to reach his target audience with his address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on November 3rd, 1969. His viewers for his speech were his fellow Americans because they had lost hope based on past results of too many deaths of Americans in this war. His goal was to answer questions about why the wars were still taking place, and how he proposed to create peace to end the war. The United States could create propaganda and mislead the general …show more content…
President Nixon attempts to persuade the public of his nation by the methods of bandwagon, oversimplification, scapegoating, virtue words and euphoria in propaganda techniques. Specifically, Nixon takes on the bandwagon method because he is appealing to keep the concept alive and stop the division of the country and keep the idea alive of creating peace to end this war. Although he was a strong believer in the ability to turn to oversimplification, because of the military and political setting during this time based on setting up a timetable for peace. Meanwhile, he still blamed passed past presidents before him to justify the length of this war and how he planned to make changes because of scapegoating. To illustrate his ideal method of virtue words, he overstressed the word of making peace to end the war. Overall the end result of Nixon’s address was not effective, because of the leak of the Pentagon papers in 1971 when 20 newspapers printed articles about the lies of Vietnam. Based on this leak by Daniel Ellsberg who was a former military report for the Vietnam
In 1971, John Kerry stood in front of the Senate and spoke about his experiences in Vietnam as a soldier. There would be many that would agree with his position, some that would disagree and ultimately some that had no strong opinion at all. John Kerry knew that although he was speaking to the senate he was also speaking to the American people and through his intentional way of speaking he used this to his advantage. In John Kerry’s speech, strongly opposing the Vietnam War, Kerry successfully uses his persona as one who experienced the war head on, to reveal the lack of morality in Vietnam and paint the war as barbaric acts with no true purpose behind them.
Mark Atwood Lawrence’s The Vietnam War: A Concise International History shows readers an international affair involving many nations and how the conflict progressed throughout its rather large existence. Lawrence starts his book in a time before America was involved in the war. It starts out with the French trying to colonize the nation of Vietnam. Soon the United States gets involved and struggles to get its point across in the jungles of Indo-China. Much of the book focuses on the American participation in helping South Vietnam vie for freedom to combine the country as a whole not under Communist rule. Without seeing many results, the war drug on for quite some time with neither side giving up. This resulted in problems in Vietnam and the U.S.
In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected President. One of the promises he made was to end the Vietnam War. When the My Lai massacre was exposed in November of 1969 there was worldwide outrage and reduced public support for the war. Then a month later the first draft lottery was instituted since WWII. In April 1970, Nixon told the public he was going to withdraw large numbers of U.S. troops from Vietnam. So when he made his television address on April 30 to say we had invaded Cambodia the American people reacted strongly. In the speech Nixon addressed not only Cambodia but also the unrest on college campuses. Many young people, including college students, were concerned about the risk of being drafted, and the expansion of the war into another country appeared to increase that risk. Across the country protests on campuses became what Time magazine called "a nation-wide student strike."
On April 30, 1970, when Nixon gave a speech announcing his invasion of Cambodia, anti-war factions rose up across the United States. In the speech he stated that, “If, when the chips are down…the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and institutions around the world. I would rather be a one term president and do what I believe is right than to be a two term president at the cost of seeing America become a second rate power.” Students did not agree with Nixon and protests cropped up on university campuses in the days that followed his speech. Amongst these protesters were students of Kent State University, “The Cambodian invasion defined a watershed in the attitude of Kent students toward American policy in the Indochina War.” At this point, the first two days of May, the students were protesting Nixon’s actions. While the cou...
In the 1968 election Nixon made Vietnam a campaign issue promising to win the war, but he also planned to expand the war by bombing neutral Cambodia to cut off the North supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh trail. He wanted to show North Vietnam that the United States was willing to purse “peace with honor”. Nixon went public with the bombings and sent troops into Cambodia, NVA invaded
It is understandable that some Americans strongly opposed the United States getting involved in the Vietnam War. It had not been a long time since the end of World War II and simply put, most Americans were tired of fighting. Mark Atwood Lawrence is one of the people who opposed our involvement in the Vietnam War. In his essay, “Vietnam: A Mistake of Western Alliance”, Lawrence argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and that it went against our democratic policies, but that there were a lot of things that influenced our involvement.
At first, he was a strong supporter of the Vietnam War but then became a strong opponent. The Department of Defense continued to lie to the people about the hype about the war. The government continued to say that the war was under control. The Pentagon Papers already have statistics on the Vietnam War. As soon as Nixon saw the paper, he went to his Attorney General right away to stop the printing of the New York Times newspaper. Daniel Ellsberg knew that he would get arrested for making copies of the papers.
The years leading up to the 1972 election were filled with new political tactics. Going into the election year, President Nixon seemed like he could never lose the second term election after successfully negotiating with Vietnam, Beijing, and Russia to improve international relations (Emery 4). Raising international toughness made Nixon seem like the most worthy person to stay president. Fred Emery analyses in his novel Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon, the president was also setting up the first summit meeting in history with Soviet Union Presidents (3). There seemed to be nothing capable of holding the seemingly responsible man back. However, this assurance came with massive consequences. The absolute certainty that Nixon would be reelected fueled the lies and abuse of power by the Nixon government (Emery 195). As the outlook of landslide winnings took over the White House, the moral reasoning, “the end justifies the means” became more prevalent. Nixon was obsessed with winning and being successful. Under his command his staff did whatever possible to ...
was the first time that the media were able to get a glimpse of it. As
Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president, gave his “Resignation Address to the Nation (1974)” speech explaining that he wasn’t going to be the president any more. Through his speech, Nixon demonstrates logos, pathos, ethos, repetition and anaphora to the citizens of the United States. Nixon’s goal is to suggest that the Watergate issue was not his fault, and also to resign from his presidency profoundly in order to avoid impeachment by the people. The tone of his voice was apologetic as he addressed the nation on his resignation.
out of Vietnam. All share a common theme of Vietnamization, triangular diplomacy, and threat of force to coerce the North Vietnamese to accept terms favorable to Nixon’s administration. Vietnamization was a carryover from LBJ’s presidency. Simply put, it was a program to set conditions where the South Vietnamese could stand on their own with minimal or no U.S. support. Triangular diplomacy involved public and secret peace negotiations with Hanoi. Central to these negotiations is the involvement of the Soviets and Chinese in the peace deals. Added initiatives were linkages, or carrots and sticks for trade negations and arms control in exchange for help from the Soviets or Chinese to get Hanoi to the peace table (p 75). Force was used to compel the North Vietnamese into accepting U.S. terms. Unlike LBJ’s use of gradual escalation of force, Nixon intended for this force to be overwhelming. Nixon also needed to demonstrate to America that he was ending the war. To this end he gradually withdraws U.S. military ground forces throughout the remainder of the
After President Johnson intensified violence in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon took on the role of presidency with the impending pressure of recalibrating American foreign policy. In particular, Nixon implemented Vietnamization which was the process in which Americans transferred battle tactics and strategies to Vietnamese soldiers so that they would be able to fight the war on their own. He wanted to make the Vietnamese fight their own battles in order to relieve the pressures on American soldiers. While this was a theoretically digestible idea, Nixon still upheld ideas of deception and imperialism.
The Sixties and Seventies were among the most important decades in American history in terms of massive social upheaval. With practically the entire world in a state of unbalance and with the wild relationship of the United States to the rest of the world, it is unsurprising that the States faced a state of unrest and social change. The United States was involved in two vastly different wars at the time that created a massive feeling of unrest inside its own walls, especially among groups of young people who worked in massive numbers to bring about heavy societal change in many different areas aiming for the top and moving down. These decades included some of the most hotly debated and controversial events in American history. The United states
However, it contradicts his own promise during the campaign. He promised that he wanted to end the war peacefully. As a result, his credibility in the future can be questioned because President Nixon did not keep his own promise. Moreover, in his speech he stated that it could be disastrous to draw the American forces from Vietnam. This also shows that he is not a consistent person and change his views easily. Citizens are mad because he does not fulfill his promises and decided to
I sat on my front porch steps, eating my lunch and watching the cars zoom by. I was beginning to become upset by sitting on the couch with my family, watching television. There was no more family game show night; it was now only news coverage of the Vietnam War. From news teams on the front lines to news anchors talking about the war, like it was an overview of sports game. I outraged that my parents found this entertaining and continued to watch the reportage, even though all of the coverage was gruesome and disgusting. I hated war, and I hate the Vietnam War even more. It was pointless, and I have a feeling that the United States will not be triumphant this time.