Effect of Propaganga during Vietnam War

City, he pointed out that the  U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia as little more than imperialism and that We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.   The Reverend King further stated If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam."  The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.   The Reverend King, Malcolm X, and groups like the Black Panthers and Weathermen stated the best way to resist the white man was to use violence, and so the riots of 1968 started.

    The youth of America in late 60s and early 70s choose a different way to express their feelings about a war they felt was immoral and futile.  Conservatives and liberals clash over their ideology's.  Even if these liberal protesters were correct and Vietnam was a war that could not be won some of the ways they protested were self-defeating and often misguided.  American public held numerous anti-war demonstrations, especially at universities and colleges.  Though the first American protests against U.S. intervention in Vietnam took place in 1963, the antiwar movement did not begin in earnest until nearly two years later, when President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered massive U.S. military intervention and the sustained bombing of North Vietnam. In the spring of 1965, teach-ins against the war were held on many college campuses.    Protests such as the one in Columbia University which forced police into action to physically remove them, violate actions against draft board locations happened in which blood was smeared on walls and files were shredded, and Dow Chemical was sabotaged.  One of the most publicized protest was on May 4, 1907, when members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire at Kent State University in Ohio.  The reactions by the Guard left four students died and another nine injured, the crowd gathered to protest the Vietnam War.

    The United States' image was damaged and the anti-war sentiments grew when soldiers committed atrocities against the Vietnamese people.  The media painted an ugly military leadership of soldiers taking out their frustrations on the Vietnamese people.  Racism, fear, and hatred bred atrocity.  The media accused the soldiers of rape, murder, looting and burning down villages.  North Vietnam made sure the American press got this info and pictures to show American public how inhumane the soldiers were to the local population.  Being one of the first wars that the press had unlimited access to did not help as they printed more negative items than positive ones.  Military leaders knew this was becoming an issue a released an order to adjust the conduct for the troops in battle.    Since everyone knew that South Vietnamese military tortured North Vietnamese prisoners the military leadership asked United States troops to make sure they were not in any photographs taken of these sort of actions. 

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