American opposition to the Vietnam War, propelled
largely by young adults and college students in small numbers in
the mid-1960s, grew into a national phenomenon by the end of the
decade and on into the 1970s. As the War pushed seemingly endlessly
forward, so did the protests. The draft, first-time-ever television
coverage of combat, the Kent State shootings, the My Lai massacre
and relentlessly depressing news about the war effort in general
contributed to a nationwide beating drum of anti-war sentiment.
The protests remain an important lesson in the
power of organized opposition to effect change in public
policy.
Below are some of the more memorable quotes from well-known figures
about the War.
We are not
about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from
home to do what Asian
boys ought to be doing for themselves.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Oct. 1964
Television
brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.
Vietnam was lost in the living rooms
of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
Marshall McLuhan
Vietnam
was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without
censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public
mind.
General William C. Westmoreland
No event
in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It
was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.
Richard M. Nixon
One of the
greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is The Great Society ...
shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our
numbers have increased in Viet Nam because the aggression of others
has increased in Viet Nam.
There is not, and there will not be, a mindless
escalation.
Lyndon B. Johnson
My
solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese
Communists] frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and
stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the Stone
Age.
General Curtis LeMay
If we were
not in Vietnam all that part of the world would be enjoying the
obscurity it so richly deserves.
John Kenneth Galbraith
I was
proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they
were my babies.
Benjamin Spock
This is
not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of
human activity.
Lyndon B. Johnson
We didn't
lose Vietnam. We quit Vietnam.
Alexander Haig
By the end
of the summer of 1973 I thought it was virtually impossible for
South Vietnam to survive. How in the heck could they?
General William C. Westmoreland
It's silly
talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles
of Vietnam when we could pave the
whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by
Christmas.
Ronald Reagan
I
seriously doubt if we will ever have another war. This is probably
the very last one.
Richard M. Nixon