After World War II, the American population had hoped that any major conflicts between countries around United States would leave the country alone for a long while. However, the citizens of the United States were in for a surprise when President Dwight E. Eisenhower announced that America would participate in the civil war occurring in Vietnam. The Vietnam War spanned for 20 years from 1955 to 1975 but with the United States withdrawal from the war in 1973. Due to Northern Vietnam’s communist ideals, America initially entered the war in an attempt to prevent the communist takeover of Southern Vietnam. Unfortunately, despite the reasoning for entering the Vietnam War being reasonable, the majority of America’s population was strongly opposed
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For the most part, these movements are focused on why individuals join a movement, and why individuals or movements engage in civil strife. However, focusing solely on these often leads to overlooking the fact that there is a time gap between when a movement is formed and when such a movement is spread by the members throughout the population to use as political tactics. People learning the ideals of a movement occurs when a significant number of persons within the movement learn the same lessons, and therefore change the movement's behavior. These individuals will tend to learn the same lessons because they perceive themselves as belonging to a loosely organized 'group' effort, share a common goal and previously learned set of behavior, and confront similar experiences and …show more content…
Unlike either for the Tet offensive or for policy initiatives by President Johnson, there were no visible short-run effects on public opinion that were attributable to demonstrations. While a long-run effect of demonstrations could be asserted, the assertion as such is not directly testable; by contrast, alternative long-run explanations in terms of casualties or duration of the war were testable, and when tested explained most of the variance in the decline in the public's support for the war over time. The unpopularity of Vietnam war protesters, plus the lack of association between public opinion on the war and feelings toward protesters suggest that demonstrations largely were irrelevant to Vietnam-related opinions. The change in Vietnam opinions of the segment for the public that was most attentive to the printed news media between I964 and I968 suggests that this opinion change was linked to changes in the Vietnam-related views expressed by the news media. The assumption that anti-Vietnam war demonstrations reduced, or helped to reduce, the American public's support for the Vietnam war, then, is not supported by the
For the most part, these movements are focused on why individuals join a movement, and why individuals or movements engage in civil strife. However, focusing solely on these often leads to overlooking the fact that there is a time gap between when a movement is formed and when such a movement is spread by the members throughout the population to use as political tactics. People learning the ideals of a movement occurs when a significant number of persons within the movement learn the same lessons, and therefore change the movement's behavior. These individuals will tend to learn the same lessons because they perceive themselves as belonging to a loosely organized 'group' effort, share a common goal and previously learned set of behavior, and confront similar experiences and …show more content…
Unlike either for the Tet offensive or for policy initiatives by President Johnson, there were no visible short-run effects on public opinion that were attributable to demonstrations. While a long-run effect of demonstrations could be asserted, the assertion as such is not directly testable; by contrast, alternative long-run explanations in terms of casualties or duration of the war were testable, and when tested explained most of the variance in the decline in the public's support for the war over time. The unpopularity of Vietnam war protesters, plus the lack of association between public opinion on the war and feelings toward protesters suggest that demonstrations largely were irrelevant to Vietnam-related opinions. The change in Vietnam opinions of the segment for the public that was most attentive to the printed news media between I964 and I968 suggests that this opinion change was linked to changes in the Vietnam-related views expressed by the news media. The assumption that anti-Vietnam war demonstrations reduced, or helped to reduce, the American public's support for the Vietnam war, then, is not supported by the