How many people supported the vietnam war

It was the older generation that worried most about U. In the s, the use of U. Times-Mirror Center surveys conducted in posited potential scenarios in which U. In every situation, Americans ages 65 and older were far less willing to support the deployment of U. These scenarios envisioned such purposes as sending troops to prevent famines, restore law and order in Asian or African countries if their governments completely broke down, or dispatching troops to the Middle East to make sure that U.

Younger people were more likely to support the use of air power in these hypothetical scenarios as well. The generation gap in attitudes toward the Vietnam War did not erode over time. Gallup surveys conducted between and show that over time people of all ages increasingly expressed the view that U. Nearly eight years later, as U. Older Americans are more opposed to the use of military force than those in other age groups, but most believe that, in principle, the best way to ensure peace is through military strength rather than effective diplomacy.

Americans under age 30 generally favor the opposite approach. Younger people also have a much more favorable opinion of the United Nations than do older Americans and are more likely to say that the international body has a good influence on the way things are going in the United States. Reports of the Tet Offensive stunned the U. With his approval ratings dropping in an election year, Johnson called a halt to bombing in much of North Vietnam though bombings continued in the south and promised to dedicate the rest of his term to seeking peace rather than reelection.

Despite the later inclusion of the South Vietnamese and the NLF, the dialogue soon reached an impasse, and after a bitter election season marred by violence, Republican Richard M. Nixon won the presidency. In an attempt to limit the volume of American casualties, he announced a program called Vietnamization : withdrawing U. In addition to this Vietnamization policy, Nixon continued public peace talks in Paris, adding higher-level secret talks conducted by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger beginning in the spring of The North Vietnamese continued to insist on complete and unconditional U.

The next few years would bring even more carnage, including the horrifying revelation that U. After the My Lai Massacre , anti-war protests continued to build as the conflict wore on.

In and , there were hundreds of protest marches and gatherings throughout the country. On November 15, , the largest anti-war demonstration in American history took place in Washington, D. The anti-war movement, which was particularly strong on college campuses, divided Americans bitterly. For some young people, the war symbolized a form of unchecked authority they had come to resent.

For other Americans, opposing the government was considered unpatriotic and treasonous. As the first U. Nixon ended draft calls in , and instituted an all-volunteer army the following year. In , a joint U. The invasion of these countries, in violation of international law, sparked a new wave of protests on college campuses across America. At another protest 10 days later, two students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed by police. By the end of June , however, after a failed offensive into South Vietnam, Hanoi was finally willing to compromise.

Kissinger and North Vietnamese representatives drafted a peace agreement by early fall, but leaders in Saigon rejected it, and in December Nixon authorized a number of bombing raids against targets in Hanoi and Haiphong. Known as the Christmas Bombings, the raids drew international condemnation. Some of the papers from the archive of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in A top-secret Department of Defense study of U.

The report, leaked to the Times by military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, further eroded support for keeping U. During this Census count, the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is: 13,, This makes calculations of those alive, even in , difficult to maintain. Corrections and confirmations to this errored index resulted in the addition of U. Isolated atrocities committed by American Soldiers produced torrents of outrage from anti-war critics and the news media while Communist atrocities were so common that they received hardly any media mention at all.

The United States sought to minimize and prevent attacks on civilians while North Vietnam made attacks on civilians a centerpiece of its strategy. Americans who deliberately killed civilians received prison sentences while Communists who did so received commendations.

From to , the National Liberation Front assassinated 36, Vietnamese and abducted another 58, The death squads focused on leaders at the village level and on anyone who improved the lives of the peasants such as medical personnel, social workers, and school teachers.

The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March How could we lose a war we had already stopped fighting? We fought to an agreed stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January It called for release of all U. The , evacuees in April during the fall of Saigon consisted almost entirely of civilians and Vietnamese military, NOT American military running for their lives.

There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia primarily Cambodia the first two years, after the fall of Saigon in , than there were during the ten years the U. Thanks for the perceived loss and the countless assassinations and torture visited upon Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians goes mainly to the American media and their undying support-by-misrepresentation of the anti-War movement in the United States.

As with much of the Vietnam War, the news media misreported and misinterpreted the Tet Offensive. It was reported as an overwhelming success for the Communist forces and a decided defeat for the U. Nothing could be further from the truth. Despite initial victories by the Communists forces, the Tet Offensive resulted in a major defeat of those forces.

Still, militarily, the Tet Offensive was a total defeat of the Communist forces on all fronts. It resulted in the death of some 45, NVA troops and the complete, if not total destruction of the Viet Cong elements in South Vietnam. With the passage of time, the percentage of Americans who think the U.

This is particularly true of younger Americans. Americans who are under 50 are less likely to think the U. Seven in 10 Democrats think the U. Independents tend to think the U. Polling by the Gallup Organization at the time indicates that before the Tet Offensive, most Americans were supportive of the war effort.