Year 10 Attitudes to The Vietnam War History Essay

The Vietnam War is one of the most controversial and distinctive wars in modern history. It was one where a global superpower lost to a force with inferior weapons and numbers. The public’s attitude to the war and Australia’s involvement in it changed over the course of it, eventually, through protests and moratoriums, it ended.

The Australian Government decided to send troops to Vietnam in 1964. Fear of communism, belief in the ‘Domino Theory’, and Australia’s policy of ‘forward defense’ were the main reasons for the Australia’s involvement in the war. The Australian public was extremely worried about communism. This was evident in the large number of people who voted in favor of banning the communist party in Australia.  The war was initially supported and was seen as a necessary step to contain the communist threat. The reason the Menzies government stated was the reason for the war was the South Vietnamese government’s request for military assistance. Australia and the US then became involved. They thought of the North Vietnamese as sub-human, second-rate fighters. This proved to be a fatal error as the Viet Cong were masters of guerilla warfare and had more local support than the foreigners.

In 1964, conscription was re-introduced and in 1965, the Liberal government passed legislation enabling conscripts to serve overseas. The conscripts at the time, the “baby boomers”, born after WWII, were opposed to this. The anti-conscription protests of the baby boomers soon turned into anti Vietnam War protests. Before conscription was introduced, there were very few people protesting against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The RSL and some Liberal Party members supported conscription and the baby boomers and their family were opposed to it. This gave way to the SOS (Save Our Sons) movement, the Draft Resistance Movement, and the “hippie” movement. Around the ‘Tet Offensive’ resistance was highest- some students were killed in protests and riots.

The Vietnam War was also called the “Lounge Room War” because it was the first televised war- people could see the horrors of it in their living rooms every day, strengthening the call to the end our involvement in it. The camera became one of the most powerful weapons in the war because of its ability to record the chaos and show it to the public. Some of the photos, such as a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in protest to the Diem government’s crackdown on Buddhists, and the summary execution of a suspected Viet Cong guerilla during the Tet Offensive, have become synonomous with the war.   Also, America’s use of chemical defoliants, such as the infamous “Agent Orange”, and the atrocities committed by the soldiers, such as the My Lai Massacre, outraged many who had previously not been opposed to the war. The Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh once said “you can kill ten of our men for every man we kill of yours. Even at those odds, we will win and you will lose.” The Americans finally realized this and saw that they had been bogged down in a long, hard, dirty war. The public also realized this. The protests, resistance movements, and moratoriums could not be ignored. We withdrew and Saigon fell on April 29 1975.

The Vietnam War is a war unique in so many ways. It was the first televised war, a war where a superpower lost to an inferior force, a war where protests and resistance movements caused it to end. At the start of the war, nearly no one was opposed to it- communism was too great a threat. At the end of it, we lost, partly because of the amount of opposition to it.