When the Vietnam War started in 1955, the US was not involved. This lasted until 1964 when North Vietnam supposedly attacked two US ships. Lyndon B. Johnson saw this as a direct attack on the US, and immediately requested congress to declare war. The Gulf Tonkin Resolution was passed and the US began shipping soldiers across the world to aid South Vietnam. This threw the United States into Vietnam’s Civil War and another proxy war with Russia, furthering the Cold War. At first, most Americans were on board with the war, as they wanted to protect the United States from communism and prevent the spread of it to other countries.
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As the war raged on, moral lowered at an exponential rate. People began to get frustrated with how the war was progressing. Because of the wide expanse of media in the late 1960s, it was nearly impossible for the government to hide what was really happening in Vietnam. The Vietnam War soon became called “The Living Room War” as Americans would watch updates and footage of the war on their televisions in their living rooms. People saw bodies being carried off the field in body bags, and the overall moral turned more against the war. After multiple years it was clear to the public that not much was happening in Vietnam in terms of progress. They saw no strides being successfully taken against North Vietnam and only saw the body count that was quickly approaching 50,000. |