The Vietnam War, Cold War and Reagan's foreign policy

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Course: HIST 1302
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The Vietnam War, Cold War and Reagan’s foreign policy
1). Our involvement in Vietnam divided the nation. Discuss the range of American responses to the war, including the anti-war movement. How did American responses change over time? How did the war shape our politics in the 1960s and early 1970s?  The Vietnam War polarized the American public, coinciding with the changing societal attitudes from the 1950’s where people were more conformist, while the anti-war movement increasingly allied with social justice causes that swept the country in the 1960’s. Nonetheless, to begin with many Americans supported the war with the objective of curtailing the activities of undemocratic communist forces. On the other hand, one of the most expressed sentiments in the peace movement was that, the North Vietnamese forces were legitimately fighting to keep away external aggressors the American soldiers. This motion holds that the war was unjustified from an economic and moral viewpoint (Hall, 160). The war efforts increasingly diverted resources from social programs to finance the cost of the war, and hence the growing resentment towards the Vietnam War. Many activists of the anti-war movement were associated with leftwing politics from colleges to the movement’s leaders. Even though, more people came to support the anti war movement as economic costs of the war escalated, some were opposed to the growing counterculture that emerged from the movement.
The Vietnam War influenced American politics from the 1960’s, with President Kennedy keen on fighting the communists in order not to appear soft on the communist forces from 1963 (Lawrence, 20). Similarly, there was heightened military presence of American forces in the South East region as Vietnam policy influenced domestic policy. President Johnson also increased the number of American troops in Vietnam like his predecessor, and this was meant to reassure Americans and hawkish politicians that it was possible to win the war, and it was also aimed at deflecting attention from the war (Lawrence, 24). However, as more American people became disillusioned wi...