# Did the 1960's anti-Vietnam-war protests achieve anything?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [April 25, 2024, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751 "2024-04-25T18:03:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/41 "2024-04-29T11:30:55Z")
Don’t overlook that the push to end the draft, was much focussed on the fact that white kids were getting excused by going to college, while black kids were getting sent to die.
George Bush’s kid dodging the draft would have looked very bad, so he went, but somehow found himself serving in Texas, go figure!
Once these inequities were illuminated, those defending the draft had very little to say. The writing was on the wall.
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### Author:  [@BayLeaves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BayLeaves)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/42 "2024-04-29T11:38:00Z")
I was active in the anti war movement. I think the disorderly behavior of many protesters angered the voters and provoked many of them to vote for hawks who prolonged the war.
I think demonstrations rarely have a positive effect. What matters is who wins on election day.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/43 "2024-04-29T19:55:49Z")
> [@elbows](#):
>
> George Bush’s kid dodging the draft would have looked very bad, so he went, but somehow found himself serving in Texas, go figure!
He joined the National Guard.
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### Author:  [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/44 "2024-04-29T19:57:26Z")
> [@BayLeaves](#):
>
> I think the disorderly behavior of many protesters angered the voters and provoked many of them to vote for hawks who prolonged the war.
This is exactly my thought as well. To a lot of folks, it looked like rich spoiled white hippie kids were daring to protest against the country that everybody should support. Those people definitely voted for hawks, both R and D.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/45 "2024-04-29T20:39:25Z")
> [@TriPolar](#):
>
> This has always been a specious claim. I don’t know if there’s a single confirmed incident of the alleged spitting on Vietnam vets other than figuratively by the government.
Very true. I would say, however, that a lot of vets, myself included, did feel that the demonstrations were directed at us rather than at the war and the government. It was a bad feeling, I can tell you, to feel that you were hated by your fellow countrymen simply because you did what was asked of you. I blame the messaging for that, and the fact that what news we got over there was filtered through government agencies.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/46 "2024-04-29T21:05:02Z")
> [@TriPolar](#):
>
> This has always been a specious claim. I don’t know if there’s a single confirmed incident of the alleged spitting on Vietnam vets other than figuratively by the government.
It was rare certainly and almost a UL, but-
> **[Ask Amy: Was spitting on service members an ‘urban myth’?](https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/11/11/ask-amy-was-spitting-on-service-members-an-urban-myth/)**
>
> Readers take issue with discounting of recollections from Vietnam War era.
A couple of vets confirmed it happened. So, not quite a UL, but much more rare than the meme would have you believe.
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### Author:  [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/47 "2024-04-29T21:18:26Z")
> [@Railer13](#):
>
> To a lot of folks, it looked like rich spoiled white hippie kids were daring to protest against the country that everybody should support.
Part of that perception, of course, was due to racist assumptions on the part of media outlets and consumers that rich white kids were by default the face of the antiwar movement and its principal constituents. [Black American public figures and protestors played a much larger role than is generally remembered today.](https://www.amistadresource.org/civil_rights_era/black_opposition_to_vietnam.html#:~:text=Malcolm%20X%20was%20the%20first,were%20forced%20to%20choose%20sides)
> [@](#):
>
> […] in 1967, 64 percent of all eligible African-Americans were drafted, but only 31 percent of eligible whites. During 1965-66, the casualty rate for blacks was twice that of whites. Malcolm X was the first prominent African American leader to denounce the Vietnam War, and others soon followed his lead.
>
> During the bitter national debate on Vietnam, all public leaders within black America were forced to choose sides. Black progressives in electoral politics began to speak out in opposition to the war. As a dedicated pacifist, Martin Luther King took a strong public stand against it. […]
>
> On April 4, 1967, speaking at Harlem’s Riverside Church, King announced: “It would be very inconsistent for me to teach and preach nonviolence in this situation and then applaud violence when thousands of thousands of people, both adults and children, are being maimed and mutilated and many killed in this way.” Eleven days later, Dr. King organized a rally of 125,000 in protest against the war. […]
>
> Using the Reverend’s rhetoric linking inhumane foreign policy to the injustices of the American domestic social landscape, students continued to raise questions and demonstrate against the war they saw as an extension of American racism. On May 14, as Jackson State College students protested the injustices of the war and American racism, the police opened fire on the rally, killing two and injuring 12. Occurring right after the Kent State shootings, where four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard as they protested, the events at Jackson State set off a widespread outrage that linked the war to police violence and domestic injustice. The protest of a spectrum of black leaders, athletes, activists, artists, and entertainers helped force the federal government to start withdrawing troops from Vietnam in late 1969.
How many people remember the Jackson State killings of Black student protestors, as opposed to the far better-known Kent State killings of non-Black ones?
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### Author:  [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/48 "2024-04-29T21:37:55Z")
The short answer is yes. The long answer is that it focused the attention of some politicians on the issue to the point where somebody turned it into a campaign for the presidency and then voters weighed it.
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### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/49 "2024-04-29T21:52:16Z")
Correct, and for a war the officials knew from the start was not really our business, and also an exercise in futility.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2024, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/50 "2024-04-29T22:18:58Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> The draft ended at the beginning of 1973, after Nixon’s landslide re-election. To be fair, by 1973 [troop strength had fallen 95% from the peak](https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=11&psid=3844), and [99% of American soldiers had already been killed by then](https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics) so nationwide protests would have been meaningless. The American war was essentially over.
According to [this](https://www.sss.gov/history-and-records/induction-statistics/), the number of draftees dropped by over a third every year past 1969. The draft may have ended in 1973, but even in 1971 it was down below pre-Vietnam War levels. That, IMHO, did more than anything else to end the antiwar movement.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [May 1, 2024, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/51 "2024-05-01T20:32:30Z")
> [@TriPolar](#):
>
> Johnson’s resignation was an immediate result.
Boris Johnson? LBJ didn’t resign.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/52 "2024-05-02T02:03:53Z")
I have no idea why I wrote ‘resignation’.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/53 "2024-05-02T02:38:10Z")
It demonstrated that the US public, while it would support a draft for a genuinely existential threat like World War Two and would grudgingly tolerate a peacetime draft to man the USA’s commitments to N.A.T.O., would NOT support a draft for a quasi-imperial war to bolster the USA’s geopolitical strategic position. The hopelessness of ever having a draft for such adventures as the USA’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq led to the modern reliance on a army of professional volunteers. Which is the modern analogy to how ancient Rome moved away from having a citizen army man the borders of a city-state to having professional legionnaires man the frontiers of an empire; an analogy which is rather disturbing if you’ve ever read “Are We Rome?” by Cullen Murphy.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/54 "2024-05-02T02:49:48Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> While some protestors only wanted to end the Viet Nam war, quite a lot wanted to end war in general.
I blame nuclear weapons and “duck and cover” for producing the first generation of American youth who grew up with the fear of annihilation; and who were as a result natural pacifists who saw war and militarism as insane, to a degree their WW2 elders could scarcely imagine.
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### Author:  [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/55 "2024-05-02T11:46:58Z")
I’m glad Kimstu brought up what happened at Jackson State.
I can’t really reach a conclusion about what was “achieved” by the protests but am glad they occurred nonetheless. Rightly or wrongly, a group felt strongly enough to speak out about perceived injustice and that’s a fine old American, or even global, tradition that I appreciate.
People comfortable in their authority will never get that.
Guess I should head over to the Gaza thread now.
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### Author:  [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/56 "2024-05-02T12:39:10Z")
> [@Chefguy](#):
>
> I can tell you, to feel that you were hated by your fellow countrymen simply because you did what was asked of you. I blame the messaging for that,
Interesting parallels to the recent “defund the police” sloganeering.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/57 "2024-05-02T22:37:49Z")
I was listening to a political science type who had done a study of protests around the world. His basic conclusion is that they take a long time to move the needle. Civil rights boycotts and marches went on for years, Vietnam protests went on for years, anti-Apartheid protests went on for years, etc. That doesn’t mean they aren’t effective, just that trying to change national policy in a few weeks is like trying to turn around a supertanker in a few feet.
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### Author:  [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2024, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/58 "2024-05-02T23:35:25Z")
> [@Alessan](#):
>
> That, IMHO, did more than anything else to end the antiwar movement.
I had heard that the 1970 Sterling Hall bombing at UW-Madison ended student protests. Killing someone to protest war didn’t go over too well.
Though I was only 9 at the time; my memory may be a little off.
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### Author:  [@sboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sboy)
#### Post date: [June 16, 2024, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/59 "2024-06-16T13:06:44Z")
RE: No more draft…YES I was in one of the early “Lottery” drafts ( no real deferments) Myself and numerous friends of mine made life - changing- decisions based upon whether they thought they were going to be drafted or not. Todays volunteer army does not have the angry families of the war- dead decrying the latest bloody overseas blunder
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### Author:  [@BayLeaves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BayLeaves)
#### Post date: [September 28, 2024, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-1960s-anti-vietnam-war-protests-achieve-anything/1000751/60 "2024-09-28T22:25:45Z")
I was active in the anti war movement. I always respected combat veterans of the war.
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