Vietnam War Opposition

Using your knowledge gained from previous readings in the Vietnam War reading, complete the following.


Title: Vietnam War Opposition Labels: Vietnam_War, Vietcong, Tet_Offensive, My_Lai_Massacre, Vietnam_War_Protest, 1968


The assignment is due by at the beginning of class on Friday.


You are an opponent of American involvement in Vietnam. Use the evidence in this chapter to begin formulating ideas to make a poster or a leaflet putting forward your views. You will work on this in class on Friday. You can include stories and images from pages 353-61. However, you must also include an explanation that will convince the supporters of containment that the policy is not working in Vietnam. OPTIONAL: Instead of opposing the war, you can support it. Feel free to make a COUNTER-ARGUMENT that the war is necessary to contain Communism.

1. Note all of the reasons why you feel the war in Vietnam is wrong.

-The My Lai Massacre (the general issue of brutal civillian deaths)
-use of chemical weapons like agent orange
-the US is not making a lot of progress against the Vietcong guerilla army
-methods like bombing (operation rolling thunder) are costly and only slow down the viet cong


2. Note what you re trying to achieve with this poster. (e.g. to convince people to write to their Congressmen to get the troops out.)

With this poster I will try to convince to publicly protest against the Vietnam War.

3. List possible images for your poster. Think about: background (e.g. destroyed villages); the central image (e.g. picture of a young soldier); whether you will need words to explain your image.

Possible images for the poster:

-A soldier (with his head facing down) in the midst of a destroyed village
-Politicians (portrayed unflatteringly) dump money and american soldiers into a giant hold labled "Vietnam"
-Vietnamese civillians running away from chemical weapons
-a group of american protesters

4. List some possible slogans for your poster.
Possible solgans

"Protest the war; stop the waste of lives"
"No one wins in a war like this"
"Show some humanity. Protest the Vietnam War"