Why did the Vietnam War become so controversial?

By: S. Dias

The Vietnam War stands as one of the most controversial conflicts in American history. What began as a Cold War intervention to prevent the spread of communism gradually descended into a brutal, costly, and deeply divisive war. There are several key factors to consider when answering why the war provoked such widespread outrage and opposition. 
From the outset, American involvement in Vietnam was driven by the Domino Theory. President Eisenhower and his Secretary of State were convinced that China and the USSR were planning to spread communism throughout Asia. The Domino Theory argued that if one country fell to communism, then others would follow like a row of dominoes. When applied, this meant that if Vietnam fell to communism, then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma and possibly India would likely fall as well. To prevent this, the Americans helped anticommunist leader Ngo Dinh Diem set up the Republic of South Vietnam in 1955. However, Diem's regime was highly unpopular within the Vietnamese people as he treated Vietnamese peasants with contempt, showed little respect to the Buddhist religion and led an extremely corrupt government. Although they were frustrated by Diem's actions, the USA supported his regime with $1.6 billion in the 1950s as there was no one better. This compromised the moral credibility of the American cause from the very beginning. 
As the war escalated, so did the price Americans were paying for it. There were nearly 500,000 troops in Vietnam and the USA was spending $20 to $30 billion a year, yet the Viet Cong still managed to launch major offensives that took US forces completely by surprise. In 1967, Life Magazine calculated it cost $400,000 for each Viet Cong guerrilla killed. At this point, a massive portion of the US government budget was being directed onto a war that seemed useless for many Americans instead of on social reforms. The introduction of the draft made the war personal for millions of American families. As soon as young men left school or college they could be called up into the US army, with the average age of US troops falling to just 19. The racial dimension of conscription added further controversy, as 30% of African Americans were drafted compared to only 19% of white Americans, deepening existing tensions around racial inequality in the United States. 
The tactics employed by American forces became another major source of moral outrage. Search and destroy was an American military policy developed to combat guerrilla warfare, however it soon became infamous for a few reasons. The raids were often based on inadequate information, meaning the US often attacked villages without any reliable intelligence, resulting in them missing the Viet Cong fighters or harming the wrong people. For every weapon captured, there was a body count of six, meaning that either the body count numbers were exaggerated, or a fair share of the body count consisted of innocent civilians. The Americans also used chemical weapons to combat the Viet Cong, mainly Agent Orange and Napalm. During the war, the Americans used 82 million liters of Agent Orange to spray thousands of square kilometers of jungle. Napalm would also destroy the jungles where guerrillas might hide, but it also burned through skin to the bone. These chemical weapons were responsible for the harm and death of many civilians and soldiers, and their widespread use was deeply troubling to the public at home and abroad. 
Then, in early 1968, the Tet Offensive shattered this confidence. During the New Year holiday, Viet Cong fighters attacked cities, towns, government buildings and US bases, with one unit getting inside the US embassy in Saigon. A CBS journalist famously said, "What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war." Although it had been a military defeat for North Vietnam, it caused a big shock in the American public and marked a turning point in US involvement in the war. The Tet Offensive showed the American people and most of their leaders that the Vietnam War would require greater effort over a far longer period than it was worth. People started to raise questions on whether this was a war worth fighting, and whether what the US troops were doing was morally correct, as the retaking of towns captured in the offensive resulted in the deaths of many civilians and the destruction of the ancient city of Hue. 
Nothing damaged the American war effort more in the eyes of the public than the My Lai Massacre in 1968. In March, a unit of young American soldiers called Charlie Company started a search and destroy mission in My Lai where they had been ordered to destroy all houses, dwellings and livestock. Between 300 and 400 civilians were killed, of these numbers, there were mostly women, children and old men. No Viet Cong were found and only three weapons were recovered. At the time, the American army treated the operation as a success and lied about the casualties. Twelve months later, a soldier exposed the truth, and Life Magazine published photographs of the massacre, shocking the American public. This led people to the conclusion that the war in Vietnam had gone terribly wrong and that American troops should be withdrawn. 
The Vietnam War was also a media war, meaning that thousands of television, radio and newspaper reporters and photographers would send back to the USA and Europe reports and pictures of the fighting. Newspapers and televisions showed crying children burned by American Napalm bombs, prisoners being tortured or executed, and women and children watching their houses being burned down. Instead of the Vietnam War becoming a symbol of a US crusade against communism, it was thought of as a symbol of defeat and moral corruption. Between 1968 and 1970, antiwar protests led by students and civil rights campaigners reached their peak. In the first half of 1968, there were over 100 demonstrations against the war involving 40,000 students, and in 1969, one of the largest political protests in American history took place in Washington DC with almost 700,000 protestors. 
The Vietnam War became so controversial because it combined an enormous human and financial cost with tactics that were difficult to morally justify, a growing realisation that the war could not be won, and a dramatic erosion of trust between the American government and its people. What had been sold as a short and easy war had become a prolonged, brutal conflict that claimed millions of lives, including an estimated 1 million Viet Cong and North Vietnamese dead, while failing to achieve its objectives. When the last American troops finally left Vietnam in March 1973, they left behind not victory, but a deeply scarred nation, both at home and abroad. ​