In the summer of 1968, during a protest in Chicago, people saw on television the violent way in which the police behaved. These protests resulted in violent conflicts between police and students. Others took their case to court on the grounds that they were conscientious objectors and had moral or religious reasons for not fighting a war. Some became draft dodgers by remaining students as long as possible, or by going to Canada.
As a protest, many burned their draft cards (= documents showing that they could be called for military service). They said they should not be forced to fight a war that they believed was wrong. Opposition to it was led mainly by university students, many of whom were young men facing the draft (= service in the armed forces). In 1975 the government of South Vietnam fell and the country was taken over by the Communist forces. Finally, in 1972, Nixon sent Henry Kissinger to negotiate a ceasefire (= an agreement to end fighting), and afterwards the US was no longer directly involved in the war, though it continued to provide supplies. The war then spread to Vietnam's neighbour, Cambodia. When Richard Nixon became President he at first tried to attack hard and force the Viet Cong to come to an agreement.
As the war became more intense it lost support at home and also in other countries. In 1968 the Viet Cong started a major attack known as the Tet Offensive, and the US position in South Vietnam was threatened. Discipline became a problem, and the use of drugs was common. Many US soldiers were not sure why they were fighting the war and became traumatized (= very upset and shocked) by the violence around them. In 1968 the My Lai massacre, in which over 300 ordinary people, including women and children, were killed by US soldiers, shocked Americans at home. There were also reports of atrocities (= extremely violent and cruel acts) committed by both sides. The US used bombs against the Vietnamese soldiers, and chemicals to destroy crops, which had a terrible effect on people as well as on the land. It was easy to keep the Communist forces, called the National Liberation Front or the Viet Cong, out of South Vietnam, but much harder to defeat them. In 1964, after an attack on US ships, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which gave President Lyndon B Johnson greater powers to fight a war, and in the spring of 1965 Marines were sent to South Vietnam. Under President John F Kennedy, in the early 1960s, many US soldiers were sent to the South as advisers. In 1954 the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam into the Communist North and the anti-Communist South. At first, under President Dwight D Eisenhower, it provided the French with supplies. The US became involved in Vietnam only gradually. Vietnam, a colony of France, wanted to become independent, but the US believed that Communists were behind the movement, and so opposed it. Culture the Vietnam War the Vietnam War Like the Korean War, the Vietnam War was a result of US policy during the Cold War, a period when Americans believed that Communism, the political system in the Soviet Union and China, was a threat to their security and power.