Introduction The American Vietnam War (1965-1975) was a complex affair that encompassed many themes and issues—from the fight to contain Communism, which was very much on the minds of many Americans especially since Kennedy had been said to have been assassinated by one, to the problem of the draft and rising protests against the war. As perception of the war changed over time with the help of media interventions, both the myth of the war and the reality of war intersected and became interwoven in a complicated tapestry of conflicting ideas, rumors and facts. The Vietnam War was both a war of political incompetence, military atrocities and government lies and also a war in which heroism still appeared and American ideals were pursued.

The Role of the Media

Following the conclusion of the “Good War,” American soldiers were idolized, their heroics and charisma captured in iconic images like the hoisting of the flag at Iwo Jima or the kiss between the sailor and the nurse in Times Square at the conclusion of the war. The life of the soldier was romanticized and numerous Hollywood films were produced that helped to create the myth of the American soldier and of WWII as the “Good War.” However, with the Vietnam War, all that changed. The Cold War had drained all enthusiasm for conflict from the American consciousness and the rising distrust of the government was destroying whatever myths of heroism still existed. Beginning with the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, followed by the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy later the same decade, the 1960s proved to be a turbulent time. A war abroad was the last thing Americans wanted—especially when there was so much conflict at home. Moreover, a war in the jungles of Vietnam was much different from a war in the Old Country, and much less glamorous thanks to real life footage captured by photojournalists who were able to bring the war home in a much more realistic way than had happened in the 1940s.

The Pentagon Papers

The media also helped to leak information regarding the government cover-up of how the war was actually playing out. While Johnson and Nixon tried to give the impression that the war was going well and that America was winning against the Communists, the Pentagon Papers obtained by Daniel Ellsberg and leaked to the New York Times told a different story: it revealed a story of untold carnage, of thousands of American lives lost, of little actual ground gained in the war, and of immense waste, cost, and sacrifice. The media thus painted the war in a way that was shattering to the myths of war that had been constructed during WWII. And it didn’t help that the government responded to these revelations with more underhanded tactics—like ordering “a break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to find discrediting information about Ellsberg.”[footnoteRef:2] This was the beginning of a series of crimes that would eventually embroil the President in the Watergate scandal and thoroughly disillusion the American public of any trust that remained in government power. [2: Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1997), 292.]

My Lai

My Lai was another revelation that shaped the perception of the Vietnam War and the media again was the one to help show how this unholy slaughter of Vietnamese men, women and children by American soldiers was a travesty of the sort that the U.S. simply did not hear about during the “Good War.” There was nothing to romanticize with reports like the My Lai massacre making the rounds, embarrassing the American public at home and triggering resentment for soldiers by those opposing the war. The media helped shape the image of the solder of Vietnam as rabid, murderous and inhumane—a stark contrast to the types of virtues and honor that the public wanted to project abroad. My Lai and the Pentagon Papers both caused Americans to lose respect for soldiers and for the military as well as the government who had gotten them all into this mess in the first place and which had then proceeded to lie to the public about how well it...

The visuals provided by the media of dead Vietnamese children and elderly showed the grim face of war that left a scar in the public consciousness.
The Role of the Military

The United States had not been prepared to fight a guerrilla-style campaign in the jungles of Vietnam. The U.S. wanted to fight a WWII-style war in a terrain that was known and held by an elusive enemy. The military wanted to engage in a pin-down-and-attack type of campaign, but the reality of the situation was that Vietnam was like nothing the U.S. had previously encountered. To counter the guerrilla war it faced, the U.S. turned to unconventional tactics—like Operation Ranch Hand—i.e., chemical warfare in hopes of gaining an advantage over the bush.

Operation Ranch Hand

Operation Ranch Hand was designed to defoliate the jungles and fields of Vietnam and thus take away the advantage of the North Vietnamese—the terrain—over the Americans. The most commonly used chemical agent used by the U.S. was Agent Orange, which was dropped over Vietnam from 1965 to 1971.[footnoteRef:3] Agent Orange had adverse side effects on American troops—such as the increase in cancer. By the end of the 1970s, veterans were filing claims against the government for the ill health they were suffering as a result of the U.S.’s use of chemical warfare on the Vietnamese. This only added to the fallout of the war for people at home and increased the perception that the military was not operating very wisely in Vietnam. [3: Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1997), 193.]

Tet Offensive

The Tet Offensive in 1968 also played a part in reducing the level of public support for the public. It completely caught the Americans by surprise and led directly to Johnson deciding not to run for re-election.[footnoteRef:4] It was a pivotal moment in the war—a moment unlike any that had occurred during WWII and the U.S.’s relatively brief part in that conflict. The Tet Offensive showed that the U.S. was simply out of its depth and was exhausted in terms of military strategy and preparation. Congressman Henry Reuss, a Democrat from Wisconsin, expressed his total shock as the Tet Offensive reports began making the rounds at home. He angrily wondered, “What the hell’s going on here…I thought we were winning this war!”[footnoteRef:5] The images broadcast over the media, of South Vietnam in a swirl of chaos as the enemy attacked, only added to the collective feeling at home that the U.S. military was ill-prepared to handle the Vietnamese Communists. Everywhere, in fact, there appeared to be chaos. The war had been dragging on and people were tired of it at home. Johnson, as the major cheerleader of the war, was its first main political casualty—Nixon would be the second. [4: Michael H. Hunt, A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 85.] [5: Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975 (Oxford University Press, 1997), 262.]

The Protest

Vietnam Veterans Against the War was a group led by veteran John Kerry and it helped to shape the perception of the war as well. As Lien-Hang T. Nguyen notes, the Veterans Against the War “staged effective demonstrations in the nation’s capital” and its members and leaders (including Kerry) “testified against the war in a Senate committee hearing.”[footnoteRef:6] Their testimony helped to support the narrative already being driven by the media—namely, that Americans were butchering innocent Vietnamese. Kerry delivered his testimony in 1971 and become the image of the new soldier hero—the soldier who returned home from the war in order to protest it and call for an end to the senseless killing. This type of soldier would go on to be immortalized in films like Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July and Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump. The soldiers were not all bad—and some had the voice of conscience and honor. However, at home, confusion reigned—and the people…