How Important Was The My Lai Massacre

In Generating Support For The Peace Protest Movement? Essay, Research Paper

The Peace Protest Movement was a time in the Vietnam war when people disagreed with it. This was because of a number of things. The amount of money it was costing, The amount of people killed, but it originated largely from the massacre at My Lai. The reason that the happenings in My Lai, 1968 were so unpopular is because it was the first time that people back home, in USA and all around the world saw what was actually happening to innocent citizens who had done nothing wrong, as a result of Search and Destroy missions. The My Lai Massacre was the first incident to be televised during the war and therefore, it was only then that people realised what was actually happening in Vietnam.

This caused a major uproar, which many people were involved in. Students played a major role, running demonstrations against the War, Veterans from the war threw their medals away in disgrace at what was happening, as well as a few more individuals, Richard Nixon, Coretta King, Dr Spock, Roger Laporte and Norman Morrison, who all did their own thing to symbolise the wrongs of the war. Teach-ins on why the USA should leave Vietnam, Railway Blocks with human barricades, Campus Demonstrations, Huge Public Demonstrations, Burning Draft Papers and even to the drastic case of burning themselves to death.

Not all Americans supported the peace protest movement, if they lived with the enemy, they were the enemy and deserved what they got. Did My Lai harden the support for the War effort? I don?t think so, but some people argue that it did.

The thing that worried people is they didn?t know how long that this sort of thing had been going on, without them knowing. The protests were not only aiming to try to stop the Vietnamese War, but also to remember all the other innocent civilians killed in other wars that weren?t televised before Vietnam.

I think that the main reason that the My Lai Massacre caused such an uproar was because it was the first time that anything of the sort had been televised and had so much media coverage, but could the peace protest movement have happened if the media were not involved? I think that it would have, but not to the same extent. People in the USA wouldn?t know exactly what was happening in Vietnam, but they would know about the large American soldier body count and the expense that was caused by the whole thing. People wouldn?t have gone to the same lengths as burning themselves to death for example. However, the news may have leaked out another way of a mass scale killing involving innocent citizens, however, the graphical images in peoples minds wouldn?t be the same and they couldn?t be sure that what they heard was true, if there was no graphical evidence.

I think that the My Lai Massacre was a major cause of the Peace Protest Movement, and was a significant turning pint during the Vietnam war.