Anti-War Protest, Miami Beach In 1969
The war in Vietnam wasn't exactly popular. It was extremely unpopular with the age group that was being drafted and sent to Vietnam. By 1969 it was all too obvious that the French had abandoned the effort to keep in control of their former colony for good reason. It was an unwinnable war. It was bankrupting France. Enter the Americans!
I guess we needed the practice. We needed to learn how to waste billions of dollars, tens of thousands of young men, how to lose a war. It would get us prepared for Kuwait and make the current situations in Iraq and Afganistan look more normal. People took to the streets and demonstrated against the war. Others moved to Canada. A few went to jail.
At some point the powers that be recognized the hard facts. We negotiated a barely face saving partitioning of Vietnam into Ours and Theirs, declared a truce of sorts, and for the most part withdrew. The protestors had won.
posted by Al Kaplan at 8:36 AM
2 Comments:
Great blog ,Al. Entertaining and informative like your posts on RFF.
I was 20 at the time, was studing chemistry at university, was a fan of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and I took part at some demonstration against the Vietnam war we had in Italy.
Even if we were not so sure about reasons of this war...
robert blu (writing from italy)
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