The Pro-War Movement: Domestic Support for the Vietnam War and the Making of Modern American Conservatism

Historians often note how domestic politics constricts or otherwise affects a president's foreign policy. The Vietnam War serves as a prime example of this phenomenon. The United States witnessed perhaps the most vociferous antiwar protests in its history over the country's involvement in that conflict. Some commentators allege that the antiwar movement seriously eroded the national will to fight the war and either deliberately or inadvertently encouraged North Vietnam to keep fighting. Others believe the societal upheavals were necessary to convince U.S. political elites to withdraw from an unjust and unwinnable war and to usher in a new era of civil rights. Historians and commentators still hotly argue whether the antiwar movement—identified with the left wing of American politics—along with the media's increasingly adversarial position toward the Johnson and Nixon administrations, undermined the U.S. government's ability to prosecute the war. Given this debate and the scope of the public turmoil,...