Hell No; We Won't Go!

The Vietnam War was not going well. Americans had believed that such weak opposition would be very easily defeated. However, a war that had started in 1956 and was to cost over 50,000 American lives, take up almost half of US government spending and saw huge defeats that caused great embarrassment was now gaining massive public anger.

Images of the massacred at My Lai were too much for many Americans. The bodies of babies and children displayed as legitimate Vietcong targets could not be justified. The officers in charge were put on trial for this act.

Events like My Lai in 1968 when 150 innocent people were killed by US soldiers was unacceptable to American people. Images of brutality from South Vietnamese forces were again seen as weakening the US cause. 

A South Vietnamese policeman shoots a suspected Vietcong terrorist without trial. Another image many American's found hard to justify.

By the end of the 60s it was no longer possible for the US government to put anti-war demonstrators down to communist and radical student activists. 

The time for a withdrawal from the conflict had come.

Possibly one of the most famous of images from the Vietnam war. Children run in terror from a US napalm attack. This horrific weapon caused terrible burns to its victims. As you can see (so did many Americans) its targets were often innocent people.