s orders. The conflict between the protestors and Guard ended in the National Guard opening fire on the crowd of unarmed protestors, wounding 11 and killing 4 (Berkely, 2). "One of the biggest controversies is who was really responsible for the shootings. Though some protesters may have provoked the guards, the fact remains that the guards fired on an unarmed, peacefully protesting crowd"(McCormick, 7). Numerous instances of protest ranged throughout the country at this time, spreading even to some of our soldiers overseas, just as anxious to stop this war as the people athome. "The antiwar movement spread directly among the combat troops in Vietnam, who began to wear peace symbols and flash peace signs and movement salutes. Some units even organized their own demonstrations to link up with the movement at home" (Schlight, 45). One problem of the antiwar movement was the difficulty of finding ways to move beyond protest and symbolic acts to deeds that would actually impede the war. Unlike college students and other civilians, the troops in Vietnam had no such problem. Individual acts of rebellion, raging from desertion to killing officers who The Vietnam 8 ordered search-and-destroy missions, merged into mutinies and large-scale resistance (Sclight, 45). The polarization between large groups of people at home and our own government began to tear at the fabric of unity in our country. Vietnam destroyed the credibility of our government and the political process. Too often were they working to cut off the flow of information, to stop the unrest among the people, to squelch the voice of the people. The public came to distrust its leaders, and many officials distrusted the public (Katsiaficas, 72). As supporters of the war found themselves more popular, they were driven increasingly to rely on equating their position with "support for our boys in Vietnam" (Brown, 34). "The more the government gave support to Americans in the war, the more t...
