How the Anti-Vietnam War Movement Hastened the End of the War, the Draft and Improved America

The May Rebellion of 1970: It Hastened the early withdrawal from Cambodia and the End of the Vietnam War

By Frank Gormlie

The month of May 1970 was the very height of the anti-Vietnam war movement — and I just wrote an entire book about that fateful month, The May 1970 Rebellion. Here, then, is an excerpt from an earlier edit.

The May Rebellion changed America and changed American politics forever – both in the immediate sense and over the ensuing decades.

The historically unparalleled “100-a-day new campus protests that occurred during the four days following the student fatalities at Kent State” led to the creation of the largest student strike in American history.

It hastened the early withdrawal of the US military from Cambodia and was instrumental in forcing the end of the Vietnam war.

Neil Sheehan in A Bright Shining Lie, his prize-winning Vietnam War history, wrote that “the bonfire of protest” ignited by Nixon’s “incursion” into Cambodia was so great that the White House “had no choice but to accelerate the withdrawal” of U.S. troops from the region. Unfortunately, the pace of American withdrawal took another five years, causing further bloodshed among the Vietnamese, who overall suffered an estimated 3 million civilian and military deaths.

May 1970 was the high-water mark of the greatest anti-war movement in American history, and its demands for peace and an end to the war worked objectively to support Vietnamese liberation and to a great strengthening of the anti-imperialist movement.

In terms of its intensity, breadth and universal nature, nothing like it has been seen since. The national strike was the most forceful display of student power from a New Left that had been developing for a decade. On the campuses, the massive support for the strike was greater than any other previous attempt by the left to organize anti-Vietnam War protests. And that popular support legitimized the left’s analysis of the war and of American society in general. And significantly, the widespread support for the Black Panthers by white antiwar students demonstrated a dramatic turn among the young in addressing the system of institutionalized white racism.

And for the first time since the 1930s trade union movement, the Rebellion helped to concretize a broad, nation-wide oppositional force against the governing elite, and like those activist forebears, it was unafraid of using direct action and civil disobedience.

Rebellion led to Watergate / Nixon’s resignation 4 years later.  

As Nixon’s aide H.R. Haldeman later speculated, the Kent State shootings were “a turning point” for the president and the “beginning of his downfall slide into Watergate.” Because Nixon’s trust in the FBI soured in part due to its failure to find the “outside agitators” responsible for provoking the National Guard at Kent State, he turned to the secret “Plumbers group” — which led to the June 1972 break-in at the Watergate. In short, the repressive abuses of Nixon’s teams of agents and provocateurs geared up in the aftermath of the May Rebellion led to Watergate in 1972 – and his resignation in 1974. (But not, of course, before Nixon won a landslide re-election against the Democratic Party peace candidate, George McGovern in November 1972.)

“Vietnam Syndrome”

The May Rebellion was a major step in the creation of the “Vietnam Syndrome” – a public aversion to US military operations overseas that hampered future presidents in deploying ground troops. For two decades, it became a “third rail” in American politics, for woe to any president who tried to cross it — any substantive military engagement would be met with immediate grassroots and legislative opposition.

Academic Reform

The May Rebellion opened up and created political space for those energized by pent up campus issues and for those pushing for racial and gender equality in academic institutions. Most notably, support and sympathy for the Black Panthers, the most visible African-American organization being persecuted by the government, became a major issue and demand by the mainly white antiwar movement. This in turn lent some encouragement to Black students to intensify their own demands and rights on campus – despite at times the white antiwar students – and helped to galvanize their push for the creation of Black studies and increases in Black enrollment, faculty, and employees. Space was also opened up for Black activists to help educate white students to the racist reality their communities suffered.

In some western colleges, similar demands were made for Chicano/ Mexican-American students’ rights, studies, and departments. And on at least one campus, Native American students and community supporters expressed parallel demands. Clearly, however, the main impetus for these ethnic studies, enrollment and staffing reforms came from the Black and Latino communities themselves.

Likewise, demands and pressure from women students and faculty were made for courses in women studies or departments, including demands for more women faculty and administrators. In addition, in the atmosphere created by the Strike there was a general loosening up of restrictions on women students, such as dress codes and the curtailing of “co-ed” only curfews. Overall, this period witnessed a widening growth in the consciousness of women’s liberation and the formation of feminist groups on campuses in response to the abject societal male chauvinism, but also partly as a reaction to the male dominance of the New Left and the anti-war movement. Students at all-women schools proved their capabilities at responding to the crisis and organized protests that were just as substantial as those on mixed campuses.

Also importantly, students’ rights — or the lack thereof — were pushed to the forefront, especially at those schools where the Berkeley-inspired Free Speech Movement had never reached. Issues of freedom of speech and of assembly were raised dramatically particularly at schools where regressive administrations ruled. Crack-downs on peacefully protesting students forced them to understand that their own schools lacked an adherence to basic citizen rights as guaranteed in the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. In response, students demanded those rights, plus they pressed for more self-governance and control over their own activities, student centers and funds. And at many colleges, faculties were jolted out of their complacency and forced to confront their own complicit roles in the military-industrial-academia complex where university budgets were partially funded by the Pentagon. At some colleges, faculties made strides in increasing their own self-governance and enlarging the roles they played in the administration of the campuses.

The across-the-board demand for more relevant courses was seen in the creation of “Free Universities,” alternative class structures and contents, and the countless teach-ins and seminars organized during May. This was a major cornerstone of the wave of academic reform that swept the country during this period. At the bottom of it all was an effort to change the relationship between student and university, to exert the student’s role as more of co-equal partner in her or his own education.

Lessons in Co-optation, Accommodation and Repression

On the flip side of academic reform, administrators and law enforcement gained important insights during the rebellion over how to control or squelch campus dissent. California governor Ronald Reagan provided a model for many administrations when he abruptly closed down the entire state-funded higher education system — with hopes the rebellion would go away. It didn’t of course.

Other lessons learned by administrators were ones about accommodation and co-optation. Give in to the students, avoid militant protests, sponsor “forums” and campus plebiscites, send telegrams to Nixon asking him to bring the troops home, sign petitions — even talk and hang-out with demonstrators. But never seriously question the role of the university in a militarized society. At times, this tactic backfired, and the hypocrisy of administrators stood out like silhouettes in front of a burning barricade. This occurred when top administrators praised the calms established on numerous campus after the mass arrests of students and the jailings of strike leadership.

The dialectic of accommodation was evident in the widespread efforts to channel the dissent into letter-writing, working on the campaigns of dovish politicians and bell-ringing projects for antiwar petitions. But so many letters, telegrams and petitions swamped congressional offices that those “dovish” representatives were emboldened in their efforts to reassert Congress into the policy of war-making. All those petitions, likewise, taken door-to-door in neighborhoods around campuses spread the anti-war message, which – with time — helped turn the tide of public opinion on the war.

Another key lesson was the ability of administrators to encourage the wide-scale lobbying effort by thousands of students and faculty members who roamed the halls of congress to inform legislators about the across-the-board anguish of students to the war. It was a way to channel the Rebellion into legal and electoral avenues, particularly on the East Coast. Yet, a good number of those student lobbyists returned to their campuses frustrated, demoralized and even embittered at the responses they’d received. Some had become turned-off to the whole concept of appealing to the mostly conservative, out-of-touch white male legislators. There was even an aspect of accommodation by Congress itself when it passed legislation lowering the voting age in federal elections from twenty-one to eighteen.

Other lessons learned by the Establishment included the absolute need to coordinate actions between administrators and law enforcement. Once administrators gave in to using the repressive measures of outside agencies, by in large, they gave up control of their campuses and of any moral high ground. Repression against militancy usually spiraled into more violent resistance which garnered increased sympathy from the rest of the campus.

After the Rebellion, administrators looked at their campus grounds and tried to figure out ways to discourage mass protests and give themselves more control over their own environs. Traditional mass assembly sites were broken up with landscaping and walls; cobble stones and bricks were removed from campus pathways; and new administration buildings were designed with more glass to allow wider fields of vision and the ability to view interiors.

…

Polls over time showed American people turned against the war.

Over time, the American people began to agree with the students. In just a few months’ time, polls of Americans indicated a dramatic turn against the wars. In early November 1969, after a major speech by Nixon on his policy of “Vietnamization,” a Gallup Poll indicated that 77% of the American public were in support of his policy in Vietnam. Another poll in January 1970 showed public approval at 65%, although one in April had the approval rating dropping to 48% with 41% disapproving. A few days after Nixon announced the Cambodia invasion – but before shots were fired at Kent State – another Gallup Poll reported that a slender majority of Americans continued to support him.

Then came the full onslaught of the May Rebellion. And by June 1970, opinion polls suggested Americans opposed sending GIs “to help Cambodia” by 58% to 28%; favored a December 1971 deadline for total withdrawal by 44 to 33 %; and wanted more than ever, 58 to 24 %, to pull US forces out even if the South Vietnamese government collapsed. Nearly two-thirds polled thought the president should get congressional approval before again sending troops into Cambodia. And by April 1971, a Gallup Poll showed that 73% of the American public was in favor of a withdrawal of all US troops from Indochina by the end of the year.

Students’ visible resistance to the wars and the door-to-door campaigns by campuses had laid the groundwork for a turnabout in American public opinion about Cambodia, Vietnam and war in general.

Voting Age Lowered

In another congressional action, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 in America for the first time. The proposed 26th Amendment passed the House and Senate in the spring of 1971 and was ratified by the states on July 1, 1971. It went into effect in 1973.

The Pentagon Papers

The increase in Congressional scrutiny of the president’s war-making powers was also galvanized by the release of the “Pentagon Papers” by Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in June of 1971. Officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, and first published in the New York Times, the documents represented an official history of the US political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. They revealed the US had secretly expanded the scope of military operations, none of which had been reported in the mainstream media, and that generals and presidents had repeatedly lied to the American public. The revelations destroyed the so-called “Domino Theory” – one of the main rationales for the war and American involvement which had been parroted by diplomats, generals, and Cold Warriors for over a decade.

End of the Draft

The draft law was due to expire at the end of June 1971, but Nixon decided it needed to continue and asked Congress to approve a two-year extension. They complied by a huge margin of votes. The last draft call was on December 7, 1972, and on January 27 in 1973 the Selective Service announced that there would be no further draft calls.

The Paris Peace Accords

That announcement about the end of draft calls was dwarfed by the signing of the Paris Peace Accords the same day. Peace talks between Americans and Vietnamese had been going off and on since 1968, but were disrupted by Nixon’s Cambodian invasion, and the North Vietnamese negotiators boycotted the peace talks for a week. Nixon — under intense domestic pressure to end the war — in early May 1972 made a major concession that the US would agree to a cease-fire as a precondition to its military withdrawing from South Vietnam without North Vietnam doing the same. The concession broke a deadlock and resulted in progress in the talks over the next few months. On January 27, 1973, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Politburo Member Le Duc Tho signed the Accords. That year the two men were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, although Le Duc Tho refused to accept it.

The peace treaty established a temporary peace and an end to US direct military involvement and led to the removal of all remaining US Forces, including air and naval forces.

Case-Church Amendment

Taking advantage of a weakened president, in June 1973, Congress approved the Case-Church Amendment with veto-proof margins (named after its principal co-sponsors Senators Clifford Case (R-NJ) and Frank Church (D-ID)). This ended direct US military operations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia — unless Congressional approval of any presidential action was procured in advance. Most US forces had been withdrawn from Vietnam in March 1973 pursuant to the Paris Peace Accords, but the US continued to provide air and financial support to the South Vietnamese government until August 15, 1973, the deadline set by the Amendment.

War Powers Resolution of 1973

In November of 1973, Congress – over Nixon’s veto — passed the War Powers Act designed to limit the U.S. president’s ability to initiate or escalate military actions abroad without the express approval of Congress. Its goal was to avoid another lengthy conflict like Vietnam, an undeclared war. It requires the president, as Commander-in-Chief, to notify Congress whenever armed forces are deployed and imposes a limit of 60 days on any engagements initiated without congressional approval. While it does not outright forbid presidents from taking military action, it does create some sense of accountability.

In the decades since it was enacted, the Act’s effectiveness has been repeatedly challenged by presidents who have mostly ignored its spirt. Most assuredly, it has not actually restored the balance between executive and congressional war powers.

The End of the War

Fighting between the North Vietnamese and National Liberation forces with the government of South Vietnam broke out in March of 1973, and two years later a massive North Vietnamese offensive conquered the south on April 30, 1975. As Saigon “fell” the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were frantically airlifted out of the country. Separated since 1954, the two countries united in 1976 as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City.

Watergate Hearings Begin – May 1973

Details of the “White House Horrors” were revealed during the televised proceedings of the special Senate committee hearings into the Watergate affair, which began in May 1973. The Horrors included the Huston Plan and other elements of the White House arsenal of extra-legal actions: the “enemies list,” the covert Plumbers Unit, the proposed fire-bombing of the liberal Brookings Institute, and the burglary of the psychiatrist’s office of Daniel Ellsberg – the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Members of the Plumbers Unit – Nixon’s “fixers” – had been ordered to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate. And the break-in, of course, led to the exposure of the unprecedented Watergate scandal and the eventual resignation of President Nixon in August of 1974.