The Vietnam War Rhetoric Analysis

The war in Vietnam to do this day has gone down as one of the influential and controversial wars in United States history. The war lasted from 1955 to 1975.The nation as a whole began to uproar over the war and the major consequences of the war. There were many reasons why so many Americans were against the war. Public opinion steadily turned against the war following 1967 and by 1970 only a third of Americans believed that the U.S. had not made a mistake by sending troops to fight in Vietnam (Wikipedia). Not to mention, many young people protested because they were the ones being drafted while others were against the war because the anti-war movement grew increasingly popular among the counterculture and drug culture in American society and

Soldiers were dying, and they continued to be sent over to fight. The war itself provided a major wave of anti-war rhetoric that is still prominent today. The anti-war rhetoric was pushed through politicians, celebrities, concerts, protests, average citizens of different economic classes, but most importantly through song. “In the 1960s, several now-influential artists appealed to the disaffected counterculture’s emphasis on peace and love, especially with the sliding approval rates of the Vietnam War. As public approval of the Vietnam War dwindled in the latter half of the 1960s, popular music artists began to record songs that reflected this disapproval and ultimately became a new method of protest (Hopkins).” Not to mention, “not only has music been a direct means of anti-war protest, but the culture of peace and love, seen especially in the Woodstock festival, has also pervaded the minds of the public” (Hopkins). The controversial Vietnam War affected many people in the United States, but the war caused a socio cultural revolution through the power of

There was rock, folk music, and many more. But, in the late sixties Rock n Roll, commonly reckoned as the golden age of rock and roll when it attained a maturity unimaginable for the delinquent rebellion of the fifties, there are numerous references to the Vietnam War. The criticism of the war is submerged in or displaced by the politics of sexuality, lifestyle, and drugs. Rock music of that time period celebrated anti-materialism, spiritual awakening and social disengagement (James pg 133). Like the social movement it made possible, hippie music was ideologically and economically assimilable. All anti-war rocks songs of that time could be functional within rituals and other social practices of the anti-war movement, and on many levels rock music supplied the imaginative energy of contestation (James pg 134). Not all of these rock songs were anti-war songs. As I have mentioned before, there were a few pro- Vietnam war songs as well. For example, one of the most famous pro war songs the Ballad of the Green Beret’s written by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. The song sketched the career of the green beret, one of America’s best (James pg 135). Sadlers song is one of many pro-war songs within the Rock n Roll genre of music. Rock was huge in the socio cultural uproar of the Vietnam War through anti-war music and pro war music as