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  3. Opposition to the Vietnam War in the United States developed immediately afte

Opposition to the Vietnam War in the United States developed immediately afte

游客2023-12-21  10
问题    Opposition to the Vietnam War in the United States developed immediately after the beginning of the war, chiefly among traditional pacifists, such as the American Friends Service Committee and antinuclear activists. Early protests were organized around questions about the morality of U. S. military involvement in Vietnam. Virtually every key event of the war, including the Tet Offensive and the invasion of Cambodia, contributed to a steady rise in antiwar sentiment. The revelation of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 caused a dramatic turn against the war in national polls.
   Students and professors began to organize"teach-ins"on the war in early 1965 at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of California at Berkeley. The teach-ins were large forums for discussion of the war between students and faculty members. Eventually, virtually no college or university was without an organized student movement, often spearheaded by Students for a Democratic Society(SDS). SDS organized the first major stu- dent-led demonstration against the war in April 1963. Another important organization was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee(SNCC), which denounced the war as racist as early as 1963. Students also joined"The Resis- tance", an organization that urged its student members to refuse to register for the draft, or if drafted to refuse to serve.
   While law enforcement authorities usually blamed student radicals for the violence that took place on campuses, often it was police themselves who initiated bloodshed as they cleared out students occupying campus buildings during "sit-ins"or street demonstrations. As antiwar sentiment mounted in intensity from 1965 to 1970 so did violence, culmi- nating in the killings of four students at Kent State in Ohio and of two at Jackson State College in Mississippi.
   Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, and other black leaders denounced the U. S. presence in Vietnam as evidence of American imperialism. Martin Luther King, Jr. , had grown increasingly concerned about the racist nature of the war, toward both the Vietnamese and the large numbers of young blacks who were sent to fight for the United States in Vietnam. In 1967 King delivered a major address at New York’s Riverside Church in which he condemned the war, calling the United States"the world’s greatest purveyor of violence. "
   On October 15, 1969, citizens across the United States participated in"The Moratorium", the largest one-day dem- onstration against the war. Millions of people stayed home from work to mark their opposition to the war;college and high school students demonstrated on hundreds of campuses. A Baltimore judge even interrupted court proceedings for a moment of reflection on the war. In Vietnam, troops wore black armbands in honor of the home-front protest. Nixon claimed there was a"great silent majority"who supported the war and he called on them to back his policies. Polls showed, however, that at that time half of all Americans felt that the war was"morally indefensible, "while 2 percent admitted that it was a mistake. In November 1969 students from all over the country headed for Washington, D)C), for the Mobilization Against the War. Over 40, 000 participated in a March Against Death from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House, each carrying a notice with the name of a young person killed in Vietnam.
   Opposition existed even among conservatives and business leaders, for primarily economic reasons. The government was spending more than ＄2 billion per month on the war by 1971. Some U. S. corporations, ranging from beer distributors to manufacturers of jet aircraft, benefited greatly from this money initially, but the high expense of the war began to cause serious inflation and rising tax rates. Some corporate critics warned of future costs to care for the wounded. Labor unions were also becoming increasingly active in opposition to the war, as they were forced to respond to the concerns of their members that the draft was imposing an unfair burden on working-class people.
   Another factor that turned public opinion against the war was the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 13, 1971, by the New York Times. Compiled secretly by the U. S. Department of Defense, the papers were a complete history of the involvement of numerous government agencies in the Vietnam War. They showed a clear pattern of cheating toward the public. One of the senior analysts compiling this history, Daniel Ellsberg, secretly photocopied key documents and gave them to the New York Times. Subsequently, support for Nixon’s war policies plummeted, and polls showed that 2 percent of the public now considered the war"immoral, "while 70 percent demanded an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.  [br] What was the most important reason for the U. S. government to stop the Vietnam War and withdraw the troops?
选项 A、The economy.
B、The expenses.
C、The lasting time was too long.
D、The antiwar movements both inside and outside the country.
答案 D
解析 见最后两段，选D。
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