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that national liberation struggles met by fierce imperialist attacks were the main feature of today's world. Due to its geography and its history of defeating the French some people saw that Vietnam might be the country to end the American boast that "we never lost a war".
Because the main forces for change were outside the imperialist nations, it is not surprising that students were the largest contingent of the anti-war movement. Not because they were oppressed but because they had more leisure time for reading, more inclination toward intellectual work, greater access to books and news sources, including foreign sources,
students came to the fore.
In addition they had greater freedom to go on
demonstrations, print leaflets, etc.
With the possible exception of the great heroism of the Vietnamese
themselves, the "single most important influence on white (anti-war)
students remained the example of black students in the South".1 In the summer of 1964 when three Civil Rights workers were slain in Mississippi, Bob Moses of SNCC tied these killings in with the killings in Vietnam. Many of the early anti-war activists first became critical of their own country when they saw the poverty and terror and lack of democracy in the South.
Mario Savio, the leader of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley,
was just back from Mississippi and a leader of the Friends of SNCC group on campus.
Even in Congress, Adam Clayton Powell was the only member of
the House who did not support the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
(He voted
present.)
The growing strength of the oppressed nations had important indirect
influences on the anti-war movement.
European, Japanese and Canadian
imperialists had doubts about U.S. policy in Vietnam.
These imperialist
nations wanted to maintain their profitable trade and investments in oppressed nations which might eventually turn against the U.S. in greater
numbers.
Perhaps also they did not think they could afford military
adventures of the scale the U.S. was involved in.
important difference from the Korean War.
In any case, this was an
U Thant, Secretary General of
the U.N., criticized the U.S. bombing in Vietnam whereas in Korea, the U.S.