policy - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
Before the Vietnam War became an issue there was the budding
nucleus of a youth movement that had most of the rharacteristics ob5erved
in the full-blown movement of 1967-1969. These characteristics involved:
(1) A sense of alienation from the objectives and accomplishments of
American society.
(2). A belief in the immorality of power as exercisedby authorities
in the United States.
(3) A sense of moral superiority over the acquiescence and passivity
of most citizens.
(4) A fully developed repertoire of demonstration, sit-in, bus-in,
etc. techniques inherited from the civil rights movement
(5) A unique style of dress, comportment, and social behavior that
set the participants in the movement apart from the rest of
society.
The embryonic youth movement spread across the country's elite
college campuses with the antiwar movement which rapidly came to dominate
the rhetoric and activities of the revolution. The movement grew in pace
with the Vietnam-related military escalations of the Johnson Administration.
It first became nationwide in response to the landing of 3,000 US
Marines at Danang and began to crest and ebb in 1968 as President Johnson
backed away from further escalation. The movement declined as the Nixon
Administration began rapidly withdrawing Americans, and by the fall of
Saigon in 1975, the movement had all but disappeared as a mass, nationwide
phenomenon. The rising tide of the movement and the Johnson Administration's
policy of gradual escalation paralleled each other. The impact of
the escalation on the antiwar movement is evident.
Figure IV-l at the begining of this volume depicts the major
antiwar demonstrations that took place during the Vietnam War in
conjunction with the political and military events that sparked the
demonstrations.
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