Today in History - Nov 15 - The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam

November 15 is the anniversary of the 2nd event of The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam in 1969. The first one happened on October 15, and was the largest protest in US history, with over two million people demanding the end of the war. Although a smaller number of people showed up in Washington for the second protest at a "mere" 500,000 people, the second event was nationwide and drew even more attention.

While this protest was happening, the US president stayed safe in his palace, watching a football game. Earlier in the month, he had given a speech where he had implied that the "silent majority" of the population supported the war, and that "North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States".

Of course this was all lies. North Vietnam did indeed defeat and humiliate the US, and polls at the time showed the 68% of the population did not support the war. (Oddly, this is the same number that currently want a ceasefire in Gaza). The war continued for several more years before the US threw in the towel and went home.

I was going to write about how things got worse instead of better after this protest. If I might break tradition a bit... I try to stick to purely factual and/or liberal sources on this comm, but I came across this article by Daniel Bessner in the process of writing this post. I defer the remainder of my post to him.