U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War

First off, the Vietnam War is a proxy war of the Cold War. Although by the technical terms, it isn't. A proxy war is a war instigated by a major power that does not itself participate.  At first we made the locals fight, but then they were losing, so we had to intervene. Then we were in the war directly. The Soviets played more along the proxy rules. They got the North Vietnamese to fight for them. 
There were lots of T.V.s in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. They had a big impact on the American people; good things and bad things. A good thing about the cameras being in Vietnam is that you could keep up with the war. The government couldn't tell you lies about what was going on. The cameras at that time did not lie to you. But a bad thing about the cameras being there was that everyone saw all the bloody battles and everyone dying. That made many people very, very upset. So upset, they started riots. One example would be Kent State. Most of the protesters were college age, younger than thirty.
The protesters were a violent bunch. They wanted the war to end now, and got even angrier when President Nixon announced that they would be widening the war effort. 
On Saturday, May 2, the Reserve Office Training Corps building at Kent State was torched, and stores downtown had been looted the night before.
The Governor of Ohio sent in the Ohio National Guard. The troops arrived with tear gas and loaded rifles (bad mistake). Protesters rallied that Monday at noon on the commons. A National Guard officer told them to go away and stop gathering.

The famous Kent State photo of
a 14 year old crying over
one of the dead



Troops threw tear gas at the protesters, but that did little. That only got the canisters thrown back at them. So the guards marched up a hill and opened fire on the crowd. Accounts were that 28 Guardsmen fired between 61 and 67 shots. Four people ended up dead that day, and nine more were injured.

Nixon said some of the blame was on the protesters. He basically said "if you didn't protest, those lives wouldn't be lost, and we wouldn't have tragedy on our hands. Just let me do my job and don't tell me what I'm supposed to do."

The Draft also became something the American public despised greatly. There was a draft during WWI and WWII, but the public thought it was necessary, so they didn't protest. Vietnam was different. At first it was single men up to 45, and married men up to 35. Also then there were ways out of it. You could pay your way out or you could find a substitute.

During the Vietnam War, you could get out of it by going to college or marrying and having kids. Others also had "connections" to get out of it. The minorities and the poor had a lot harder time of getting out of being drafted. But there weren't enough people coming in. So then they made it so where everyone, even the rich, were in the lottery. Then people got angry, and there were many protests.

At the end of the war, Nixon put the draft on hold, and it has been a voluntary draft ever since. Charles B. Rangel from New York has introduced a bill to reinstate the draft over and over, time and time again to Congress. It has failed to gain much support. In 2004, his bill failed 402-2. It looks like the draft will not be returning anytime soon.