what were good reasons in vietnam for being anti-war?

I can think of one overriding reason...the lousy way the war was being run by El BJ and McNamara. It was a giant cluster f**k. The war was run about as badly as any in history.

For most of us, it really didn't matter about the absolute right or wrong...it was about our a$$es being left hanging in the breeze. We needed an exit strategy and never got one.

BTW, every good soldier, sailor, airman and Marine is "anti-war."

There are several reasons:

1) The draft forced men into military service, and if they declined they were sent to jail. If you believe that the military should be a volunteer only service, then you might be anti-war

2) The premise of the Vietnam war was that America had to hold back the spread of communism, and that without direct intervention communism would likely spread without check throughout Asia. This was during the high of the cold war, so America was unwilling to allow this to occur without a fight. If you disagreed with either the belief that communism would spread unchecked, or you believed that communism spreading unchecked wasn't a bad idea, you probably disagreed with the war.

3) Conscientious objectors believed that violence was unacceptable in any circumstances. This made them anti-war, so of course they objected strongly to Vietnam.

4) The casualty rate was huge during Vietnam. Nearly 60,000 Vietnam vets died during the war, and approximately 153,000 were injured in the war. Nearly everyone knew someone impacted by a casualty. This war was very personal to Americans. It was very difficult to justify on a personal level.

5) Vietnam was truly the first time that a war was televised. Every night, the nightly news would show the horrors of war to a woefully under-prepared public. Every American felt a little responsible for the deaths and atrocities that were occurring, and in a way that they had never contemplated before.

6) Veterans were coming back in the early 1970s and testifying to congress about the atrocities committed abroad. John Kerry (back then just a newly returned veteran) testified in front of the U.S. congress that the soldiers he knew personally had raped villagers, tortured civilians, had become addicted to drugs, and worse. How could anyone be supportive of a war where this kind of thing was happening?

As you can see, there were a lot of reasons why people were anti-war during Vietnam.

Well I can tell you part of the reason WHY anti-war sentiments exploded during the Vietnam war, as opposed to any war before it (as I learned it in my AP History class a few years ago). Vietnam was the first televised war, meaning that people in America saw the horrors of war for the first time up close, and while it was happening. I don't know anyone's personal reasons, and I strongly disagree with the the anti-war movements of the '60s, but the fact that it was televised was a large part of the reason why those movements are remembered so well.

First off, the USA had made agreement to provide support to a profoundly corrupt government which didn't represent the citizens of Vietnam. The conflict was internal - between two artificially-separated halves of the same country. It began as a civil conflict.

Secondly, the reported attack on the two US Navy warships, called the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" - has been proven never to have occurred.

Thirdly, the civil conflict there simply was none of our business. Our chemical and weapons industries made obscene profits from the US military involvement.

Fourthly, it needlessly cost the lives of over 58.000 of my fellow soldiers.

That enough reasons for you?

Having been there, most of the anti-war protests were in actual fact anti-draft protests. Once we went to the lottery system and made everyone take an equal and fair chance at serving the anti-war protests died out.

An invading force cannot beat a determined local populace, it was a draft so our armed forces were comprised mostly of unwilling draftees, and the Ivy league students who were protesting regardless of the fact that there rich right wing fathers wouldn't have let them go, regardless of the fact that many of the fathers supported the war. Which is why boston is so badass.

If you were from North Vietnam and had just invaded South Vietnam, you would not want the South to repel you, and would do whatever you could to discourage its treaty signatories ( from the SEATO ) like USA to leave.

It worked.

If you were "in" Vietnam, it was way to late to be anti-war.

It was a CIVIL WAR. How many Vietnamese fought in OUR civil war?

They didn't even want us there, but we insisted.

Because it was a BS war based on a paranoid BS theory.