Telltale hearts
Subtitle: the origins and impact of the Vietnam antiwar movement
By: Adam Garfinkle.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
Subjects: Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 -- Protest movements -- United States; Radicalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century; United States -- Politics and government -- 20th century
Description: More than two decades after the end of the Vietnam War, America's wounds have yet to heal; the war's divisiveness continues. Yet today, even the most hard-line hawks and doves share the conviction that, for better or worse, the antiwar movement played an important role in turning American opinion against the war, thereby limiting and ultimately ending U.S. military activity in Southeast Asia. In Telltale Hearts, Adam Garfinkle convincingly demonstrates that this widely accepted view is wrong.

Garfinkle argues that the movement, even at its radical height, had but a marginal impact on limiting and ending the war and in fact unwittingly helped to prolong it, thereby killing more people on both sides. The movement, in the end, was simply not as important as other factors, such as the contours of normal electoral politics, the ebb and flow of battle, and the devastating misjudgments made by a series of American civil and military leaders.

However, by following the movement into the present, the author concludes that it has in fact had a powerful, and greatly underestimated, postwar influence.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [341]-360) and indexes.