Why was Australias involvement in the Vietnam war such a divisive issue?
The war had nothing to do with us, it was thousands of miles away, the Vietnamese made no threat against Australia, they had not asked for our involvement. 2. The majority of Vietnamese people were in favour of communism, which is what the Australian/Americans were fighting against. 3. There was a belief of a ‘domino effect’ which meant if one country became communist so would the next and the next, and then Australia would be ‘threatened’ by it (how this was possible or practical no rational arguement can explain, but this is one of the popular beliefs). 4. Because we were going ‘All the way with LBJ” meaning we were allies with the Americans, they wanted to go to war here, and so we should too; some thought this wasn’t a great idea. 5. Because of conscription, for the first time they made men sign up to the army and go to war. Go to the Australin War Memorial site, an RSL sight or get the newspapers from the time on the web, there’s plenty of leads from there.
