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Pro War vs Anti War Protests Critical Introduction

If you have stumbled upon this blog you are either our professor, or a very lsmart scholars student! We are five undergraduate scholars students who have chosen to discuss the concepts of pro-war vs anti-war protests during the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The five of us share a common interest in this subject, for we see war as one of the and most influential periods towards rhetoric. We find that it is extremely important to learn from our history to ensure a brighter and more promising future, and to try to understand how people have different thoughts about how to defend our nation's honor. In order to do this, we examined two different and opposing texts from the 1960s expressing different views on the war efforts in Vietnam. 

We have decided to look at two drastically different texts, one being Dave Dudley’s hit song, “What We’re Fighting For,” and the other Marc Riboud’s Flower Child photograph. Both of these texts exemplify the power rhetoric can have across a variety of mediums and political stances. As we dive deeper into Dudley’s song, we can see the lyrics are about a man who received a letter from his mother about the anti-war protests, and the soldier’s response is for her to remind America why the soldiers are fighting, and why it is imperative for them to fight and defend our country. Meanwhile, Riboud’s photograph is a juxtaposition between peace and war, strength in numbers and power within an individual's voice, and overall the symbolism of a young seventeen-year-old girl holding up a flower to thousands of soldiers. These texts both have very strong and emotional stances to try and persuade the audience to be either pro war or anti war. These texts are very powerful for any reader, regardless of their stance on the issue. They both cause the reader to think and question what is the correct path to choose, and they use metaphors in order to achieve these goals.

While we have not seen as much action being taken, these texts still relate to our current wars. Although America is currently not fighting in a war, the Iraq war sparked huge controversy between people. Yet, while we had protests and others being very vocal about their opinions on the war in the 1960s, we have seen a shift in how people present their stances to the world on issues such as these. Either fortunately or unfortunately, people now take to Social Media to share and explain their views. We have ceased to see enormous groups coming together to fight for a cause, but now expect that we can make a difference by simply posting a status onto a website. This generation is missing the inspiration to share opinions through physical action. Readers of our blog should feel inspired after seeing what past generations have done and accomplished through their actions, and should feel as though they can have the same affect if they put forth effort.

We decided it was important to first share our Stasis Theories, Kairos and Audience in order to provide the needed background and context of our texts for our readers. Then we decided to post the Pathos, Logos, and Ethos of the texts. We thought it was important to give the emotional and logical appeals to readers to better understand the intention of the authors. We wanted to establish ethos succeeding those rhetorical appeals in order to finalize why the messages were so important. Afterwards we added a few miscellaneous posts to help further our arguments and analysis of those rhetorical appeals.

Today, war is still a prevalent topic. We see on the news and read in the papers about Iraq and Afghanistan. The ways in which we perceive wars has changed and will continue to change throughout history. In order to fully grasp what has happened and predict what will happen, one must analyze past works of art, as we have done, and see how they have transformed the image of war.