Answer:
The answer is that at the beginning of the Vietnam conflict, almost no American had heard before of the country of Vietnam, or that there was a conflict going on. Around 23.000 military personnel had been dispatched to assist the South Vietnamese government and military in fighting off the North Vietnamese Army (Viet Cong), but only as advisers, not direct fighters. Throughout 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson began to take heavier and more drastic decisions regarding American involvement in the conflict, most Americans did not even know that a country by the name of Vietnam even existed, let alone that the U.S was getting involved in its fights. Full knowledge of what was going on did not come until almost the end of 1964, and protests against it, and the true initiation of the Vietnam War, with U.S full military involvement, began in 1965.
