Troubled by his role and the smell of the swamp he was getting into, Kennedy resorted to another fact-finding mission, the now traditional Washington substitute for policy. A rapid but intensive four-day tour was made by General Victor Krulak, special adviser to Maxwell Taylor, who was now Chief of Staff and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Joseph Mendenhall of State, an old Vietnam hand with a large acquaintance among Vietnamese civilians. Their reports to the White House on return, one hearty and promising from military sources, the other caustic and gloomy, were so at variance as to evoke the President’s puzzled query “You two did visit the same country, didn’t you?” On their heels followed another mission at the highest level, General Taylor himself and Secretary McNamara with the assignment to find out how far the political chaos had affected the military effort. Their report on 2 October, while positive on military prospects, was full of political negatives that belied their hopes. All contradictions were muffled by McNamara’s public announcement, with the President’s approval, that 1000 men could be withdrawn by the end of the year and that “The major part of the United States military task can be completed by the end of 1965.” The confusion and contradiction in fact-finding did nothing to clarify policy.
On 1 November the generals’ coup took place successfully. It included, to the appalled discomfort of the Americans, the unexpected assassinations of Diem and Nhu. Less than a month later, President Kennedy too was in his grave.
5. Executive War: 1964–68
From the moment he took over the presidency, according to one who knew him well, Lyndon Johnson made up his mind that he was not going to “lose” South Vietnam. Given his forward-march proposals as Vice-President in 1961, this attitude could have been expected, and while stemming from cold war credos it had even more to do with the demands of his own self-image—as became overt at once. Within 48 hours of Kennedy’s death, Ambassador Lodge, who had come home to report on post-Diem developments, met with Johnson to brief him on the discouraging situation. Political prospects under Diem’s successor, he reported, held no promise of improvement but more likely of further strife; militarily, the army was shaky and in danger of being overwhelmed. Unless the United States took a much more active role in the fighting the South might be lost. Hard decisions, Lodge told the President squarely, had to be faced. Johnson’s reaction was instant and personal: “I am not going to be the first President of the United States to lose a war,” alternatively reported as “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way that China went.”
In the nervous tension of his sudden accession, Johnson felt he had to be “strong,” to show himself in command, especially to overshadow the aura of the Kennedys, both the dead and the living. He did not feel a comparable impulse to be wise; to examine options before he spoke. He lacked Kennedy’s ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking. Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contra-indications.
Speculations about a neutralist solution were floating in South Vietnam after Diem’s assassination, and it is possible that Saigon might have come to terms with the insurgents at this point but for the American presence. A broadcast by the clandestine Viet-Cong radio was heard suggesting negotiations for a cease-fire. A second broadcast suggesting accommodation with the new President in Saigon, General Duong Van Minh, leader of the coup against Diem, if he were to detach himself from the United States was picked up and reported in Washington by the Foreign Broadcasting Intelligence Service. These were not hard offers and probably intended merely to probe Saigon’s political chaos. Saigon was listening if Washington was not. The six-foot President, General “Big” Minh, a former Buddhist peasant, who though well-meaning and popular had no control over a nest of rivals, was rumored to be considering contact with the Viet-Cong. After three months in office he in turn became the victim of a coup. The same rumor clung to successors who followed each other through coups and ousters during the next months. American opposition to any such feelers was actively exerted by the Embassy and its agents.
During this time U Thant, the Burmese Secretary General of the UN, was testing receptivity to a neutralist coalition government. Though coalition between fundamental enemies is an illusion, it can be used for temporary settlement. It did not interest Washington. Nor did Senator Mansfield’s rather desperate proposal in January to open the way for American withdrawal by dividing South Vietnam itself between Saigon and the Viet-Cong. Although Johnson was demanding “solutions” from his advisers, these compromises with Communism were not what he had in mind.
The hard decisions were already forming. On return from a fact-finding mission in December, McNamara reported that unless current trends were reversed within “the next two or three months,” they would “lead to neutralization at best and more likely to a Communist-controlled state.” The stakes in preserving a non-Communist South were so high, he told the President, “that in my judgment we must go on bending every effort to win.”
Enormity of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis. To let North Vietnam win would give incalculable encouragement to Communism everywhere, erode confidence everywhere in the United States and arouse the right at home to political slaughter. The New York Times affirmed it in an editorial of fearful portent: the roll of Southeast Asian nations, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, would be endangered if South Vietnam fell; the “entire Allied position in the Western Pacific would be in severe jeopardy”; India would be “outflanked,” Red China’s drive for hegemony “enormously enhanced”; doubts of United States ability to defend other nations against Communist pressure would spread around the world; the impact on revolutionary movements would be profound; neutralism would spread and with it a sense that Communism might be the wave of the future. As of 1983, Vietnam has, unhappily, been under Communist control for eight years and except for Laos and Cambodia, none of these terrors has been realized.
By 1964, ten years had passed since America undertook to save South Vietnam after Geneva. Circumstances had changed. The Soviet Union had been faced down in the Berlin and Cuban missile crises; Soviet influence over the European Communist parties was much less; NATO was firmly established. Why then were stakes still considered so high in remote unimportant Vietnam? Communism had made European advances without engendering the hysteria that seemed to infect us out of Asia. If Communist advance anywhere was so to be feared, why did we fling a harebrained strike at Cuba and make our stand in Vietnam? Perhaps, perversely, because it was Asia, where Americans took it for granted they could impose their will and the might of their resources on what a United States Senator, Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, referred to in his wisdom as “a few thousand primitive guerrillas.” To be frustrated in Asia seemed unacceptable. The stake had become America’s exercise of power and its manifestation called “credibility.” Despite old counsel that a land war in Asia was unwinnable, despite disillusioning experience in China and Korea, despite French experience on the very spot where Americans now stood, this perception of what was at stake was overriding.
Reminiscent of British visions of ruin if they lost the American colonies, prophecies of exaggerated catastrophe if we lost Vietnam served to increase the stakes. Johnson voiced this over-reaction in his initial scenario of pulling back to San Francisco; Rusk voiced it in 1965 in his advice to the President that withdrawal “would lead to our ruin and almost certainly to catastrophic war,” and again in 1967 when he drew a picture at a press conference of “a billion Chinese armed with nuclear weapons.” The New York Times’ military correspondent, Hanson Baldwin, voiced it in 1966, writing that withdrawal from Vietnam would result in “political, psychological and military catastrop
he” and would mean that the United States “had decided to abdicate as a great power” and be “reconciled to withdrawal from Asia and the Western Pacific.” Fear too conjured visions: “I am scared to death,” said Senator Joseph Clark in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that “we are on our way to nuclear World War Three.”
• • •
North Vietnam was now sending units of its regular army across the line to exploit the disintegration of the South. To prevent collapse of America’s client, President Johnson and his circle of advisers and the Joint Chiefs came to the conclusion that the moment had come when they must enter upon coercive war. It would be war from the air though it was understood that this would inevitably draw in ground forces. Civilian and military agencies began drawing operational plans, but though Saigon’s situation was growing daily more precarious, action could not be initiated yet because Johnson faced the presidential election of 1964. Since his opponent was the bellicose Senator Barry Goldwater, he had to appear as the peace candidate. He took up the chant about “their” war: “We are going … to try to get them to save their own freedom with their own men.” “We are not going to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” “We don’t want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys.” When, six months later, American boys were sent into combat with no dramatic change of circumstances, these phrases were easily recalled, beginning the erosion of Johnson’s own credibility. Long accustomed to normal political lying, he forgot that his office made a difference, and that when lies came to light, as under the greater spotlight on the White House they were bound to, it was the presidency and public faith that suffered.
Public response to the campaign of Goldwater the hawk denouncing a “no win” policy versus Johnson the peacemaker flowed steadily one way. After World War II and Korea, and in the shadow of the atomic bomb, Americans, however anti-Communist, wanted no war. Women especially were to vote disproportionately for Johnson, testifying to the reservoir of antiwar sentiment. The Administration might have taken heed but did not, because it never stopped believing its troubles would come from the right.
While giving one signal to voters, Johnson had to give another of fiercer intent to Hanoi in the hope of holding back a challenge, at least until after the election. Naval units in the Gulf of Tonkin, including the destroyer Maddox, soon so notorious, went beyond intelligence gathering to “destructive” action against the coast, which was supposed to convey a message to Hanoi to “desist from aggressive policies.” The real message, which by now virtually everyone believed necessary, was to be American bombing.
Johnson, Rusk, McNamara and General Taylor flew to Honolulu in June for a meeting with Ambassador Lodge and CINCPAC to consider a program of American air action and the probable next step of ground combat. The rationale for the bombing was two-thirds political: to bolster the sinking morale in South Vietnam, strongly urged by Lodge, and to break the will to fight of the North Vietnamese and cause them to cease supporting the Viet-Cong insurgency and ultimately to negotiate. The military aim was to stop infiltration and supply. Recommendations and caveats were tossed and turned and argued, for the planners were not eager for belligerency in a civil conflict in Asia, even while pretending it was “external aggression.” The underlying need, given the rapid failing of the South, was to redress the military balance so that the United States should not negotiate from weakness. Until that could be achieved, any move toward negotiations “would have been an admission that the game was up.”
As it was bound to, the uncomfortable question of nuclear weapons came up without arousing anyone’s advocacy. The only case in which their use was even theoretically contemplated was against the vast peril, as it was seen, of the Communist Chinese if they should be provoked into entering the war. Secretary Rusk, whose adrenaline always rose on that subject, believed that in view of China’s enormous population, “we could not allow ourselves to be bled white fighting them with conventional weapons.” This meant that if escalation brought about a major Chinese attack, “it would also involve use of nuclear arms.” He was nevertheless aware that Asian leaders opposed it, seeing in it an element of racial discrimination, “something we would do to Asians but not to Westerners.” Possible circumstances of tactical use were briefly discussed. General Earle Wheeler, new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was unenthusiastic; Secretary McNamara said he “could not imagine a case where they would be considered,” and the matter was dropped.
Operational plans for the bombing were drawn, but the order for action postponed, for while the election still lay ahead, Johnson’s peace image had to be protected. The graver question of ground combat was left in abeyance until a dependable government could be installed in the political shambles of Saigon. Further, as General Taylor pointed out, the American public would have to be educated to appreciate the United States interest in Southeast Asia. Secretary McNamara, with his usual precision, thought this “would require at least thirty days,” as if it were a matter of selling the public a new model automobile.
Johnson was intensely nervous about expanding American belligerency for fear of precipitating intervention by the Chinese. Nevertheless, if escalation was inevitable, he wanted a Congressional mandate. At Honolulu the text of a draft resolution was read and discussed, and on his return home the supreme manipulator prepared to obtain it.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 7 August 1964 has been so exhaustively examined that it can afford to rest under more cursory treatment here. Its importance was that it gave the President the mandate he was seeking and left Congress suddenly staring helplessly and to some extent resentfully at its empty hands. Not a Fort Sumter or a Pearl Harbor, Tonkin Gulf was no less significant; in a cause of uncertain national interest, it was a blank check for Executive war.
The cause was the claim of the destroyer Maddox and other naval units that they had been fired upon at night by North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats outside the three-mile limit recognized by the United States. Hanoi claimed sovereignty up to a twelve-mile limit. A second clash followed the next day under obscure conditions never fully clarified and subsequently, during re-investigation in 1967, thought to have been imagined or invented.
White House telecommunications to Saigon crackled with crisis. Johnson promptly asked for a Congressional Resolution authorizing “all necessary measures to repel armed attack,” and Senator J. William Fulbright, as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, undertook to guide it through the Senate. While aware that he was not altogether upholding the constitutional authority of Congress, Fulbright believed in Johnson’s earnest assurances of having no wish to widen the war and thought the Resolution would help the President withstand Goldwater’s calls for an air offensive and also help the Democratic Party by showing it to be tough against Communists.
The personal ambition that so often shapes statecraft has also been cited in the suggestion that Fulbright had hopes of replacing Rusk as Secretary of State after the election, which depended on retaining Johnson’s goodwill. Whether true or not, Fulbright was correct in supposing that one purpose of the Resolution was to win over the right by a show of force.
Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin tried to limit the Resolution by an amendment against “any extension of the present conflict,” but this was quashed by Fulbright, who said that since the President had no such intentions, the amendment was not needed. Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, working the famous eyebrows, hinted at the lurking uneasiness among some Senators about the whole involvement when he asked, “Is there any reasonable or honorable way we can extricate ourselves without losing our face and probably our pants?” The most outspoken opponent was, as always, Senator Wayne Morse, who denounced the Resolution as a “pre-dated declaration of war,” and, having been tipped off by a telephone call from a Pentagon officer, questioned McNamara closely about suspicious naval actions in the Gulf. McNamara firmly denied any “connection with or
knowledge of” any hostile actions. Morse was often right but fulminated so regularly against so many iniquities that he was discounted.
The Senate, a third of whom were also up for re-election, did not wish to embarrass the President two months before the national vote or show themselves any less protective of American lives. After a one-day hearing, the Resolution authorizing “all necessary measures” was adopted by the Foreign Relations Committee by a vote of 14 to 1 and subsequently approved by both Houses. It justified the grant of war powers on the rather spongy ground that the United States regards as “vital to its international interests and to world peace, the maintenance of international peace and security.” Neither the prose nor the sense carried much conviction. By its ready acquiescence, the Senate, once so jealous of its constitutional prerogative to declare war, had signed it over to the Executive. Meanwhile, with evidence accumulating of confusion by radar and sonar technicians in the second clash, Johnson said privately, “Well, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.” So much for casus belli.
Alternatives for the United States were offered at this time by U Thant’s proposal to reconvene the Geneva Conference and by a second summons from de Gaulle for a negotiated peace. De Gaulle proposed settlement by a conference of the United States, France, Soviet Russia and China to be followed by evacuation of the entire Indochina peninsula by all foreign forces and by a big powers guarantee of the neutrality of Laos, Cambodia and the two Vietnams. It was a feasible—and probably at that time achievable—alternative, except that it would not have ensured a non-Communist South Vietnam, and for that reason it was ignored by the United States.
The March of Folly Page 42
