The bombing of North Vietnamese cities was not announced to the press, the soaring military costs were met by borrowing rather than tax increases, and most significantly no Congressional approval was sought for the dramatic increases in troop numbers. . I just cant be the architect of surrender.24. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. Those 3,500 soldiers were the first combat troops the United States had dispatched to South Vietnam to support the Saigon government in its effort to defeat an increasingly lethal Communist insurgency. Since 1954 every American President has offered support to the people of South Vietnam Our objective is the independence of South Vietnam We want nothing for ourselves. The failure of free men in the 1930s was not of the sword but of the soul. The president responded by appointing a special panel to report on the crisis, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which concluded that the country was in danger of dividing into two societiesone white, one Black, separate and unequal., Examine President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation and handling of the Vietnam War, Analyze the effects of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed under the Lyndon Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. Lyndon B. Johnson, Tet Offensive champagnecrow196. Press Conference, July 28, 1965. While senior military and civilian officials differed on what they regarded as the benefits of this programcode-named Operation Rolling Thunderall of them hoped that the bombing, which began on 2 March 1965, would have a salutary effect on the North Vietnamese leadership, leading Hanoi to end its support of the insurgency in South Vietnam. **** David White, Neoliberalism: Origins, Theory, Definition, The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville 1705, The War of the Rebellion US Civil War Documents. Lyndon B. Johnson, also referred to as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States of America from 1963-1969. The plan envisioned a series of measures, of gradually increasing military intensity, that American forces would apply to bolster morale in Saigon, attack the Vietcong in South Vietnam, and pressure Hanoi into ending its aid of the Communist insurgency. governance In an effort to achieve consensus about security requirements for those troops, key personnel undertook a review in Honolulu on 20 April. Although not a Communist himself, Bosch had raised the ire of the Dominican military through his accommodation with Communist factions and been forced out in a September 1963 coup. 450 Words2 Pages. The bombing, however, was failing to move Hanoi or the Vietcong in any significant way. rights reserved. From the above two quotations, there seems little doubt that Johnson genuinely believed there was a threat of world domination by Communism, a very mainstream Cold-War view among American politicians from the late 1940s to the 1980s. While the Great Society policies dovetailed well with New Deal policies, Johnson misinterpreted Roosevelts foreign policy, reading back into the 1930s an interventionist course of action that Roosevelt only adopted in 1941. If anything, he encouraged his closest advisers to work even harder at helping South Vietnam prosecute the counterinsurgency. Within days of the attack, Johnson reportedly told State Department official George Ball that Hell, those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!11 The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the conclusion that the 4 August incident was fiction; whether it was imagined by flawed intelligence or fabricated for political ends has remained a vigorously contested issue.12. Arnold, Fortas reported directly to Johnson by telephone. Having already decided to shift prosecution of the war into higher gear, the Johnson administration recognized that direct military action would require congressional approval, especially in an election year. Balls arguments about the many challenges the United States faced in Vietnam were far outweighed by the many pressures Johnson believed were weighing on him to make that commitment. Lyndon B. Johnson: Impact and Legacy. Washington was generally pleased with the turn of events and sought to bolster the Khanh regime. Johnson's strategic objective in South Vietnam, as articulated at Johns Hopkins, was the same one set forth previously by Kennedy in National Security Action Memorandum 52. American public opinion was willing to go along with whatever course of action the administration chose, Johnsons standing being so high at this point. With vehemence that ultimately provided fodder for the administrations harshest critics, and betraying none of these doubts and uncertainties, administration officials insisted in public that the attacks were unprovoked. Theres not a bit.25 Coming on the eve of Johnsons dispatch of the Marines to Vietnam, it was not a promising way to begin a war. In thinking about Vietnam, the model LBJ had in mind was South Korea. Even after winning the 1964 presidential election, Johnson still felt he had to tread carefully with public opinion. Lyndon Johnson. . William Bundys role atop the Vietnam interagency machinery is indicative of that developmenta pattern that continued for the remainder of the Johnson presidency as Rusks star rose and McNamaras faded within Johnsons universe of favored advisers. On 2 August, the USS Maddox, engaged in a signals intelligence collection mission for the National Security Agency (known as a Desoto patrol) off the coast of North Vietnam, reported that it was under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Joseph Siracusa stated that, America developed an increasingly rigid ideological view of the world anti-communism, anti-socialism, anti-leftist that came to rival that of Communism. This appears to be as true of Johnson as it was of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. And once the troops started arriving, their numbers kept growing, hawkish military commanders repeatedly insisting that victory was just around the corner if only they could deploy a few more divisions. But that endgame, when it did come during the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, was deeply contingent on the course that Johnson set, particularly as it flowed out of key decisions he took as president both before and after his election to office. Statement by the President on the Situation in the Dominican Republic, 30 April 1965, Alan McPherson, Misled by Himself: What the Johnson Tapes Reveal about the Dominican Intervention of 1965,. Furthermore, Johnson was acutely aware that he was JFKs successor. Johnson had a choice over his course of action and was not as constrained by circumstances as is sometimes suggested, the crucial period when this was most possible being late 1963 to early 1965. With more than a thousand Americans seeking refuge in one of the citys largest luxury hotels and the situation on the street deteriorating to the point of an evacuation becoming necessary, Bennetts cable said that he and his colleagues were unanimously of opinion that time has come to land the marines. Each year the society also invites one of its own members to give a talk, usually at the AGM , and transcripts of these are among the works appearing here. The tapes included in this edition show vividly a president all too aware of shortcomings of the deeply flawed information that he was receiving, and by the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, several senior officialsand apparently the President himselfhad concluded that the attack of 4 August had not occurred. Nevertheless, the State Departments influence in Vietnam planning was on the rise, as it had been since early 1963. On election day Johnson defeated Goldwater easily, receiving more than 61 percent of the popular vote, the largest percentage ever for a presidential election; the vote in the electoral college was 486 to 52. No amount of administrative tinkering could mask the continuing and worsening problems of political instability in Saigon and Communist success in the field. In fact, Johnson sought the counsel of ad hoc groups and advisers during the escalation of the war. He began his career as a teacher. National Historical Publications and Records Commission, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/. $17.93 . The Diem coup had unleashed a wave of instability below the seventeenth parallel that Communist forces were only too eager to exploit. Johnson accepted the offer of his friend and confidant Abe Fortas to undertake a secret mission to Puerto Rico to negotiate with Bosch, someone Fortas had come to know through mutual contacts. $29.95 + $5.85 shipping. Lyndon Johnson. Johnsons election as president in his own right allowed the administration to move forward in crafting a more vigorous policy toward the Communist challenge in South Vietnam. 11 PopularOr Just Plain OddPresidential Pets, U.S. Presidents and Their Years in Office Quiz. McNamara thus recommended, and Johnson endorsed, a more vigorous program of U.S. military and economic support for South Vietnam.10. by David White, Bloody Victory or Bloody Stupidity? Lyndon B. Johnson's tenure as the 36th president of the United States began on November 22, 1963 following the assassination of President Kennedy and ended on January 20, 1969. But it was the attack by Diems minions on parading Buddhists four months later that ignited the nationwide protest that would roil the country for the remainder of the year and eventually topple the regime. The primary charge against Johnson was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress in March 1867 over Johnson's veto. Having secured Congressional authorization with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Johnson launched a bombing campaign in the North, and in March 1965, dispatched 3,500 marines to South Vietnam. 07/22/2017 11:41 PM EDT. Meanwhile, as Johnsons reform consensus gradually unraveled, life for the nations poor, particularly African Americans living in inner-city slums in the North, failed to show significant improvement. "Why We Are in Vietnam". These included a more aggressive propaganda offensive as well as sabotage directed against North Vietnam.9, But those enhanced measures were unable to force a change in Hanoi or to stabilize the political scene in Saigon. Unhappy with U.S. complicity in the Saigon coup yet unwilling to deviate from Kennedys approach to the conflict, Johnson vowed not to lose the war. By December, with attacks increasing in the countryside, a look back at those earlier metrics revealed that State Department analyses were indeed on the mark.8, Yet Johnson did not need that retrospective appraisal to launch a more vigorous campaign against the Communists, for his first impulse as the new president was to shift the war into higher gear. Civilian rule in Saigon came to an end in mid-June as the Young Turksmilitary officials including Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Kyrose to prominence at the head of a new ruling war cabinet. Department of State Bulletin, April 26, 1965. Johnsons consideration of the Westmoreland proposal, which promised a drastic expansion of the American commitment, led him to seek the counsel of outside advisers as well as a final review with senior officials of his options in Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson is one of the most consequential US presidents, responsible for passing some of the most significant pieces of legislation in modern history, including the Civil Rights Act of . LBJ was a nation-builder. Never during the ten-year-long Second Indochinese war did a government emerge in Saigon worthy of the support of the people of South Vietnam. Just ask at the reception desk for directions to the meeting room. But on 3 NovemberElection Dayhe created an interagency task force, chaired by William P. Bundy, brother of McGeorge Bundy and chief of the State Departments Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs, to review Vietnam policy. I don't always know whats right. "Johnson was a man with great political skills, and it was through him that the nation made its most significant attempt to expand the American welfare state.". McNamaras arrival and report back to Johnson on 21 July began the final week of preparations that would lead to Johnsons announcement of the expanded American commitment. Beginning in 1965, student demonstrations grew larger and more frequent and helped to stimulate resistance to the draft. (2) president richard nixon negotiated a peace treaty with north vietnam. The Cold War was essentially fuelled by a conflict of ideology, and Johnsons ideology was strongly rooted in the past. After a devastating war with the North (1950-1953) and one of the lowest living standards in the world in 1950, South Korea had by 1963 emerged from military rule and in 1965 was already beginning to see real economic gains. In April 1964 US intelligence reported that substantial numbers of regular North Vietnamese troops were infiltrating into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. "The. Concern about his personal credibility was also at work in Johnsons calculus. He had been in exile in Puerto Rico since. They were unanimous and vehement in their advice to stay the course in Vietnam (although McNamara would very publicly do a mea culpa years later.). Raids by the local Communistsdubbed the Vietcong, or VC, by Diemhad picked up in frequency and intensity in the weeks following Diems ouster. by David White, Leopold IIs Heart of Darkness, by David White, Why did Lyndon Johnson escalate the conflict in Vietnam? In fact, it was those advisers who would play an increasingly important role in planning for Vietnam, relegating the interagency approachwhich never went awayto a level of secondary importance within the policymaking process. Moreover, the enormous financial cost of the war, reaching $25 billion in 1967, diverted money from Johnsons cherished Great Society programs and began to fuel inflation. Grant as secretary of war ad interim. By mid-March, therefore, Johnson began to consider additional proposals for expanding the American combat presence in South Vietnam. The first phase began on 14 December with Operation Barrel Rollthe bombing of supply lines in Laos.13. Although State Department officials had maintained in October 1963 that that statistical evidence pointed not to success but to mounting troubles against the Vietcong, Pentagon officialsboth civilian and militaryhad rejected those arguments. The Miller Center is a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia that Its legacy was 58,220 American soldiers dead, a huge drain on the nations finances, social polarisation and the tarnishing of the reputation of the United States. Together, he explained, echoing the anthem of the civil rights movement, "we shall overcome.". As he would say to U.S. Johnson announced an "unconditional war on poverty" in his first State of the Union address, in January 1964. What was being undertaken was essentially a war of attrition, with the hope that eventually they could kill more cadres than the enemy could replace (the body-count measure of success). This is a different kind of war. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation US, Inc. At a post-retirement dinner in New York with McNamara, Bundy, and other former aides in attendance, LBJ accepted full responsibility. Over the course of the next several months, American assistance to South Vietnam would play out against a backdrop of personnel changes and political jockeying at home and in Saigon. Speakers have included eminent academics, published authors, documentary producers, historical novelists, postgraduate researchers and Open History Society members. The circumstances of Johnsons ascendance to the Oval Office left him little choice but to implement several unrealized Kennedy initiatives, particularly in the fields of economic policy and civil rights. Both Diem and Nhu were killed in the coup that brought a military junta to power in early November 1963, ending Americas reliance on its miracle man in Vietnam.4, Kennedys own assassination three weeks later laid the problems of Vietnam squarely on Johnsons desk. The CIA predicted that if Washington and its allies did not act, South Vietnam would fall within the year. May 12 Lyndon B. Johnson visits South Vietnam Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon during his tour of Asian countries. Those pressures were rooted in fears about domestic as well as international consequences. this isa terrible thing that were getting ready to do. Bombing had neither compelled Hanoi to halt its support of the Vietcong nor was it disrupting the flow of supplies to the insurgents; likewise, it had neither bolstered morale in the South nor stiffened Saigons willingness to fight. The presence of several policy options, however, did not translate into freewheeling discussions with the President over the relative merits of numerous strategies. But not wanting to get railroaded into large-scale military response by political pressure from hawks on the right in Congress, Johnson and McNamara privately and selectively conceded that classified sabotage operations in the region had probably provoked the North Vietnamese attack. Liberal. Sponsored. It was this pre-existing situation, where maintenance of the regime in South Vietnam had been elevated to symbolic political and ideological importance, which Johnson inherited upon Kennedys assassination in late 1963. These were: that America keeps her word; that the future of all south-east Asia was the issue; that our purpose is peace; and that the war was a struggle for freedom. President Lyndon B. Johnson, 6 March 1965 1 On 8 March 1965, two battalions of U.S. Marines waded ashore on the beaches at Danang. On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson culminated a weeklong series of meetings with his top diplomatic, intelligence and military advisers in . Part 2 of 3. by Dr David White, Alasdair Gray on the Declaration of Arbroath: A Personal View, The Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway and Sunday Travel by Dr John McGregor, Monitoring Morale: The History of Home Intelligence 1939-1944 by Paul Addison and Jeremy Crang, How Churchills Mind Worked by Paul Addison, Red Herrings & Codswallop: Fishing History Pre-Brexit by Pouca McFeilimidh, Stalin, the Red Tsar? Humphrey's advice that the United States should pull back on the Vietnam War nettled Johnson . Two days after his first order sending in the Marines, Johnson again went on television to announce a rapid escalation in the U.S. military intervention that, within three weeks, would have approximately thirty thousand U.S. troops in the island nation. But there aint no daylight in Vietnam. newly digitized critical and documentary editions in the humanities and social Many more would be required to regain the initiative and then to mount the win phase of the conflict. US Information Agency Fifty years ago, during the first six months of 1965, Lyndon Johnson made the decision to Americanize the conflict in Vietnam. And I dont want any of them to take credit for it.23. The troops arrived on 8 March, though Johnson endorsed the deployment prior to the first strikes themselves. . Drawn from the months July 1964 to July1965, these transcripts cover arguably the most consequential developments of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, transforming what had been a U.S. military assistance and advisory mission into a full-scale American war. David Coleman, former Associate Professor and former Chair, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center, University of Virginia, Marc Selverstone, Associate Professor and Chair, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center, University of Virginia, I guess weve got no choice, but it scares the death out of me. Together, they Americanized a war the Vietnamese had been fighting for a generation. "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your President." President Lyndon Johnson telling the nation on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek reelection. Shortly after, he vented to adviser McGeorge Bundy in a now familiar monologue: I dont think its [South Vietnam] worth fighting for and I dont think that we can get out.