By spring of 1965, Johnson was holding impromptu lunch meetings with only a handful of senior officials on Tuesdays where they hashed out strategy. The bombing, however, was failing to move Hanoi or the Vietcong in any significant way. All signs were now pointing to a situation that was more dire than the one Kennedy had confronted.7, Or so it seemed. Hoping to apply more pressure on the Communists, the administration began to implement a series of tactics it had adopted in principle within the first week of Johnsons presidency. The war was, however, impossible to win as Ball and Humphrey had predicted. He advanced the Kennedy legacy, obtaining far more than Kennedy would likely have gotten out of Congress, and then won a . The Soviets supplied North Vietnam by sea. It was in this context that General Westmoreland asked Washington in early June for a drastically expanded U.S. military effort to stave off a Communist victory in South Vietnam. As he lamented to Senator Russell, A man can fight . The deterioration of the South Vietnamese position, therefore, led Johnson to consider even more decisive action. Upon taking office, Johnson, also. Further indication of that resolve came the same month with the replacement of General Paul D. Harkins as head of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) with Lieutenant General William C. Westmoreland, who had been Harkinss deputy since January 1964 and was ten years Harkinss junior. . challenges. He was an overbearing man who tolerated no dissent, and though he appears to have been poorly advised, he chose who to listen to, was secretive in his decision-making, and was overly concerned with how the USA and he himself appeared to others. Position Paper on Southeast Asia, 2 December 1964, David Humphrey, Tuesday Lunch at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary Assessment,, Quoted in Randall B. In thinking about Vietnam, the model LBJ had in mind was South Korea. Raids by the local Communistsdubbed the Vietcong, or VC, by Diemhad picked up in frequency and intensity in the weeks following Diems ouster. 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. However, owing to a dogmatic commitment to conventional thinking about the Cold War and Containment, and because opponents of escalation did not speak up till too late, Johnson proceeded with the Americanization of the conflict after recognising that the South Vietnamese could never win the war on their own. 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. And there must be no such failure in the 1960s. The Cold War was essentially fuelled by a conflict of ideology, and Johnsons ideology was strongly rooted in the past. Prior to finalizing any decision to commit those forces, however, Johnson sent Secretary of Defense McNamara to Saigon for discussions with Westmoreland and his aides. The spate of endless coups and governmental shake-ups vexed Johnson, who wondered how the South Vietnamese would ever mount the necessary resolve to stanch the Communists in the countryside when they were so absorbed with their internal bickering in Saigon. In Santo Domingo, rebels sympathetic to the exiled liberal intellectual President Juan Bosch had launched an open, armed uprising against the military-backed junta. On 7 April, before an audience at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, LBJ outlined a program of economic aid for both South and North Vietnam, characterized by efforts to fund a $1 billion project to harness the productive power of the Mekong River. 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. specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history and Lyndon Johnson. 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. On the pretext that the airfields needed for US aircraft had to be defended, the number of ground troops increased swiftly. Lyndon B. Johnson US President & First Lady Collectibles, Lyndon Johnson 1964 US Presidential Candidate Collectibles, Lyndon B. Johnson 1963-69 Term in Office US President & First Lady Collectibles, Photograph Collectible Vintage Pin Ups Pre-1970, Historic & Vintage Daguerreotype Photographic Images, WW2 German Photograph, 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. This section is for pieces, both published and unpublished, which Open History Society members have written. A series of meetings with civilian and military officials, including one in which LBJ heard a lone, dissenting view from Undersecretary of State George Ball, solidified Johnsons thinking about the necessity of escalating the conflict. In his April 1965 speech, Johnson limited himself to a defensive strategy of containment in Indochina. As his popularity sank to new lows in 1967, Johnson was confronted by demonstrations almost everywhere he went. In the presidential election of 1964, Johnson was opposed by conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. We beat the Communists first, then we can look around and maybe give something to the poor., It was for these reasons that Johnson carried out the military escalation quietly and almost clandestinely. But segregationists and red-baiters might well have blocked the civil rights achievements of the Great Society, prompting racial conflict at home that would have made Detroit seem like a picnic. He frequently reached out to members of the business and journalistic communities, hoping to shape opinions as much as to receive them. 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). 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 . On this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson culminated a weeklong series of meetings with his top diplomatic, intelligence and military advisers in . His report to LBJ was not a happy one, as signs pointed to a deterioration in South Vietnamese morale and an acceleration of Communist success. Johnson interpreted his victory as an extraordinary mandate to push forward with his Great Society reforms. Out of fear of a great power confrontation with the Soviet Union, the United States fought a limited war, with the South China Sea to the east and the open borders of Laos and Cambodia to the west. McNamara thus recommended, and Johnson endorsed, a more vigorous program of U.S. military and economic support for South Vietnam.10. This was in keeping with the Containment policy originating in the Truman Doctrine, causing keen pro-war advocates such as General William Westmoreland to lament that America always had to fight with one hand tied behind her back. 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,. by David White, Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Dutch Hostility by David White, The 1707 Window of Opportunity by David White, Why Did Germany Lose the Great War? In conversation with Dick Russell, he said, I dont think the people of the country know much about Vietnam and I think they care a hell of lot less.. The American commitment to South Vietnam was one of Kennedys legacies. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge within two days of becoming president, I will not lose in Vietnam. That personal stake in the outcome of the war remained a theme throughout his presidency, perhaps best embodied by his remark to Senator Eugene McCarthy in February 1966: I know we oughtnt to be there, but I cant get out, Johnson maintained. Entdecke 1965 Broschre des Auenministeriums Lyndon B. Johnson Muster fr den Frieden in Sdostasien in groer Auswahl Vergleichen Angebote und Preise Online kaufen bei eBay Kostenlose Lieferung fr viele Artikel! And like most politicians he routinely asserted that everything was done for principled non-self-regarding reasons: Why are we in South Vietnam? Press Conference, July 28, 1965. Original: Jun 30, 2016. From 1967 onward, antiwar sentiment gradually spread among other segments of the population, including liberal Democrats, intellectuals, and civil rights leaders, and by 1968 many prominent political figures, some of them former supporters of the presidents Vietnam policies, were publicly calling for an early negotiated settlement of the war. "Why We Are in Vietnam". The Military Draft During the Vietnam War. While the attacks on Pleiku and Qui Nhon led the administration to escalate its air war against the North, they also highlighted the vulnerability of the bases that American planes would be using for the bombing campaign. Kennedy was essentially continuing the anti-Communist containment policy of his predecessors, but he was also impelled by a sense that he had been repeatedly bested by the more experienced Khrushchev and needed to make a stand somewhere. So did his long time mentor and friend, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. Operating under the code name Mr. He emphasised four factors which justified not just a presence but an escalation of American military force. Specifically, he had removed from office Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war whom the act was largely designed to protect. 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. 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. The state of South Vietnam was in many ways artificial. 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. The troops arrived on 8 March, though Johnson endorsed the deployment prior to the first strikes themselves. A half-century has passed since President Lyndon B. Johnson stunned Americans by announcing, in a televised address on March 31, 1968, that he was drastically reducing the bombing of North Vietnam . Although there were contradictory reports about the engagement in the gulfabout which side did what, if anything, and whenJohnson never discussed them with the public. Matters were further complicated by the fact that right-wingers led by FBI Director J Edgar Hoover and Alabama governor George Wallace were trying to portray the civil rights sit-ins and demonstrations as communist inspired. Furthermore, Johnson was acutely aware that he was JFKs successor. sciences. 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. However, Americas traditional anti-colonial foreign policy stance was swiftly superseded by fears of Communist expansionism and the onset of the Cold War. And as they do on so many other topics, the tapes reveal the uncertainty, flawed information, and doubts to which Johnson himself was frequently prone. 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. 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. I just cant be the architect of surrender.24. His vice-president, Hubert Humphrey advised him against it. The Vietnam war was a very controversial war. While Johnson resumed the bombing and increased its intensity following the failure of MAYFLOWER, South Vietnam continued to suffer increasing strain from both political instability and pressure from Communists. An Asia so threatened by Communist domination would certainly imperil the security of the United States itself. 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. Original Vietnam War Personal & Field Gear, Original WW II US Field Gear & Equipment, Original WW II British Hats & Helmets; Additional site navigation. Vietnam might not have become a zone of conflict for the United States had she adhered to Franklin Roosevelts wartime opposition to the return of French colonialists and his support for independence for Indochina once the Japanese had been defeated. In late 1963 the North Vietnamese greatly increased supplies of weapons and equipment to the Vietcong and infiltrated regular army units into the South. Its just the biggest damned mess that I sawWhat the hell is Vietnam worth to me?What is it worth to this country? Johnson was reluctant to intervene in South East Asia but once strategic and politic exigencies seemd to demand it, he began to develop a not unreasonable vision for the future of South Vietnam, one that helped him stay the course. The flag of Vietnamese nationalism had been captured by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and his followers in the north: it would not be easily wrested from them. Johnson opted not to respond militarily just hours before Americans would go to the polls. 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. 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. Some citizens of South Viet-Nam at times, with understandable grievances, have joined in the attack on their own government. 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. His extraordinarily slim margin of victory87 votes out of 988,000 votes castearned him the nickname "Landslide Lyndon." He remained in the Senate for 12 years, becoming Democratic whip in 1951 and minority leader in 1953. Rotunda editions were established by generous grants from the Andrew W. Mellon He had been vice president for 1,036 days when he succeeded to the presidency. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as the 36th. LBJ was a nation-builder. Both the education bills and Medicare were civil rights measures in their own right, making federal funding to schools and hospitals dependent on desegregation. There are no easy choices when you are chief executive of a nation which is both a democracy and the most powerful nation on earth. Johnsons actions, both domestically and internationally, arose from his early political experiences as a New Deal Democrat. Looking at his former defense chief and national security adviser, he said, You know, I want you fellows to know everything that went wrong in Vietnam thats being criticized, it was my decision, not yours. Victory in the military conflict became the new administrations top priority. 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. Sometimes I take other people's judgments, and I get misled. The subject matter may be anything from the Falklands War to medieval women, from Hugh MacDiarmid to Eamon De Valera, from Nazi feature films to Sicilian cultural history, from Bannockburn to Verdun. In coming weeks and months, questions and doubts about the necessity of the military intervention grew. 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. Johnson had chosen to keep on Kennedys foreign policy team McNamara, Bundy, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. The undesirability of renewed colonialism was seen as a lesser evil, so first Truman and then Eisenhower switched support from the indigenous independence forces to their more powerful ally, France. I don't always know whats right. Washington was generally pleased with the turn of events and sought to bolster the Khanh regime. Why didnt Lyndon B. Johnson seek another term as president? See Conversation WH6505-29-7812, 7813, 7814, 7815. Worries about the credibility of the U.S. commitment to Americas friends around the world also led Johnson to support Saigon, even when some of those friends had questioned the wisdom of that commitment. In February 1965, after an attack by Viet Cong guerrillas on an U.S. military base in Pleiku, Johnson ordered Operation Rolling Thunder, a series of massive bombing raids on North Vietnam intended to cut supply lines to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters in the South; he also dispatched 3,500 Marines to protect the border city of Da Nang. It is clear that Johnson was reluctant to become involved in Vietnam. 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. The presence of several policy options, however, did not translate into freewheeling discussions with the President over the relative merits of numerous strategies. HIST 115 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Ngo Dinh Diem, 17Th Parallel North amaranthweasel363. Humphrey's advice that the United States should pull back on the Vietnam War nettled Johnson . These forces were, however, largely used for search-and-destroy missions because the administration was receiving reports that the South was about to collapse, a concern that grew when it was realised that the air offensive was making little impact on the war in the South.

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