home | 1945-21st century

COLD WAR: 1964-75 (2 of 5)

Villagers held by the U.S. Army in 1966.

The regimes in Saigon that followed Diem were many, and they were led by military men. An attempt was made at elections, but not one of the generals was able to rule democratically. Their regimes had some civilian supporters, but none represented the feelings of a broad segment of the population of South Vietnam. These were regimes that would owe their existence to U.S. money, material support and increasingly to U.S. military power. These regimes would have their fervent followers, but not enough public support in fighting against Communist forces. The guerrilla forces in South Vietnam, meanwhile, were thriving because they had support from local populations. Guerrillas without local support failed -- as Che Guevara did later in Bolivia.

Soon after Diem was assassinated, the same fate befell President Kennedy. And soon after that, the new U.S. president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was handed a report by the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, the gist of which was that the U.S. had a hard choice: either dramatically increase U.S. involvement in the war or see a Communist victory there. That such a choice had to be made was a sign of failed policy for the U.S., a policy built on the failed assumption that with U.S. help the anti-Communist regime in Saigon would be popular enough to win against Ho Chi Minh and the Communist s. Johnson's response to the report from the ambassador to South Vietnam was personal and political. It was not yet America's war to lose, but he said that he was not going to be the first U.S. president to lose a war. Johnson was afraid of hardline anti-Communist s in Congress whose help he wanted in getting civil rights legislation passed.

So far the United States had lost only a couple of dozen or so "advisors" in Vietnam. On July 31, in the Tonkin Gulf, the U.S. Navy was helping South Vietnam make raids against a North Vietnamese radio transmitter on the island of Hon Ngu. The North Vietnamese responded by attacking hostile ships in the area. The torpedo boats approached the U.S. destroyer, Maddox, and two of the torpedo boats were sunk and a third damaged. On August 3, Secretary of Defense McNamara told President Johnson about the fighting and the naval mission in the area. On August 4, off the coast of North Vietnam, the Maddox thought that it was again under attack -- in the dark of night. The Captain of the ship was to admit that it was just an "overeager sonarman" who "was hearing his ship's own propeller beat." But for two hours the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy, fired at imaginary targets.

Air support from two U.S. aircraft carriers were sent on a retaliatory mission against targets on Vietnam's coast. And President Johnson spoke to the America public about "deliberate attacks on U.S. naval vessels," and the retaliation and added that "we must and shall honor our commitments." On August 6, Defense Secretary McNamara met with U.S. legislators and gave them a distorted description of  U.S. naval activities in the Tonkin Gulf.  On August 7 the Senate and House of Representatives passed the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution," characterized as a response to Communist aggression against innocent U.S. naval vessels. The swell of public opinion in support of a tough response against Communism was overwhelming, with only two U.S. senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, voting against it.

In his 1964 run for the presidency, Johnson had said that he would not be sending American boys to do the fighting that Vietnamese boys should be doing, but in 1965 he believed he had good reason for doing so. He characterized his policy as liberating South Vietnam from Communism, and he said nothing about the nationalist element against which the U.S. was pitting itself. He and the American people were unwilling to resort to the kind of all out war as the United States had fought against Japan and Germany, but the U.S. would try to use American ground forces and air power to bomb the Communist s into submission. General Curtis LeMay, who retired in 1965, claimed the U.S. should bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age. (In 1968, LeMay ran as the candidate for vice president on the George Wallace ticket for the American Independent Party.)

In the summer of 1965, George Ball warned President Johnson that once he began escalating the war in Vietnam he would continue doing so until U.S. troops reached maybe 500,000 in number. Johnson's Secretary of Defense mustered his intellectual powers and from his platform of official expert on such matters described what would prove to be Ball's accurate prediction as "outrageous."

The Johnson administration and others argued that if the United States did not stop Communist aggression in Vietnam, Communism would spread elsewhere in Southeast Asia. On university campuses, students attended debates on the war, and in these debates those supporting Johnson's policies were less convincing than those who opposed Johnson's policies. Hearing debates that the public at large was not hearing, students rose in great numbers against the war. Pacifists joined others in opposing the war in Vietnam. Overwhelmed by World War II and largely silent about Korea, the war in Vietnam gave pacifists a great opportunity to protest war.

Peter Beinart in his book The Icarus Syndrome reminds us that in 1965 some " graying intellectuals" were upset by Johnson's policy regarding Vietnam (aside from Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaka). One was Hans Morganthau, a foreign policy scholar. Another was the author of the Containment Theory, George Kennan. And there was one of the nation's most celebrated journalists, Walter Lippmann. Lippmann called Johnson's escalation "supreme folly." The Johnson administration did a lot of research in hope of painting Lippmann as a fool. Failing at this, according to Beinart, "Johnson began telling anyone who would listen that Lippmann, now in is late seventies, was cowardly or senile or both." Lippmann stuck to his guns and wrote:

The root of [Johnson's] troubles has been his pride, a stubborn refusal to recognize the country's limitaritions or his own. (Beinart, p. 170)

Meanwhile, Americans had been getting news of guerrillas being supported by local people but they gave little thought to the right of people to local government of their own choosing. It was the ability of the guerrillas to fade back into their local communities that had made fighting them so frustrating for those fighting on the side of the regime in Saigon. The Saigon regime had been making military forays against villages, but the Americans focused instead on Communist atrocities -- some of which were guerrilla forces murdering people sent by Saigon into villages, killings that were often supported by the local people, who hated or feared Saigon agents. There was also Communist mistreatment of captured American men, which added to the anger of Americans.

Few Americans supporting the war effort in Vietnam considered the atrocities being committed by those fighting for the regime in Saigon. This included terrorist air strikes. Napalm was being splashed around. The Saigon regime and the U.S. were bombing areas in an attempt to discourage its inhabitants from cooperating with those among them who had joined the guerrillas. Villages and towns were being destroyed. One American claimed that a town had to be destroyed in order to save it from Communism.