Beginning in 1965, student demonstrations grew larger and more frequent and helped to stimulate resistance to the draft. This raised the problem of balancing the demands, both political and financial, of his cherished domestic program and his deep ideological hostility to Communism. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueller conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history. As each new American escalation met with fresh enemy response and as no end to the combat appeared in sight, the presidents public support declined steeply. Meeting with his top civilian advisers on Vietnam, LBJ told them to forget about the social, economic, and political reforms that Kennedy had stressed. I have nothing in the world I want except to do what I believe to be right. An Asia so threatened by Communist domination would certainly imperil the security of the United States itself. 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. In response, President Johnson ordered retaliatory strikes against North Vietnam and asked Congress to sanction any further action he might take to deter Communist aggression in Southeast Asia. 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. With the return of a Democratic majority in 1955, Johnson, age 46, became the youngest majority leader in that body's history. 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. In between lie incidents of increasingly greater magnitude, including the decision to deploy the Marines and the shift from defensive to offensive operations. By mid-March, therefore, Johnson began to consider additional proposals for expanding the American combat presence in South Vietnam. In 1968, President LBJ delivers a speech entitled, "Why Are We in Convinced that Bosch was using and encouraging Communist allies, particularly those aided and abetted by the Cuban Communist leader Fidel Castro, the reactionary military-backed junta sought to crack down on pro-Bosch groups, moves that only served to provoke the Dominican population to take their activism to the streets. It was focussed on the 1930s appeasement of Hitler and the Containment Doctrine of Truman, and these greatly contributed to his decision to escalate the war. Restoration of colonial rule fanned the flames of nationalism still further in Vietnam, and significantly elevated the role of the Communist element within the national resistance to the point where it dominated what had previously been a politically broad-based independence movement. 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 early August 1964, after North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin near the coast of North Vietnam without provocation, Johnson ordered retaliatory bombing raids on North Vietnamese naval installations and, in a televised address to the nation, proclaimed, "We still seek no wider war." Opinion | Why Lyndon Johnson Dropped Out - The New York Times He risked his own career for the good of the people in the United States. His Great Society programs to tackle poverty and the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act were socially progressive measures carried out during a period of economic expansion and increased prosperity. Charges of cronyism and corruption had dogged the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem for years, sparking public condemnation of his rule as well as successive efforts at toppling his regime. The Years of Lyndon Johnson - Wikipedia It pained him to hear protesters, especially studentswho he thought would venerate him for his progressive social agendachanting, Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? To avoid the demonstrations, he eventually restricted his travels, becoming a virtual prisoner in the White House. I need you more than he did, LBJ said to his national security team.6, That need was now more pressing because the counterinsurgency was deteriorating. Johnson rejected a legislative strategy that would have entailed open-ended discussion, preferring to obtain the funds under the authority Congress granted him via the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964a move, he knew, that would further ratify that authority should he need to act even more boldly in the future. Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36th president of the United States and was sworn into office following the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. technological innovation designed for scholars and Johnson also dispatched another trusted aide, State Department official Thomas Mann, to Santo Domingo and, later, his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy. For a narrative of these events, see David Kaiser. In the 1930s we made our fate not by what we did but what we Americans failed to do not by action but by inaction. Part 2 of 3. . The number increased steadily over the next two years, peaking at about 550,000 in 1968. In his April 1965 speech, Johnson limited himself to a defensive strategy of containment in Indochina. Nor would this be all; Westmoreland regarded these forces as necessary merely to blunt the Communists current monsoon offensive. Lyndon B. Johnson - Key Events | Miller Center Critics accused the Johnson administration of overreacting and lending too much credence to unsubstantiated claims of strong Communist influence amongst the rebel factions. Indeed, George Ball predicted that the United States would eventually have to put half a million troops in Vietnam, a prediction which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara vehemently rejected. It meant in particular that America could never send ground troops into the North. 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. 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 American commitment to South Vietnam was one of Kennedys legacies. The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed - The New York Times 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.. 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. This was particularly true of his conversations with broadcast and print journalists, with whom he spoke on a regular basis. Johnson also repeatedly referred to the legal basis for escalation, citing SEATO obligations, the Geneva Accords, the UN Charter, Eisenhowers commitment to South Vietnam in 1954 and Kennedys in 1961. He emphasised four factors which justified not just a presence but an escalation of American military force. As real-time information flowed in to the Pentagon from the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy, the story became more and more confused, and as frustratingly incomplete and often contradictory reports flowed into Washington, several high-ranking military and civilian officials became suspicious of the 4 August incident, questioning whether the attack was real or imagined. 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. The Vietnam War in Forty Quotes | Council on Foreign Relations 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. American public opinion was willing to go along with whatever course of action the administration chose, Johnsons standing being so high at this point. 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. He came into office after the death of a popular young President and provided needed continuity and stability. . Lyndon B. Johnson, "The President's News Conference: Why Are We in Vietnam?" July 28, 1965, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1965, Book II, pp. When Kennedy entered office, he too supported the unpopular regime, increasing substantially the number of American military personnel in South Vietnam. 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. by David White, Leopold IIs Heart of Darkness, by David White, Why did Lyndon Johnson escalate the conflict in Vietnam? Opinion | The Tragedy of Hubert Humphrey - The New York Times Lyndon B. Johnson, Why We Are in Vietnam, 1965 By the summer of 1964 the Johnson Administration had already made secret plans to escalate the American military presence in . The presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson began on November 22, . 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 . If I left the woman I really loved the Great Society in order to get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe. North and South Vietnamese Communists declined to meet Johnson on his terms, one of numerous instances over the following three years in which the parties failed to find even a modicum of common ground. The troops arrived on 8 March, though Johnson endorsed the deployment prior to the first strikes themselves. One faction, which included Fortas, McGeorge Bundy, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, favored the more leftist Guzmn, while Mann and Secretary of State Dean Rusk favored Imbert. Home. Was hubert humphrey ever president? Explained by Sharing Culture LBJ then widened that circle of support by turning to Eisenhowers longtime aide General Andrew J. Goodpaster, who convened study groups on Vietnam. Eisenhower authorised massive aid programs which merely made the country more corrupt and dependent on subsidies, and sustained a large ineffectual army whose violent and ham-fisted activities contributed to a guerrilla insurrection waged by the southern Vietcong and supported by the Communist North. Those officials included many of the same figures who had acquiesced in Diems removal, as the desire for continuity led him to retain Kennedys presumed objectives as well as his senior civilian and military advisers.5 Uncertainty about his own foreign policy credentials also contributed to Johnsons reliance on figures such as Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, all of whom had been with Kennedy since the outset of that administration. LBJ spurns Vietnam advice, July 23, 1965 - POLITICO by David White, Chroniclers, Detectives or Judges Just What Are Historians? These may be recent or from the distant the past, finished articles or drafts that the writer wants to try out. Furthermore, Johnson was acutely aware that he was JFKs successor. So why couldnt South Vietnam follow this model? 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. He even goes on to say that, had the U.S. not intervened, Communism would dominate Southeast Asia and bring the world closer to a Third World War. Johnson ultimately decided to support Guzmn, but only with strict assurances that his provisional government would not include any Communists and that no accommodation would be reached with the 14th of July Movement. However, Americas traditional anti-colonial foreign policy stance was swiftly superseded by fears of Communist expansionism and the onset of the Cold War. Many more would be required to regain the initiative and then to mount the win phase of the conflict. McNamara thus recommended, and Johnson endorsed, a more vigorous program of U.S. military and economic support for South Vietnam.10. Was lyndon b johnson a good president? The onset of that American war in Vietnam, which was at its most violent between 1965 and 1973, is the subject of these annotated transcripts, made from the recordings President Lyndon B. Johnson taped in secret during his time in the White House. Davidson and later Mr. Jungle Warfare Tactics Manual Army History 1969 Vietnam. 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. Johnson, a southerner himself, worked to persuade congressmen and senators from the former Confederacy to acquiesce in, if not actively support, passage of these measures. 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. 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. Its just the biggest damned mess that I sawWhat the hell is Vietnam worth to me?What is it worth to this country? Why did Lyndon B. Johnson get impeached? 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. In an effort to achieve consensus about security requirements for those troops, key personnel undertook a review in Honolulu on 20 April. He coupled that vision with rhetoric designed to highlight the administrations willingness to discuss, if not negotiate, aspects of the conflict in Southeast Asia. How many soldiers did Johnson send to Vietnam? - 2023 U.S. Involvement in the Vietnam War: the Gulf of Tonkin and Escalation, 1964 In early August 1964, two U.S. destroyers stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin in Vietnam radioed that they had been fired upon by North Vietnamese forces. Lyndon Johnson could have been remembered as one of the most outstanding of American presidents. Particularly critical was J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who, in the wake of the crisis, took the Johnson administration to task for a lack of candor with the American public. specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history and In the spring and summer of 1965 Johnson was laboring to get through Congress some of the most controversial of his Great Society programs: the Voting Rights Act, federal aid to education, and Medicare, among others. Fifty years ago, during the first six months of 1965, Lyndon Johnson made the decision to Americanize the conflict in Vietnam. A genuine Communist threat had effectively been created by US policy, based on the speculative domino theory, and this was amplified when the French were defeated and pulled out of south-east Asia. 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. Just ask at the reception desk for directions to the meeting room. With this speech, Johnson laid the political groundwork for a major commitment of U.S. troops. B. (Juan Bosch), bang-bangs (the military), the baseball players (a reduction from an earlier reference to those fellows who play left field on the baseball team, or the leftist rebels), and other references, some thinly veiled and some veiled to the extent that they are now almost completely obscured. Milestones: 1961-1968 - Office of the Historian We are there because we have a promise to keep. 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. Though his . Expectations of prosperity arising from the promise of the Great Society failed to materialize, and discontent and alienation grew accordingly, fed in part by a surge in African American political radicalism and calls for Black power. Victory in the military conflict became the new administrations top priority. We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else. 07/22/2017 11:41 PM EDT. And there must be no such failure in the 1960s. by David White, Bloody Victory or Bloody Stupidity? The shuffling and reshuffling of military personnel also contributed to Diems troubles, further undermining the counterinsurgency; indeed, by reserving some of the Souths best troops for his own personal protection instead of sending them out to defeat the Communists, Diem contributed to the very incidenthis forcible removal from powerhe was trying to forestall.3 A poor showing against the Vietcong at the battle of Ap Bac in January 1963 sparked the most probing questions to date about those personnel shifts and about the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). 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. Thus ideological inflexibility and political self-interest snuffed out any alternative to escalation; and Johnsons pride and his domineering, machismo character led him to see any weakening of the American position in Vietnam as a personal humiliation. governance American lives are in danger.18 With the concurrence of his national security advisers, Johnson immediately ordered four hundred U.S. Marines to the Dominican Republic, a deployment he announced in a brief, televised statement from the White House theater at 8:40 p.m. that evening. Raids by the local Communistsdubbed the Vietcong, or VC, by Diemhad picked up in frequency and intensity in the weeks following Diems ouster. The North Vietnamese were gambling that the South would collapse and the Americans would have nothing to support, leaving them no option but to withdraw. Lyndon B. Johnson visits South Vietnam - HISTORY 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. 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. Johnson abhorred the Kennedy practice of debating such questions in open session, preferring a consensus engineered prior to his meetings with top aides.14 Two of those senior officials, Secretary of Defense McNamara and Secretary of State Rusk, would prove increasingly important to Johnson over the course of the war, with McNamara playing the lead role in the escalatory phase of the conflict. 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. I don't always know whats right. Lyndon B. Johnson - Facts, Great Society & Civil Rights - HISTORY Document Viewer. In early August 1964, after North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin near the coast of North Vietnam without provocation, Johnson ordered retaliatory bombing raids on North Vietnamese naval installations and, in a televised address to the nation, proclaimed, We still seek no wider war. Two days later, at Johnsons request, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the president to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. In effect, the measure granted Johnson the constitutional authority to conduct a war in Vietnam without a formal declaration from Congress. The U.S. general election that loomed in November altered the administrations representation in Vietnam as Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge resigned his post that June to pursue the Republican nomination for president. Sponsored. By September, the Dominicans had agreed to a compromise. The war, they said, would have to be limited in scope. Nevertheless, in an effort to provide greater incentive for Hanoi to come to the bargaining table, Johnson sanctioned a limited bombing halt, code-named MAYFLOWER, for roughly one week in the middle of May. President Lyndon B. Johnson expanded American air operations in August 1964, when he authorized retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam following a reported attack on U.S. warships in. Concern about his personal credibility was also at work in Johnsons calculus. sciences. Here was a nation born under the direst of circumstances. 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. 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. 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. His decision to step away from the presidency in March 1968 ensured that the endgame in Vietnam did not happen on his watch. This is a different kind of war. Johnson sought Eisenhowers counsel not only for the value of the generals military advice but for the bipartisan cover the Republican former president could offer. . 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. In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon B. Johnson was elected Vice President as John F. Kennedy's running mate. 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. His limited goal was to keep North Vietnam from destroying South . The final speech was given by President Richard Nixon in 1973, informing the nation that peace had been found in Vietnam. But LBJ was equally committed to winning the fight against the Communist insurgency in Vietnama fight that Kennedy had joined during his thousand days in office. The Open History Society is open to everybody and meets on the last Friday of the month between September and May to hear talks from historians and those interested in and knowledgeable about history. By spring of 1965, Johnson was holding impromptu lunch meetings with only a handful of senior officials on Tuesdays where they hashed out strategy. (3) congress wanted to reassert its right to authorize military action. Broad planning for the war often took place on an interagency basis and frequently at levels removed from those of the administrations most senior officials. 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. 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. He was following the political interpretation and policy direction known as Containment which had first been suggested by George Kennan and adopted by Harry Truman in 1947. Distinguished Professor, John A. Cooper Professor of History, University of Arkansas. . The credibility concerns of Johnson and his advisers were not limited to how the USA would be viewed if it did withdraw it would not have been seriously damaged since only Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Taiwan and South Korea backed continued American involvement it was equally the threat to their own and the Democratic partys standing. To view these, click on the link titled Members' Articles. 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. Notably, Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs and one of the officials most enamored of deposing Diem, had lost his job in the State Department within the first five months of the Johnson administration. newly digitized critical and documentary editions in the humanities and social These exchanges reveal Johnsons acute sensitivity to press criticism of his Vietnam policy as he tried to reassure the electorate of his commitment to help the South Vietnamese defend themselves without conjuring up images of the United States assuming the brunt of that defense.