No More Vietnams (11 page)

The first direct American attack on North Vietnam was a reprisal for two North Vietnamese attacks on our ships in August 1964. On August 2, while patrolling in the Tonkin Gulf to gather intelligence and spot Communist infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam by sea, the destroyer USS
Maddox
was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Our ship sustained no serious damage, and President Johnson ordered no retaliation. At the time, South Vietnam had been making a series of small-scale strikes on North Vietnamese shore facilities from which Communist infiltration operations were launched. Johnson believed that the North Vietnamese might have mistakenly thought the
Maddox
was involved in one such attack, though the ship was 120 miles away at the time. He therefore ordered that our ships stay even farther away from South Vietnamese coastal forays. But on August 4 North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the
Maddox
and the USS
C. Turner Joy
with torpedos and gunfire. The Johnson administration retaliated with our first air strikes on targets in North Vietnam.

Years later, antiwar journalists asserted that the August 4 incident never occurred and accused Johnson and the military of fabricating it as a pretext to intervene in the war. While some respected military observers have questioned whether the attack took place, I have concluded that it did and there is no credible evidence that we provoked it. Even official North Vietnamese histories of the war include it in their narratives. And when Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was in charge of the ships on patrol, was later asked whether the attack really happened, he said the North Vietnamese bullets that were dug out of the
Maddox
looked real enough to him.

On August 7, President Johnson, who had wanted for some time to “get Congress on board” before taking strong actions in Vietnam, sent Congress the Southeast Asia Resolution or, as it became known, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. It was not,
as some would later say, a cynical ploy to obtain broad powers to fight the war. It was an honest effort to get congressional support for the deepening involvement that had been forced upon us.

The Tonkin Gulf incidents were not the reason we went into Vietnam, just as the sinking of the
Lusitania
was not why we entered World War I. Johnson's resolution stated that the attacks were “part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom.” It resolved “that the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander-in-Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed aggression against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”

We did not go to war because of two brief naval skirmishes but because North Vietnam was trying to take over Indochina.

Many have faulted Johnson for not asking Congress for a declaration of war. He almost certainly could have gotten one after the Tonkin Gulf incidents. But he had several reasons to stop short of a declared state of war.

Neither Congress nor the Pentagon was demanding a declaration of war, because nobody expected the conflict to last very long. Johnson believed that tactical bombing in South Vietnam and limited strategic bombing in North Vietnam would soon cause the Communists to cease their aggression. He feared that China might intervene in Vietnam as it had in Korea and that a formal declaration of war would enable North Vietnam to cash in on both Chinese and Soviet security guaranties. And finally, Johnson, understandably, did not want to go to war in an election year.

Congress approved the Tonkin Gulf Resolution overwhelmingly. The House voted 416 to 0 in favor of it after only forty minutes of debate. The Senate debated the resolution for eight hours and passed it 88 to 2. These votes showed that Johnson had a solid consensus behind his policy. Congressional sentiment was best summarized by one legislator who later became
a vehement opponent of the war. “There is a time to question the route of the flag,” said Senator Frank Church, “and there is a time to rally around it, lest it be routed. This is the time for the latter course, and in our pursuit of it, a time for all of us to unify.”

Those who supported the resolution but later turned against the war tried to absolve themselves by accusing Johnson of duping the Congress about the extent of the powers it was delegating or of acting beyond his authority. Neither was the case. The record of the Senate debate shows that Congress went into the war with its eyes open. Senator John Sherman Cooper asked, “[I]f the President decided that it was necessary to use such force as could lead us into war, we would give that authorization by this resolution?” Senator J. William Fulbright, who steered the measure through the Senate, answered, “That is the way I would interpret it.” Senator Daniel Brewster asked whether “the resolution authorized the landing of large American armies in Vietnam or in China.” Fulbright answered that this was the last thing the administration wanted but that “the language of the resolution would not prevent it. It would authorize whatever the Commander-in-Chief feels is necessary.” And one of two senators who voted against the resolution, Ernest Gruening, warned that it was “an authorization which would be the equivalent of a declaration of war by Congress.”

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was not the President's sole legal basis for conducting the war. Johnson was acting in accordance with the security provisions of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). And Congress exercised its war powers every year when it authorized spending for our forces in Vietnam.

Congress reaffirmed its support for the war in March 1966, long after our troops had become deeply involved in the ground war. Senator Wayne Morse introduced a measure that denounced the way the President used the powers granted by the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Johnson made it a test of congressional support for his policy. He urged that “senators who want to reverse the Tonkin resolution because of a change of
heart should vote for the Morse amendment.” The Senate rejected the amendment—and therefore supported the war—by a vote of 92 to 5.

• • •

In July 1965, eleven months after the approval of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, we took our most fateful step into the quicksand of the Vietnam War. President Johnson simultaneously faced two sets of critical decisions: He had to maneuver the legislation for his Great Society programs through Congress, and he had to decide what to do to prevent the imminent collapse of South Vietnam. How he resolved these two problems set the pattern for his handling of the war and had a great deal to do with what went wrong in it.

Until 1965, Johnson hoped words, not deeds, would be enough to deter North Vietnam's aggression. “We will remain as long as is necessary,” he said in April 1964, “with the might that is required, whatever the risk and whatever the cost.” But like Kennedy on Laos in 1961, Johnson, however expansive his rhetoric, was reluctant to take the military action necessary to back it up. For about a year he had made little use of his war powers under the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. At first he ordered limited bombing in Laos and North Vietnam and then deployed additional ground troops in South Vietnam, but only to protect our air bases. Johnson made the fatal mistake of committing American prestige without committing adequate American forces to back it up.

He hoped that these limited actions would not only lead North Vietnam to seek peace but also increase the combat effectiveness of South Vietnam's army by bolstering its morale. His hopes were disappointed. With South Vietnam tottering on the edge of defeat, morale alone could not turn the tide, and Ho Chi Minh's mind was set on military conquest, not compromise.

In the summer of 1965, North Vietnam began a concerted drive for total victory. Now, to fulfill his pledge to keep South Vietnam free, Johnson decided he had to undertake a huge military buildup in Vietnam and order our troops to take over
the war against the guerrillas. This decision made it America's war rather than South Vietnam's.

The most critical week of the Johnson presidency began on July 21, 1965. The President had long been torn between the conflicting demands of the war in Vietnam and the war on poverty. Now he had to assign priorities.

On July 21, Secretary of Defense McNamara reported to the National Security Council that the military picture was rapidly deteriorating. He recommended that the President send another 100,000 men to Vietnam by October and said that an additional 100,000 might be needed in early 1966. McNamara also suggested that the administration ask Congress for authority to call up 235,000 troops from the reserves.

The cost for these steps would add up to $8 billion. The President could get the money either by seeking a supplemental appropriation from Congress or by juggling the accounts in the Pentagon budget. As Johnson contemplated such a major escalation of our role in Vietnam, he also had to decide whether to mobilize the country behind the war. Meanwhile, the Great Society hung in the balance in Congress. During the week of July 21, two centerpieces of Johnson's domestic program—the civil rights bill and Medicare—had reached crucial stages in Conference Committee. Another twenty-six major bills were moving through the House and Senate, while eleven more awaited scheduling.

Johnson knew that the Great Society and the Vietnam War were on a collision course. He was convinced that any action which focused attention on the war undermined the prospects for his domestic program. He later exploded in exasperation, “If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home.” On the one hand, if he let North Vietnam win the war, the acrimonious debate about who lost South Vietnam would wreck his plans for the Great Society. On the other hand, if he went all out to win the war, conservatives would use it as an excuse to gut his domestic programs. “History provided too many cases
where the sound of a bugle put an immediate end to the hopes and dreams of the best reformers,” Johnson later told a biographer. He added that once the Vietnam War had begun, “all those conservatives in the Congress would use it as a weapon against the Great Society.”

It was a terrible dilemma for Johnson. He could not afford to lose the war, and he could not afford to do what was necessary to win it. Either way he would lose the Great Society. He made the worst possible choice: He would fight—not to win, but only not to lose.

Johnson decided to pursue a policy of guns
and
butter. He gave his Great Society programs priority over Vietnam and tried to prosecute the war out of the public spotlight. As he approved additional military actions in Vietnam, he told his National Security Council that he did not want to be “overly dramatic and cause tensions.” His fear was not that bellicose rhetoric would lead to a superpower confrontation but that a public debate on the war would kill his domestic plans.

He deliberately downplayed the importance of the actions he was taking in Vietnam. He announced that he was sending our armed forces into war in a short opening statement during an afternoon press conference. He did not seek authority from Congress to call up the reserves. He did not ask for a resolution of national emergency or even a supplemental appropriations bill. He did not present his plan for the war in a prime-time address to the nation. He did not publicly disclose the size of the anticipated call-up through the draft or explain that our troops would now engage in direct combat. He did not cut back social programs or increase taxes to put the economy on a wartime footing.

Making the point that Vietnam was a just war would have been easy, but Johnson deliberately chose to avoid the question. While he sporadically made strong statements on the war, he never marshaled a concerted public campaign to explain why we were in Vieinam. It was the greatest political error this master politician ever made. American leaders cannot wage war without the solid support of public opinion, and the
American people will go to war only if they are convinced that it is in a just cause. An American President therefore must never commit his troops to battle without getting the people to commit themselves to the war.

• • •

When Johnson intervened in Vietnam, he had to deal with the war as he found it. It was being fought in South Vietnam with guerrilla tactics, and the government in Saigon was near collapse. Our first priority was to stop our ally's slide toward defeat at the hands of Communist guerrillas. But that alone could not ensure South Vietnam's survival. Our second priority should have been to blunt North Vietnam's invasion through Laos and Cambodia. And because our forces eventually would be withdrawn, our third priority should have been to prepare South Vietnam to defend itself against both the internal and external threats it faced.

From 1964 through 1968, our strategy primarily addressed our first priority—and by virtually ignoring the other two, guaranteed its own failure. Had we addressed all three problems from the outset of our involvement, President Johnson could have ended the Vietnam War before he left office. Instead, it became our longest war.

Democracies are not well equipped to fight prolonged or limited wars. A totalitarian power can coerce its population into fighting indefinitely, but a democracy fights well only as long as its public opinion supports the war, and public opinion will not continue to support a war that is fought indecisively or that drags on without tangible signs of progress. This is doubly true when the war is being fought half a world away.

Some say that our mistake was in failing to follow Douglas MacArthur's dictum that in war there is no substitute for victory. According to them, we should have either stayed out of the war entirely or sought unconditional victory over the enemy as we had in World War II. But few wars have been all-or-nothing propositions. Unlimited or total wars have been a rarity. Except for World War II, none of our foreign conflicts has been a total war. We did not demand the surrender of
Madrid in the Spanish-American War or march on Berlin in the First World War, and we accepted an armistice to end the Korean War.