II
If you’re in one, stop digging.
Denis Healey, Law of Holes
In July 1965 Lyndon Johnson chose to Americanize the war in Vietnam. Faced with the prospects of losing South Vietnam to the Communists, the president announced that U.S. combat strength in Vietnam would immediately be increased from 75,000 to 125,000 and that additional U.S. forces would be sent when requested by field commander General William Westmoreland. The level of forces needed would be achieved through substantial increases in monthly draft calls but Reserve units would not be called into service. “Now,” Johnson wrote in his memoirs, “we were committed to major combat in Vietnam. We had determined not to let that country fall under Communist rule as long as we could prevent it.”1
Just seven months following the July 1965 decision, President Johnson travelled to Honolulu in February 1966 for a first-hand assessment on the war’s progress from General William Westmoreland and to secure commitments for political reform from South Vietnam’s prime minister Nguyen Cao Ky. Johnson was accompanied by Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earle Wheeler, Special Assistant for National Security McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare John Gardner, and Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman. In Honolulu they were met by a 28-member South Vietnamese delegation headed by Ky and Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu. Also waiting in Honolulu were General Westmoreland and Pacific Commander Admiral Ullysses S. Grant Sharp, Jr.
The visit to Honolulu was Johnson’s first trip outside the North American continent since becoming president. The decision was made hastily and for political reasons—Senator J. William Fulbright, Democratic senator from Arkansas and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had scheduled televised committee hearings on the war. Johnson outfoxed his political adversary by putting the principal witnesses on Air Force I and flying to Honolulu. The president’s trip galvanized public attention and South Vietnam’s premier Ky was featured on the cover of Timemagazine. Fulbright was left to question retired General James Gavin and diplomat George Kennan—critics of the war but neither holding an official position in government.
At Honolulu, Johnson learned from General Westmoreland that the July deployments had staved off defeat in the South, but additional troops would now be needed to take the military initiative. President Johnson reluctantly agreed to a dramatic increase in U.S. troop strength from the 184,000 currently deployed to 429,000 by the end of the year. In exchange for the increase LBJ, utilizing his favorite exhortation, told Westmoreland to “nail the coonskin to the wall” by reaching the crossover point by December 1966.
LBJ also told Ky he expected results, especially a plan for a new constitution and free elections. To underscore these expectations, the president related a story for South Vietnam’s premier. “There was once two poker players and the first player asked ‘What do you have?’ ‘Aces,’ said the second. ‘How many aces?’ asked the first. ‘One aces,’ answered the second.” Looking directly at Ky the president said, “I hope we don’t find out we only had one aces.”2
Nailing the coonskin proved to be elusive, however, and doubts within the administration on the feasibility of achieving U.S. objectives in Vietnam had begun to surface as early as November 1965. Among the doubters was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara—the godfather of the Pentagon’s computerized methodology and systems analysis that had originally forecast an end to the war within a reasonable period of time.
It was Robert Strange McNamara’s exuberance for statistical analysis as a method for finding the code to break Ho’s will that was discredited during the war. McNamara had utilized statistics and management/systems analysis to solve tough problems throughout his distinguished public career. A graduate of Harvard Business School, he was best known for almost single-handedly reviving Ford Motor Company and for his meteoric rise at Ford from manager to vice-president and, in 1960, to president—the first person outside the Ford family to hold that title. At Ford, as he would later do at the Pentagon, McNamara surrounded himself with a remarkably talented group of young, energetic, and similarly committed individuals who at various times were referred to as the “quiz kids,” “whiz kids,” “computer jockeys,” “technipols,” or “McNamara’s band.”
McNamara’s entire public career had been a success story. After serving only one month as president of Ford, McNamara had accepted John Kennedy’s offer to run the Pentagon. Following Kennedy’s assassination, and during the period in which President Johnson became preoccupied with the legitimacy of transition and then the 1964 election, responsibility for running the war (which was still a relatively small commitment) had fallen to the civilian secretary of defense. Vietnam was then referred to in laudatory terms as “McNamara’s war.” President Johnson trusted McNamara and respected him for his ability to get things done. General Westmoreland later recalled that “Mr. McNamara came from American business and he was very statistically oriented. He was very anxious to fight this war as efficiently as possible. I have heard him say that he wanted to end the war without having great stockpiles of material as we had in World War II.”3
McNamara became an open target for southern conservatives on the Armed Services Committee and military hawks who blamed the military stalemate on the secretary of defense. In part this reaction reflected the belief that more bombing would accomplish what a great amount of bombing and a great number of troops had failed to do—bring security and stability to South Vietnam and convince Hanoi to seek negotiations. The attacks on McNamara also manifested the desire by his political opponents to take that smart son-of-a-gun down a peg or two.
McNamara’s initial doubts had surfaced following the battle at la Drang Valley in November 1965. The battle had pitted the Army’s First Cavalry Division against regimental-size formations of North Vietnamese. In direct confrontation with the enemy, premium firepower had smashed large enemy formations. The battle had left 1200 Communists killed-in-action compared with approximately 200 for the United States. Westmoreland believed that the size of enemy casualties validated the concept of attrition as a military strategy.4
McNamara, however, doubted that the enemy would stand toe-to-toe very frequently, and a war of attriting the enemy’s manpower base would take time, possibly too long for the American public. The secretary subsequently pressed his case for what became a 37-day Christmas bombing pause and at one point told Johnson that the United States could not win the war in Vietnam. During a December 18, 1965, White House meeting, President Johnson asked McNamara, “Then, no matter what we do in the military field there is no sure victory?” McNamara responded, “That’s right. We have been too optimistic.” When the bombing pause failed to produce fruitful negotiations, the bombing program was accelerated.
By 1967–68 the Joint Chiefs were in open revolt against the civilians in the Pentagon, and President Johnson, who had always been suspicious of the military, now lost faith in his dovish defense secretary. Vitriolic perceptions of “McNamara’s band” permeated the inner war councils. Admiral Sharp later wrote, “We could have flattened every war-making facility in North Vietnam. But the hand-wringers had center stage. . . . The most powerful country in the world did not have the willpower needed to meet the situation.”5General John Paul McConnel charged that “I didn’t think Mr. McNamara understood air power nor its application very well. ... In fact, I don’t think there was at that time anybody in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who understood the application of tactical and strategic powers. At least, not the way I understood it.”6 Admiral Thomas Moorer added, “I thought that McNamara didn’t know what the hell he was talking about because they were claiming that the bombing wasn’t effective, see.”7
The Prognosis is Bad—October 1966
By the final quarter of 1966 the crossover point was nowhere in sight. At President Johnson’s behest Secretary McNamara visited Vietnam in October 1966. It had been twelve months since McNamara’s last visit—a period during which U.S. troop deployments had more than doubled. The secretary spent his first two days in formal briefings with military commanders and then visited military posts in the field.
Signs of an inconclusive military stalemate were already evident. Military defeat had been prevented, but little progress had been made in rooting out Communist forces and destroying their infrastructure in South Vietnam. Moreover, while unremitting but selective application of air and naval power had inflicted serious damage to war-supporting targets in North Vietnam, it had not reduced Hanoi’s capacity to support or direct military operations in the South.
On October 14, 1966 Secretary McNamara wrote LBJ that despite significant increases in U.S. troop deployments and in the intensity of the bombing campaign, Hanoi “knows we can’t achieve our goals. The prognosis is bad in that the war can be brought to a satisfactory conclusion within the next two years.” The U.S. military escalation had blunted Communist military initiatives, but had not diminished the enemy’s will to continue. “Any military victory in South Vietnam the Viet Cong may have had in mind 18 months ago has been thwarted by our emergency deployments and actions. And our program of bombing the North has exacted a price. My concern continues, however, in other respects. This is because I see no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon.” McNamara apparently recognized the limits of U.S. military force in a war with political ends. According to McNamara, Hanoi had adopted a strategy of “attriting our national will.”
McNamara identified shortcomings in a military strategy that was seemingly detached from its original political goals. “In essence, we find ourselves—from the point of view of the important war (for the complicity of the people)—no better, and if anything worse off. This important wai must be fought and won by the Vietnamese themselves. We have known this from the beginning. But the discouraging truth is that, as was the case in 1961 and 1963 and 1965, we have not found the formula, the catalyst, for training and inspiring them into effective action.” The Pacification and Revolutionary Development program—aimed at gaining the hearts and minds of the population—was “thoroughly stalled.” Pacification had been a central objective of U.S. policy in Vietnam. It had involved the military, political, economic, and social establishment of local government with the participation of the Vietnamese people. For pacification to succeed, it was necessary to achieve sustained periods of territorial security, economic activity, and political control, yet the Viet Cong political infrastructure still thrived in the South’s countryside and provided an enormous intelligence advantage for the enemy. In McNamara’s words, “full security exists nowhere (not even behind the US Marines’ lines and in Saigon); in the countryside, the enemy almost completely controls the night.” The people in rural areas believed that the government of South Vietnam “when it comes will not stay but that the VC will.” Moreover, people believed that those who cooperated with the Government of Vietnam (GVN) would be punished by the Viet Cong (VC) and that the GVN was indifferent to the people’s welfare. The United States could not do the job of pacification and security for the Vietnamese. “All we can do is massage the heart,” warned McNamara.
October 1966 was not, however, the time to pull back or even out. Instead, faced with this unpromising state of affairs, McNamara endorsed a policy of redefining U.S. strategy. “We must continue to press the enemy militarily; we must make demonstrable progress in pacification; at the same time, we must add a new ingredient forced on us by the facts. Specifically, we must improve our position by getting ourselves into a military posture that we credibly would maintain indefinitely—a posture that makes trying to ‘wait us out’ less attractive.” In order to achieve the political objectives of changing Hanoi’s long-term strategy, McNamara recommended stabilizing U.S. forces at 470,000. “It is my view that this is enough to punish the enemy at the large-unit operations level and to keep the enemy’s main forces from interrupting pacification. I believe also that even many more than 470,000 would not kill the enemy off in such numbers as to break their morale so long as they think they can wait us out.” A stabilized U.S. force level would put the United States in a position where negotiations would more likely be productive.
Secretary McNamara also recommended in his report that a portion of the 470,000 troops—perhaps 10,000 to 20,000—should be devoted to the construction and maintenance of an infiltration barrier. This interdiction system would cost $1 billion dollars and be constructed with fences, wires, acoustic sensors, and mines. McNamara also recommended that Rolling Thunder* attack sorties on the North be stabilized. Approximately 12,000 sorties a month were currently directed against the North—double the amount of the previous year—yet, in Secretary McNamara’s opinion, the JCS could not show what effect the sorties had had on Viet Cong infiltration into the South. “Furthermore, it is clear that, to bomb the North sufficiently to make a radical impact upon Hanoi’s political, economic and social structure, would require an effort which we could make but which would not be stomached either by our own people or by world opinion; and it would involve a serious risk of drawing us into open war with China.”8
The Joint Chiefs of Staff quickly responded to McNamara’s recommendations. Chairman Earle Wheeler, the country’s highest ranking uniformed soldier, wrote directly to the secretary that the chiefs agreed with McNamara that “we cannot predict with confidence that the war can be brought to an end in two years.” Accordingly, for political, military, and psychological reasons, it would be necessary to prepare openly for a long-term, sustained military effort. Wheeler warned McNamara that the enemy strategy “appears to be to wait it out; in other words, communist leaders in both North and South Vietnam expect to win this war in Washington, just as they won the war with France in Paris.”
But, while the JCS agreed with McNamara’s diagnosis, they vehemently rejected the secretary’s proposed treatment. A stable and sustainable force level of 470,000 was substantially less than the military envisioned. The JCS were even less enamored with McNamara’s plans for an infiltration barrier which was privately derided as an “Alice-in-Wonderland solution to insurgency.” Barriers properly installed and defended by ground and air effort could indeed impede infiltration into South Vietnam, but McNamara’s air-raid munitions barrier could not accomplish this goal and the diversion of funds would impair ongoing military programs throughout the world.
The very premise for stabilizing Rolling Thunder as a carrot to induce negotiations was rejected by the chiefs. Instead, they claimed that the air campaign needed to be accelerated. “Our experiences with pauses in bombing and resumption have not been happy ones,” Wheeler wrote. “Additionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the likelihood of the war being settled by negotiation is small; and that, far from inducing negotiations, another bombing pause will be regarded by North Vietnamese leaders, and our Allies, as renewed evidence of lack of US determination to press the war to a successful conclusion. The bombing campaign is one of the two trump cards in the hands of the President (the other being the presence of US troops in SVN). It should not be given up without an end to the NVN aggression in SVN.”
General Wheeler concluded with a clear statement that the chiefs believed the war had reached a critical stage in which “decisions taken over the next sixty days can determine the outcome of the war and, consequently, can affect the over-all security interests of the United States for years to come.” Wheeler acknowledged the admirable goals of trying to settle the war by peaceful means. “Certainly, no one—American or foreigner—except those who are determined not to be convinced, can doubt the sincerity, the generosity, the altruism of US actions and objectives. In the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the time has come when further overt actions and offers on our part are not only nonproductive, they are counterproductive. A logical case can be made that the American people, our Allies, and our enemies alike are increasingly uncertain as to our resolution to pursue the war to a successful conclusion.”9
Meeting in Manila
Would the next sixty days really be as decisive as Wheeler predicted? What did the chiefs mean by “a successful conclusion”? Were the American people really questioning U.S. resolve to succeed in Vietnam? What yardstick could be used to measure success? With an eye towards finding answers, and with the McNamara and Wheeler reports in his hand, the president convened a seven-nation meeting of Asian allies in Manila.
Accompanied by Mrs. Johnson and his official team of advisors, which included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, the president arrived in Manila on October 23, 1966, occupying the same hotel suite used by the Beatles during their historic tour the previous summer. The president’s arrival in Manila was preceded by a visit to Australia where hostile demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney against U.S. foreign policy overshadowed festivities planned by Australian leaders waiting to greet the president.
Upon his arrival in Manila, Johnson declared, “Asia and Asians must lead, but we are prepared to help.” The seven-nation conference brought together President Chung Hee Park of South Korea, Prime Ministers Harold Holt of Australia and Keith Holyoake of New Zealand, Premier Thanom Kittikachorn of Thailand, President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky and Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu, of South Vietnam.10
Of particular interest at Manila were the military assessments provided by General Westmoreland and Premier Ky. The two men presented quite disparate personalities. General William Childs Westmoreland was the soldier’s soldier. Frequently depicted as a grown-up eagle scout, Westmoreland had been first captain of cadets at West Point. In World War II, he had fought in North Africa and Sicily and led troops in the Normandy landing. Following the war he took paratroop training and commanded a combat regiment in Korea. In June 1964 Westmoreland replaced General Paul Harkins as head of the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV).
In contrast, the gaudy and flamboyant Ky was habitually attired in a black flying suit with a purple scarf around his neck and ivory-handled pistols jutting from his pockets. Many Americans had a hard time taking him seriously, but Ky took himself quite seriously. Trained as a pilot by the French, Ky later operated under CIA cover while flying secret agents into North Vietnam. Indeed, his black flying suit was designed by Ky so that he would be less visible if ever forced to parachute against the night sky. Following the June 12, 1965, coup, Ky had been installed as premier by the nineteen-member national leadership council until a constitution could be written and elections held, both of which were yet to be done at the time of the Manila conference.
President Johnson now asked Ky, “What is in the mind of the Viet Cong—do they expect to win?” Ky replied: “No. I don’t think so. I believe they will very soon collapse—if we can get to them the facts.” He said that General Westmoreland had reported to him the other day that half the prisoners captured in recent military operations still thought Diem (who had been assassinated in November 1963) was running the government in Saigon. “We must improve our information, get to the people, give them the facts, enlarge the open arms program. Then they will come back to us.”
The president then asked General Westmoreland for his assessment of the military situation. As recorded in the meeting notes, Westmoreland assured Johnson, “By every index, things were improving.” General Westmoreland cited the favorable trend of relative casualty figures, defections, and weapons losses. “Above all, an optimistic spirit was now unmistakable in Vietnam. The ARVN [Army of the Republic of Vietnam] are fighting better and are more aggressive. There was improved outlook for pacification which would become the first task of the ARVN as they were retrained. Improved intelligence from the villages permitted more effective police measures.” The president asked if the VC would still seek a major victory in October. Westmoreland thought they would try, but they would not succeed.
The president asked General Westmoreland whether he had enough troops. The meeting notes record that “[Westmoreland] could certainly need more forces. He would like all the allies fighting in Vietnam to increase their forces at least by 35%.” The president turned to Secretary of State Rusk and remarked “that [Rusk] had his work cut out for him.” The president asked if there were any more troops to be generated from South Vietnam. General Westmoreland replied that he envisaged an increase of about 22,000 by the end of 1967, but basically South Vietnam was a country whose manpower for military purposes was being stretched to the maximum.
General Westmoreland concluded his military assessment by stating “that while there was light at the end of the tunnel, we had to be geared for the long pull. The enemy is relying on his greater staying power. It is only his will and resolve that are sustaining him now, and his faith that his will is stronger than ours.”
With respect to bombing, General Westmoreland warned LBJ against taking any actions to stabilize Rolling Thunder. “We should in no case unilaterally quit bombing. Infiltration continues. The price of infiltration has definitely been raised.” The president suggested that “General Westmoreland talk with Secretary Rusk, and instructed Rostow to get a fuller version of General Westmoreland’s suggestions about the future of the bombing program.” The meeting transcripts depict LBJ’s suspicion of the press that would later destroy the administration. “Both of us,” the president said to Ky, “must be careful not to let the press bait us.” The president’s last words at the meeting were, “Don’t let the newspapermen divide us.”
The Manila conference provided President Johnson with the opportunity to send several messages to different audiences. For the Asian nations represented at the conference there was the pledge of support. For Hanoi, there was a signal of determination in U.S. resolve. For the South Vietnamese, there was a signal that the credibility of the U.S. commitment was genuine. Aggression would be repelled; the fledgling government of South Vietnam deserved the loyalty of the Vietnamese people. For the American public there was the signal that these signals had been sent. The United States would continue its support for the objective of a free South Vietnam.
But Johnson then went one step further. Inspired by an October 10 conversation in the White House in which Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had urged President Johnson to be more specific with respect to conditions for a U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, LBJ pressed his Asian allies to join him in signing the Manila Communiqué. The United States pledged to withdraw all forces from South Vietnam within six months of North Vietnam’s ceasing its aggression against the South.
Following the Manila conference LBJ travelled to the U.S. installation at Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam. “I wanted to visit our fighting men,” Johnson later wrote. “I wanted to tell them how their President and most of their countrymen felt about what they were doing. I have never been more moved by any group I have talked to, never in my life.”11
Attrition as Strategy
By November 1966 the viability of General Westmoreland’s attrition strategy was being questioned. As a military strategy, attrition meant wearing down or grinding down the enemy until the enemy lost its will to fight or the capacity to sustain its military effort. Despite recent deployments, the United States had not been able to attrite the enemy forces fast enough to break their morale and more U.S. forces were unlikely to accomplish that objective. A young CIA analyst, Samuel Adams, believed he had discovered, from captured enemy documents, that possibly twice as many enemy soldiers were in South Vietnam as MACV’s current intelligence reported. (Twenty years later Adams’s story would be aired in the CBS documentary “The Uncounted Enemy” which resulted in the lawsuit brought by General Westmoreland.) In a guerilla war it was generally agreed that three conventional soldiers were the equivalent of one guerilla. If the United States was fighting an enemy force of half a million, U.S. deployments were woefully insufficient.
Adams communicated his data to George Carver, special assistant to the CIA director for Vietnam affairs. On November 22, 1966, Carver wrote to presidential assistant Robert Komer that “a reappraisal of the strength of communist regular forces which is currently underway indicates that accepted (i.e., MACV) estimates of the strength of Viet Cong irregular forces may have drastically underestimated their growth, possibly by as much as 200,000 persons.” The memo had little effect on the ebullient Komer who a week later wrote McNamara, “I suspect that we have reached the point where we are killing, defecting, or otherwise attriting more VC/NVA strength than the enemy can build up.”12
Komer was certainly not alone in painting optimistic scenarios from the perception of declining enemy strength. On November 21, 1966, Colonel Robert Ginsburgh, the National Security Council’s liaison with the Joint Chiefs, wrote Special Assistant Walt Rostow, “You will recall that last December our figures indicated the beginning of a gradual erosion in communist strength. These latest figures indicate that the communists by now ought to be in really serious trouble. In September, my analysis showed that the war would most probably be terminated between June 1969 and 1972. At the time, I felt that I was way out on a limb. If the present trends continue, however,—and this is always a big if—I do not see how they can possibly hold out beyond the summer of 1969.” (In a February 9, 1967, memo to the president, Rostow described Ginsburgh as “a thoughtful Ph.D. and not a ‘hawk’ like me.”)
This was precisely the type of analysis that Walt Rostow liked to receive. On March 31, 1966, President Johnson, acting on the strong recommendation of his special assistant, Jack Valenti, had passed over Bill Moyers and Robert Komer and selected Walt Whitman Rostow as McGeorge Bundy’s replacement at the National Security Council. Where Bundy had held the imposing title special assistant for National Security Affairs, Rostow’s title of special assistant to the president was seen by official Washington as LBJ’s intent to have a less imposing role for the national security advisor.
That Rostow had assumed the position at all was somewhat of a mystery. An original member of Kennedy’s Brain Trust, it was Rostow who had coined the theme of “New Frontier” and the ringing cry, “Let’s get the country moving again.” Following JFK’s election he had hoped to be appointed chair of the State Department Policy Planning Council, but Secretary of State Dean Rusk had chosen someone less closely tied to the new president. Instead, Rostow had become McGeorge Bundy’s aid as deputy special assistant for national security affairs. A few months later he was appointed counselor of the Department of State and chairman of the Policy Planning Council.
Rostow’s academic credentials were impeccable. Having finished Yale at 19, he went to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and later returned to Yale for his Ph.D. During World War II he served as a major in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After the war he returned to teaching, first at Oxford, then at Cambridge, and from 1950 to 1961 he was Professor of Economic History at MIT. The New York Times praised Rostow’s appointment as “an assurance both of professional competence and of continuity in one of Washington’s most critical posts. Mr. Rostow is a scholar with an original mind, as well as an experienced official and policy planner . . . the appointment places beside the President an independent and cultivated mind that, as in the Bundy era, should assure comprehension both of the intricacies of world problems and of the options among which the White House must choose. No President could ask for more.” Over time, Rostow became excessively optimistic for the case of military victory by the strategy of attrition.
Assessing Future Prospects
In his 1966 year-end report to Admiral Sharp and General Wheeler, General Westmoreland listed enemy strength at 300,575 which actually represented a 42,000 increase in 1966. Westmoreland reported enemy infiltration into the South at 8400 a month plus another 3500 gained from recruiting South Vietnamese. “The conclusion to be drawn from the enemy’s strength increase of some 42,000 during 1966 is that despite known losses, he has been able to maintain a proportional counter-buildup to the growth of US/FWMA [Free World Military Assistance] forces. Sources of this increase are in-country conscription and foot infiltration down the trails from NVN through the DMZ [demilitarized zone], but principally through Laos and the Cambodian extension.”13
General Westmoreland’s data was viewed with skepticism within the White House. On January 3, 1967, Rostow wrote LBJ, “I do not for one minute believe the infiltration rate is 8400 per month. I believe it is a MACV balancing figure to give them what I strongly suspect is an inflated order of battle. They are being excessively conservative both as an insurance policy and to protect themselves against what they regard as excessive pressure to allocate more forces to pacification.” (Ironically, the CIA would later charge Westmoreland with deliberate underestimation of the data.)
Westmoreland’s 1966 year-end assessment led Admiral Sharp to cable both Westmoreland and Wheeler regarding MACV’s 1967 operational concept for Vietnam. Sharp believed that while MACV’s plan for 1967 was adequate to meet the anticipated enemy threat, it would be necessary to “avoid devoting too great a measure of our effort to anti-infiltration at the expense of more important operations. We should continue and, if possible, expand our air and naval interdiction of his infiltration system.”
Sharp took direct aim at the infiltration barrier McNamara had proposed in October. “It is virtually impossible,” wrote Sharp, “to stop or appreciably impede infiltration into SVN with ground forces now available or programmed for the theater, especially in light of the contiguous sanctuaries the enemy now enjoys. Although it would be desirable to stop or measurably impede infiltration, such action is not imperative to our winning a military victory. . . . Our air and naval interdiction operations must be continued at the present level and, if possible, they must be expanded. Although not in themselves capable of quelling infiltration, their effects against the enemy and his movement of personnel and equipment to the South are appreciable.”
The intrinsic value of the air campaign lay in the cost it imposed on North Vietnam and Admiral Sharp argued that it was time to really punish the enemy.
Our country harbors a natural desire to ease the hardships in the Vietnam conflict. The military, however, must press to go all out at all levels in SVN if we are to win. We are faced with a full blown and difficult war and our government has committed a huge amount of combat power to this conflict, yet we are still a long way from achieving our objectives. If we are to reach an acceptable military decision in Vietnam, we must not permit our operational tactics to reflect the reticence which currently characterizes some bodies of public and official opinion. Our ground forces must take the field on long term, sustained combat operations. We must be prepared to accept heavier casualties in our initial operations and not permit our hesitance to take greater losses to inhibit our tactical aggressiveness. If greater hardships are accepted now we will, in the long run, achieve a military success sooner and at less overall cost in lives and money.”14
Sharp’s candid appraisal of U.S. military prospects reflected his intent to wage war against the enemy, but the U.S. goal in Vietnam was not military victory in the classical sense. If it had been, the war would have been fought on quite different terms. This became the quintessential Catch-22 for those advising the president. Johnson demanded solutions or strategies for winning the war, but the documentation confirms very little agreement on the definition of winning. What did Sharp mean in his statement that the military “must press to go all out at all levels in SVN if we are to win”? Did Secretary McNamara and President Johnson share that same definition of “to win”?
LBJ never intended to accept Sharp’s advice for winning the war. The U.S. goal was to build democratic political stability in the South, not destroy the North. Johnson also feared that further punishment of the North would precipitate Chinese intervention and the possibility of world war. Yet, the president could not stop the bombing since it was the only stick he had, however unwieldy, for hoping to force negotiations. The Joint Chiefs would soon attempt to force Johnson’s hand by arguing that only by removing the wraps on the bombing of Hanoi and its environs could the enemy be brought to the conference table.
There were three purposes in selective bombing of military targets in North Vietnam: (1) To back U.S. fighting men by denying the enemy a sanctuary; (2) to exact a penalty against North Vietnam; and (3) to limit the flow or to substantially increase the cost of infiltration of men and material from North Vietnam. But while bombing clearly served these purposes it soon became a substitute for an invasion or an occupation of North Vietnam or an introduction of troops into Laos.
In early January 1967 President Johnson instructed his special assistant, Walt Rostow, to organize a secret committee to examine the overall effects of bombing North Vietnam. Rostow immediately spoke with Washington lawyer Clark Clifford, a personal friend, confidant, and member of the inner circle of unofficial presidential advisors. Clifford was regarded as a hawk, primarily because he had vehemently opposed the 1965 Christmas bombing pause. Clifford now warned Rostow that the existence of such a group might threaten administration credibility. Why was the president reexamining his own bombing program? “There is no substitute, in a matter of this kind, for the President’s personal, lonely judgment,” Clifford wrote to Rostow. “And the very fact that the President was asking for outside advice in this matter would indicate, to the public and the world, that the President was uncertain. Whatever recommendations the report made would complicate the President’s problem.”15
Rostow took Clifford’s advice and wrote to the president that such a group “would be unsettling and possibly explosive, if made public—among other things, because it would appear you were not confident of JCS and Bob McNamara’s advice.” In truth, the president was not very confident in the chiefs’ bombing program and he was beginning to worry about his defense secretary. While it was apparent by late 1966 that major troop deployments had staved off the defeat that might have occurred without American intervention in July 1965, increases in troop deployments and the intensity of bombing had not brought North Vietnam to the conference table.
The U.S. objective in Vietnam was the independence of South Vietnam, its freedom from attack, and a stable, democratic government in the South. By denying the Communists a military victory, the United States believed it could create conditions under which negotiations would be viable. But Hanoi saw Vietnam as a single country that had been split artificially by neo-colonialist intervention. The revolutionary Viet Cong (VC) believed it had an obligation to free South Vietnam from foreign intervention, while the United States believed that the Vietnam war was a case of one country trying to conquer another country covered by our treaty guarantee.
LBJ’s policy was slowly slipping the war into a stalemate, yet even as that became evident, he refused to abandon his no-win policy. President Johnson would soon learn, as Hanoi’s leaders well understood, that a stalemate could undermine a democracy faster than a Communist régime. A free press, the legitimacy of political opposition, and an attentive citizenry forced Johnson to exaggerate rates of progress and lights at the ends of tunnels in order to keep the war going. Operating under restraints imposed by the president, the military commanders recognized that Vietnam would be a long war. Hanoi could accept the conditions of a stalemate longer than the United States. Stalemate was tantamount to victory for Hanoi.
*Rolling Thunder was the code name for U.S. air operations over North Vietnam. The program was closely monitored from the White House by President Johnson and his civilian advisors. This interdiction program started in March 1965 as an attempt to destroy North Vietnamese transportation routes and thereby slow infiltration of personnel and supplies from North to South Vietnam. Rolling Thunder was expanded in July 1966 to include ammunition dumps and oil storages, and in the spring of 1967 it was further expanded to include power plants, factories, and airfields in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. The Rolling Thunder program was substantially reduced in April 1968 and terminated on November 1, 1968. In the three years of Rolling Thunder, 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam.