lyndon b johnson why we are in vietnam lyndon b johnson why we are in vietnam

Just ask at the reception desk for directions to the meeting room. Passed nearly unanimously by Congress on 7 August and signed into law three days later, the Tonkin Gulf Resolutionor Southeast Asia Resolution, as it was officially knownwas a pivotal moment in the war and gave the Johnson administration a broad mandate to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In particular, Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency overall was a good thing for the American People. His limited goal was to keep North Vietnam from destroying South . On 2 August, the USS Maddox, engaged in a signals intelligence collection mission for the National Security Agency (known as a Desoto patrol) off the coast of North Vietnam, reported that it was under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. I did that! Bombing had neither compelled Hanoi to halt its support of the Vietcong nor was it disrupting the flow of supplies to the insurgents; likewise, it had neither bolstered morale in the South nor stiffened Saigons willingness to fight. 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. . Shortly after, he vented to adviser McGeorge Bundy in a now familiar monologue: I dont think its [South Vietnam] worth fighting for and I dont think that we can get out. In a sense, Johnson was able to avoid the label he so greatly feared would be pinned to his name. Westmorelands request prompted Johnson to convene one of the more significant of these study groups that emerged during the war, and one that Johnson would return to at key points later in the conflict. The raids were the first in what would become a three-year program of sustained bombing targeting sites north of the seventeenth parallel; the troops were the first in what would become a three-year escalation of U.S. military personnel fighting a counterinsurgency below the seventeenth parallel. Beginning in the mid-1960s, violence erupted in several cities, as the country suffered through long, hot summers of riots or the threat of riotsin the Watts district of Los Angeles (1965), in Cleveland, Ohio (1966), in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan (1967), in Washington, D.C. (1968), and elsewhere. They were unanimous and vehement in their advice to stay the course in Vietnam (although McNamara would very publicly do a mea culpa years later.). However, pressurised by his closest cabinet advisers, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and Dean Rusk, along with the Head of Military Command in Vietnam, General Westmoreland, he agreed to a large-scale aerial bombing campaign against the North Operation Rolling Thunder. by David White, The Japanese Occupation of China 1937-45: The Divided Opposition and its Consequences by David White, What was the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft and how successful was propaganda in realising the vision of a racially exclusive society? Throughout his time in office, Johnson stressed that his policy on Vietnam was a continuation of his predecessors actions going back to 1954. Though his . Johnson Administration (1963 - 1969), United States National Security Policy CARYN E. NEUMANN President Lyndon B. Johnson continued the longstanding commitment of the United States to Southeast Asian security by providing increasing amounts of support to anti-communist South Vietnam.A former congressman from Texas and vice-president since 1960, Johnson took office in 1963 upon the . 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. I think everybodys going to think, were landing the Marines, were off to battle., President Lyndon B. Johnson, 6 March 19651. Foundation and the Presidents Office of the University of Virginia, The Miller Centers Presidential Recordings Program is funded in part by the Gender Spheres and Circles of Power: How American Women Won the Vote by David White, Gruppe 47 and the Post-WWII German Literary World, Products Which Changed the World Sugar and Oil, Hamish Henderson and the Spanish Connection by Mario Relich, Is Donald Trump a Jacksonian? 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. 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. But not wanting to get railroaded into large-scale military response by political pressure from hawks on the right in Congress, Johnson and McNamara privately and selectively conceded that classified sabotage operations in the region had probably provoked the North Vietnamese attack. The North Vietnam Army and the underground Vietcong were free to move in and out of their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. Grant as secretary of war ad interim. His constant refrain about continuity and legality appears to have been as much a justification/rationalisation as a cause of his choices and actions. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as the 36th. Bettmann/Bettmann Archive. 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. Comprised of figures from the business, scientific, academic, and diplomatic communities, as well as both Democrats and Republicans, these wise men came to Washington in July to meet with senior civilian and military officials, as well as with Johnson himself. To preserve the secrecy of the mission and to protect against possible eavesdroppers on the telephone line, they adopted a kind of organic, impromptu code that sometimes served to confuse the speakers themselves.21 The Johnson-Fortas conversations from this period are replete with references to J. Copyright 2014 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. 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. 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. From late April through June 1965, President Johnson spent more time dealing with the Dominican Crisis than any other issue.17 On the afternoon of 28 April 1965, while meeting with his senior national security advisers on the problem of Vietnam, Johnson was handed an urgent cable from the U.S. ambassador in Santo Domingo, W. Tapley Bennett Jr., warning that the conflict between rebels and the military-backed junta was about to get violent, especially now that the military had split into two factions, one of which was starting to arm the populace. Critics accused the Johnson administration of overreacting and lending too much credence to unsubstantiated claims of strong Communist influence amongst the rebel factions. Diems effort to construct strategic hamletsa program run by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhuended up alienating increasing numbers of South Vietnamese, arguably creating more recruits for the Communists instead of isolating them as the program had intended. Nevertheless, the State Departments influence in Vietnam planning was on the rise, as it had been since early 1963. However, those same factors facilitated his disastrous escalation of American involvement in Vietnam, and it is for this that he is largely remembered. LBJ then widened that circle of support by turning to Eisenhowers longtime aide General Andrew J. Goodpaster, who convened study groups on Vietnam. How many troops did Lyndon Johnson sent to Vietnam? 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 . 1965 Department of State Pamphlet We Will Stand With Viet-Nam Lyndon B Johnson. With the return of a Democratic majority in 1955, Johnson, age 46, became the youngest majority leader in that body's history. But leftist sympathizers continued to press for his return, and in the spring of 1965 the situation escalated to armed uprising. 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. "Johnson was a man with great political skills, and it was through him that the nation made its most significant attempt to expand the American welfare state.". George Herring describes Johnson as a product of the hinterland, parochial, strongly nationalistic, deeply concerned about honor and reputation, suspicious of other peoples and nations and especially of international institutions.. By September, the Dominicans had agreed to a compromise. Instead of a nation with a unique history, South Vietnam was a political compromise, the creation of the Great Powers (the US, the Soviet Union, China, France and the United Kingdom) at the 1954 Geneva Conference. Nor would this be all; Westmoreland regarded these forces as necessary merely to blunt the Communists current monsoon offensive. 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. Meanwhile, as Johnsons reform consensus gradually unraveled, life for the nations poor, particularly African Americans living in inner-city slums in the North, failed to show significant improvement. Katherine Young/Getty Images. 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. Johnson quotes Southeast Asian leaders who agree that the U.S. presence is integral to preventing the malevolent spread of communism. Although not a Communist himself, Bosch had raised the ire of the Dominican military through his accommodation with Communist factions and been forced out in a September 1963 coup. His vice-president, Hubert Humphrey. 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. However, during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency, he strongly believed that there was a need to help South Vietnam become independent. Inside the administration, Undersecretary of State George Ball also made the case for restraint. The deterioration of the South Vietnamese position, therefore, led Johnson to consider even more decisive action. Despite Democrat control of Congress, he felt hampered by conservative elements within his own party: Those damned conservatives, they dont want to help the poor and the Negroes but theyre afraid to be against it Theyll say we have this job to do, beating the Communists. 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. American intelligence and Foreign Service operatives on the ground began requesting new assignments. Compounding the new administrations problems was the realization that earlier assumptions about progress in the war were ill-founded. Furthermore, Johnson was acutely aware that he was JFKs successor. While Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower had committed significant American resources to counter the Communist-led Viet Minh in its struggle against France following the Second World War, it was Kennedy who had deepened and expanded that commitment, increasing the number of U.S. military advisers in Vietnam from just under seven hundred in 1961 to over sixteen thousand by the fall of 1963. Johnson opted not to respond militarily just hours before Americans would go to the polls. 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. By Andrew Glass. 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. 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. 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. 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 fact, Johnson sought the counsel of ad hoc groups and advisers during the escalation of the war. 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. There are no marching armies or solemn declarations. In an effort to achieve consensus about security requirements for those troops, key personnel undertook a review in Honolulu on 20 April. He advanced the Kennedy legacy, obtaining far more than Kennedy would likely have gotten out of Congress, and then won a . Write an article and join a growing community of more than 160,500 academics and researchers from 4,573 institutions. Meeting with his top civilian advisers on Vietnam, LBJ told them to forget about the social, economic, and political reforms that Kennedy had stressed. 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. 794-803. In response to these reported incidents, President Lyndon B. Johnson requested permission from the U.S. Congress to increase the U.S. military presence in Indochina. 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. Together, he explained, echoing the anthem of the civil rights movement, "we shall overcome.". The emergence of the William Bundy task force highlights a key dimension of the administrations policymaking process during this period. Why didnt Lyndon B. Johnson seek another term as president? Victory in the military conflict became the new administrations top priority. The Military Draft During the Vietnam War. In time, LBJ would make his key decisions in the presence and on the advice of very few advisers, a practice that Johnson hoped would protect him from the leaks he so greatly feared would undermine his carefully crafted strategy. By Kent Germany. 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. 518. Why did Lyndon B. Johnson get impeached? 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. The first phase began on 14 December with Operation Barrel Rollthe bombing of supply lines in Laos.13. The CIA predicted that if Washington and its allies did not act, South Vietnam would fall within the year. Lyndon B. Johnson, Tet Offensive champagnecrow196. 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. Weekly leaderboard. The Vietnam war was a very controversial war. Homework Help 3,800,000. In late 1963 the North Vietnamese greatly increased supplies of weapons and equipment to the Vietcong and infiltrated regular army units into the South. 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. 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. Have Any U.S. Presidents Decided Not to Run For a Second Term? His dispatch of National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy to South Vietnam in February 1965 sought to gauge the need for an expanded program of bombing that the interdepartmental review had envisioned back in November and December. The war, they said, would have to be limited in scope. Bundys presence in Vietnam at the time of the Communist raids on Camp Holloway and Pleiku in early Februarywhich resulted in the death of nine Americansprovided additional justification for the more engaged policy the administration had been preparing. The presence of several policy options, however, did not translate into freewheeling discussions with the President over the relative merits of numerous strategies. Like other major decisions he made during the escalatory process, it was not one Johnson came to without a great deal of anxiety. As the transcripts included in this volume of taped conversations indicate, those decisions were often agonizing ones, conditioned by the perception that Vietnam was a war that he could neither abandon nor likely win. $29.95 + $5.85 shipping. 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. Their mission was to protect an air base the Americans were using for a series of bombing raids they had recently conducted on North Vietnam, which had been supplying the insurgents with ever larger amounts of military aid. Department of State Bulletin, April 26, 1965. 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. 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. For a narrative of these events, see David Kaiser. Collection. In a moving oration, Johnson called on white Americans to make the cause of African Americans their cause too. 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. So did his long time mentor and friend, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. Johnsons election as president in his own right allowed the administration to move forward in crafting a more vigorous policy toward the Communist challenge in South Vietnam. 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.. 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. Here was a nation born under the direst of circumstances. In 1970 he reflected: I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved.