JOHNSON'S FEARS OF THE KENNEDY'S

Johnson was perhaps a man haunted by his fears. He obsessed about certain things. He had an insecurity complex, that drove him to try to "prove" himself. Because he was insecure, he felt the need to prove that he was worthy, and to win the respect and admiration and adulation and praise of others. Johnson feared being regarded as the "mistake or accident between the Kennedy's" (he assumed that Bobby Kennedy would seek the presidency after LBJ retired from the field). LBJ felt that some people scorned him and looked down on him as a Southerner, unworthy of being John Kennedy's vice president or successor. Johnson felt that Kennedy had stolen the Democratic nomination from him in 1960, when he, LBJ, had done more to "earn" it, through his hard work in the Senate (where Kenendy had been little more than a playboy). Johnson feared and suspected that the elite Ivy League snobs of the Northeastern Establishment wanted him to fail, so that they could push him aside and install Robert Kennedy instead. Johnson was certain that Robert Kennedy was seeking to discredit and undermine him, so that Kennedy could "reclaim the throne" for the Kennedy dynasty. These dark suspicions--and this rivalry with Robert Kennedy, as LBJ's most serious rival in the Democratic Party-- caused Johnson to have a mortal fear that IF he withdrew from Vietnam, Robert Kennedy and other critics would come out of the woodwork and accuse Johnson of being weak on communism and of betraying the commitment to South Vietnam that John Kennedy had made. And then Johnson's enemies would use this as ammunition to discredit him and deprive him of the Democratic nomination in 1968, and oust him as the leader of the party. LBJ saw withdrawal from Vietnam as a "trap" that would give ammunition to his rivals and enemies and give them an excuse to destroy him. So he decided early on that he could not withdraw--NO MATTER WHAT--because of what he believed the personal, domestic political consequences of withdrawal would be. In this way, Johnson's presidency was lived out in the shadow of the dead Kennedy; haunted by the ghost of the Kennedy's. LBJ saw withdrawal through the lens of domestic politics, and less as a military or foreign policy issue.He had an ulterior motive for resisting all evidence that withdrawal would be appropriate. He refused to see or hear that option. He felt threatened by that suggestion. He (perhaps) feared it as political suicide and self-destruction. And he reacted viscerally whenever that option was suggested, because he found it so threatening (for domestic political and personal reasons) to his own political survival. George Ball describes how, when he asked pointed questions designed to show that the figures the President was receiving were doubtful, LBJ gave him a look that would kill. After a certain point LBJ just didn't want to hear anything that questioned the correctness of his policy, and the people around him knew this and were afraid to say what they knew LBJ did not want to hear. They were intimidated. When McNamara began to question the wisdom of continuing the war in Vietnam, LBJ essentially eased him out by arranging for McNamara to be offered a job at the World Bank. How do you tell the boss that his policy is in error if he attacks or removes anyone who tells him what he does not want to hear? LBJ took dissent personally. He felt that it was a personal attack against HIM, and that it was disloyal. He had dark suspicions that people were plotting with Bobby Kennedy, against him, even people in his own administration. He was paranoid.  LBJ could not admit failure, or error, or mistakes. John Kennedy would not have failed. It was as if his very manhood was somehow on the line.

ESCALATION

While Kennedy was president there were 15,000 "advisors" in Vietnam. LBJ inherited the situation in Vietnam from Kennedy (who had inherited it from Eisenhower and Dulles).

The corrupt regime in the South never had the support of its "own" people. The desertion rate in the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam was 50%. If the people of South Vietnam, who we supposedly were "saving," did not think that their "country" was worth fighting for, why were Americans supposed to fight for it and die it?

But as the South Vietnam regime was on the brink of collapse in March 1965, LBJ made the fateful decision to send combat troops to Vietnam. On March 8, 1965 Johnson sent 2 battalions of Marines to Vietnam to defend the air bases at Danang. These were the first combat troops. This was called the escalation of the war. By July 16 combat battalions had been sent. By December 1965 there were 200,000 American troops in Vietnam. By December 1966 there were American 400,000 troops in Vietnam. By December 1967 there were 500,000. And General Westmoreland wanted even more.

JOHNSON AND VIETNAM

LBJ misled the American people. Even when he realized (certainly by July 1965) that the war would be long and costly, he did not tell the country. He engaged in the politics of deception. he hid the truth, perhaps because he did not trust the people to understand the truth or to be able to handle it.

By 1967 it was clear to Johnson and some of his advisors (the new Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford) that the US could not do what was necessary to win in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government was weak and corrupt. It did not even have the support of its own people. The US was propping the regime up. Without us there, South Vietnam would collapse. The US was not prepared to risk the consequences of nuclear war. The US was not willing to go to war with China, and risk a repeat of what happened in Korea, by sending ground troops into the North to destroy North Vietnam. The Soviets were bring aid into North Vietnam through the port of Haiphong. LBJ would not mine Haiphong Harbor, for fear of killing Soviets and triggering war with the Soviet Union.

In April 1967 (see Berman, p. 35), Westmoreland reported that with the current level of 470,000 American troops, the war could go on for another FIVE YEARS before the North Vietnamese were "worn down" in a war of attrition. With an additional 100,000 troops, which would raise the level to 565,000, the war could be expected to go on for THREE more years. With an additional 200,000 troops (raising the level to 665,000), the war could be expected to drag on for TWO more years. In effect, how long the war would last would depend in part on how many troops you commited. But what were the political costs of asking for the additional troops, and would it require calling up the reserves.

Johnson HID these revelations from the people. He did not let the country know how bad the situation really was, what the costs really would be, how much longer it would take. He did not want to alarm the people or the Congress. A summons to full-blown war would logically suggest scaling back expenditures for the Great Society and War on Poverty. Perhaps LBJ wanted to get through the next election (1968) and hoped that he could hide the situation. But Vietnam fell apart at the end of January 1968, BEFORE the primaries (whicvh begin in March) even started. When the truth came out, it exposed Johnson's politics of deception and deceit. The credibility gap was a polite way of saying that LBJ had been LYING to the Congress and to the American people. To many, this felt like a betrayal of trust. Once people no longer trust you, the game is over. Worst of all, it looked as if he had been "playing politics" with the lives of tens and hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women.

Eventually Clark Clifford asked the Pentagon how many men it would take to win? How long? How much money? In each case, the answer was, in essence "we do not know for certain." We just have to keep pouring in more until we win--no matter how many men it takes, no matter how long it takes, no matter how much it costs. Clifford asked if the North Vietnamese could match us in sending in more more troops. The generals said, yes, they probably could and would. But the American people were not prepared to make such an open-ended commitment. The Tet Offensive of late January 1968 involved a massive attack on all of the cities of South Vietnam. Saigon was attacked. North Vietnamese commandos attacked the US embassy. The world could see that the US was not winning. If, after 3 years of war, the North Vietnamese could still mount this type of offensive, claerly the war was not going well. Public opinion turned against LBJ. In October 1967, even before Tet, 100,000 protesters had gathered at the Pentagon.

On March 10th the media informed the public that General Westmoreland had asked for more than 200,000 additional troops. Up to this point, the request had been a secret. On March  1968 Senator Eugene McCarthy ran against LBJ for the Democratic nomination, and on March 13 almost won the primary in New Hampshire (42% of vote to 48% for the incumbent LBJ). Realizing that LBJ was weak, on March 16  Senator Robert Kennedy entered the race. LBJ saw that his hope of nomination to another term was doomed, and announced that he would not run again. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, and Hubert Humphrey won the Democratic nomination, but lost the election to Richard Nixon.

"Hawks" wanted to nuke North Vietnam. Increasingly, antiwar liberals rejected the American fixation with anti-communism, and favored withdrawal from Vietnam. Antiwar liberals felt it would not be the end of the world if some countries "went communist." The US was not God, and could not be the policeman of the whole world. We would have to learn to co-exist with the communists, especially in China.

NIXON AND THE "CHINA CARD"

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger figured out that, after 1962, although Russia and China were both communist, the two countries had a "falling out." They had become bitter rivals. Nixon and Kissinger realized that it would be possible for the US to cozy up to China and "play" China against Russia, and vice versa. In effect, the US could exploit and take advantage of the differences between the Russians and the Chinese. The US could make-up with China, and "tilt" toward China, and play China against Russia. In exchange for US "support" against Russia (the US could sell arms to China), China could use its infleunce with North Vietnam (Hanoi) to get North Vietnam to make concessions. Inasmuch as North Vietnam was in a sense a client state of Russia and China, the way to get North Vietnam to "back off" for a little while so that the US could save face and withdraw over the span of 2 years or so, was to get Russia and China to tell North Vietnam to cooperate. In 1972 it was the great anti-communist Republican Richard Nixon who visited China. Any Democrat would have been accused by the Republicans of being "weak on communism." But Nixon was almost immune to such accusations. He had a solid reputation as being a strong anti-communist. And he was a Republican.

In January 1973 the US and North Vietnam concluded a treaty of peace. Basically it provided for a truce. The US would withdrew, basically over two years. This gave the US an opportunity to exit "gracefully," whereas an immediate withdrawal would have looked like an abject defeat. In May 1975 the Communist North Vietnamese rolled over the South in barely a month, basically because the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) would not fight. And it never had fought well. South Vietnam, from 1956 forward, had been an artificial creation, a make-believe contrivance of the United States. It had been a puppet state. It could survive only as long as the puppeteer was there to hold it up. In retrospect, maybe Eisenhower and Dulles should have simply accepted the democratic right of the people of Vietnam to hold a nationwide election back in 1956 and elect their own ruler--who would have been Ho Chi Minh--even if he was a communist. He was a Vietnamese nationalist who happened to be a communist. Actually, he was no threat to us. Today even Senator John McCain, a former POW, supports normal relations and trade with communist Vietnam. Vietnam seeks trade with the US in order to counter the power of its great neighbor, China.

The US tried to pre-empt and subvert an election, as provided for in the 1954 Geneva Accords,  because we (the US Government) did not like who the Vietnamese people would have elected. That is like cancelling a US election (say the election of 2000) because we don't want the people to vote for George W. Bush. We cannot run around cancelling elections just because we don't like who the people would choose. Democracy does not mean that we can only have an election when those with power like who the people would choose.

Nixon pursued a policy called détente (relaxation of tensions) with the Soviet Union and China (a relaxation of tensions between the US and the communists). We do not have to love the Soviets and Chinese or any other communists. Nor do they have to love us. But our differences are not so important that they are worth blowing up the world or starting World War III. We can learn to peacefully co-exist.

JFK AND LBJ WERE TRAPPED

Kennedy and Johnson were trapped in a kind of ideological, psychological and political prison, by Cold War liberalism and a paralyzing fear of looking weak. This made them feel as if they had to stay and fight no matter what—even when the cause was hopeless, even when it was doomed. This was a conditioned reflex to the trauma of the McCarthy era. Basically American troops engaged in a holding action, repelling the North Vietnamese in the jungles and rice paddies but not really destroying them. This crippling fear of looking weak or soft on communism, and of falling prey to a new McCarthy type attack, made it impossible for LBJ to withdraw from Vietnam, even when LBJ saw that we could not win. LBJ was haunted by what happened to Truman and the Democrats when they were blamed for "losing China," haunted by the fear of a repeat of Korea, and haunted by a fear of a repeat of McCarthyism. In the end, the ghosts of the past destroyed him.

THE BOMBING DIDN’T WORK

The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in all of World War II. But Vietnam had few factories and industrial sites to bomb. They didn’t have many tanks or railroads or refineries. They had little portable diesel generators, and used bicycles and water buffalo. Were we supposed to bomb every bicycle and water buffalo? Worst of all, the Vietnamese fought a guerilla war. They hid in the jungles, and hit us and ran. Americans stepped on mines. When we ran after the Vietnamese, they ran away. During much of the war, American troops never saw who they were shooting at. The North Vietnamese did not wear uniforms. Often they dressed just like the peasants. We couldn’t tell friend from foe. Children were boobytrapped with bombs. In the end, American soldiers "had" to shoot everybody because we couldn’t distinguish peasants and civilians and innocent children from the North Vietnamese soldiers. We couldn’t distinguish the innocent from the guilty. We couldn’t take the chance involved in finding out (therefore shoot first and ask questions later). It was a no-win situation.

SENDING "KIDS" TO WAR

It was also the case that the average age of an American soldier in World war II was 26 years of age. In Vietnam, the average age was just 19 years of age.

DRAFT DEFERMENTS AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

Another unpopular feature of the war was that there were draft deferments for young men who went to college or graduate school. This discriminated against the poor. The sons of the rich had parents who COULD AFFORD to send their children to college. The parents of the poor could not afford college, or the students themselves could not afford it. The children of the rich had an "escape hatch" from the draft: they went to college. The children of the poor and the working class and the farmers could not afford to go to college. They had no way to escape the draft (except to be "disgraced" as "cowards" as conscientious objectors, or go to prison for evading the draft, or flee to Canada). Likewise, the children of the rich went to good private schools. Suburbanites went to good public and private schools. And they all got good grades, which qualified them to be accepted into college. The children of the poor and the working class went to less advantaged inner city schools, while the children of farmers went to less advantaged rural schools. The children of the farmers and the working class and the poor didn’t do as well on standardized tests, and it was harder for them to qualify for admission to college. Basically, the rich found a way to avoid the draft (by going to college), and the children of the poor carried the burden of going to war. It was terribly unfair and unequal, and created deep resentment and animosity. It also created a sense of "liberal guilt" on the part of college kids who knew that had it not been for the draft deferments for college students, THEY would be fighting and dying in Vietnam too. They realized that their good fortune was as matter of wealth and advantage, not just merit or qualification.

CONCLUSION

In Vietnam, we learned, the hard way, that we are not God and there are limits to our power.

The masses of the Vietnamese people wanted independence and the unification of the different regions of their country as one country. The Vietnamese people are one people. North and South Vietnam were merely parts of one country. It did not matter to the masses of the Vietnamese peasants that Ho Chi Minh was a communist. Ultimately he was a nationalist first, and a communist second. Ho Chi Minh would not accept the secession of southern Vietnam any more than Lincoln and the North would accept the attempt by the American South to secede from the US. Our intervention in Vietnam was like Britain or some European colonial Power trying to intervene in the American Civil War. The US was on the "wrong" side of history. Ultimately Ho Chi Minh and the communists won. The former French colonies (Laos and Cambodia) did come under indigenous communist control or coalition governments. But Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore and Indonesia did not fall. Dominoes did not fall one after another. The world did not come to an end. Our fears had been exaggerated and overblown and hysterical.

DECEIT CATCHES UP WITH LBJ

Instead of telling the people the truth, LBJ lied and misled the people. In 1967 he and General Westmoreland suggested that "the end was in sight, and there was light at the end of the tunnel." Then all hell broke loose with Tet. LBJ did not trust the people to understand the truth. He was not prepared to sacrifice his own political career and his ambitions and his ego to do what might have been best for the country. The failure in Vietnam made Johnson one of the most hated presidents in American history, certainly in the 20th century. And then he was attacked an criticized by Robert Kennedy anyway, and Kennedy ran against him for the nomination. Rather than be defeated, LBJ announced that he would not seek, and would not accept, the Democratic nomination. The very thing he had sought to avoid (the Kennedy resurgence) happened anyway, despite the fact that Johnson avoided withdrawal.

In the end, Nixon saw that after expending 60,000 American lives, Vietnam was not worth fighting or dying for. If victory could only be achieved by years and years of more war, against unseen enemies lurking in the jungles, at an untold cost in billions of dollars, then Vietnam wasn't worth it. If victory could only be achieved by extreme means such as the use of nuclear weapons or war with China or indiscriminate population bombing that sought to destroy Vietnam and wipe it off the face of the earth, then such means would have made us as Americans look like monsters, no better than the Nazis or the Japanese in World War II. Again, the cost wasn't worth it.

After Vietnam, the US learned to choose its battles more carefully. Every battle isn't worth fighting. There is an old colloquial expression: "Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk: the skunk will win every time." The war in Vietnam was such a contest. That war was a skunk. The best thing to do with a skunk is to just avoid him. After Vietnam, the US has a better perception of what a skunk looks like. Now we know better, and hopefully will not make the same mistake again. There is no shame in making mistakes. We just need to learn from them, and not repeat them again.