Keep Pushing: War Times analysis
Washington's Wars and Occupations:
Month in Review #23
March 29, 2007
By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras
TODAY'S ANTIWAR DILEMMAS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In March 1965, before ordering the first deployment of U.S. ground troops to Vietnam (U.S. "advisers" had been there for years) President Lyndon Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: "I don't think anything is gonna be as bad as losing, and I don't see any way of winning."
Johnson had just received a classified briefing saying that the U.S. client regime in South Vietnam was about to collapse. Military experts informed the President that only a huge U.S. military commitment could avert defeat in the short run. They said that looking ahead even "warfare of any design, scale or duration" could not assure lasting success. Maxwell Taylor, then the country's most famous active-duty general and Ambassador to South Vietnam, warned against sending U.S troops, arguing that Vietnamese civilians would turn to patriotic resistance against the "white-faced soldier, armed, equipped and trained as he is" as a successor to the hated French colonialists.
A few days later Johnson commiserated about Vietnam with his old friend Richard
Russell of Georgia, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I guess
we got no choice, but it scares the death out of me," Johnson said. "Those marines, they'll be killing a whole lot of friendly Vietnamese," Russell responded.
"Airplanes ain't worth as damn, Dick," Johnson continued. Bombing only "lets you get your hopes up... A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere, but there ain't no daylight in Vietnam."
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Month in Review #23
March 29, 2007
By Max Elbaum, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras
TODAY'S ANTIWAR DILEMMAS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In March 1965, before ordering the first deployment of U.S. ground troops to Vietnam (U.S. "advisers" had been there for years) President Lyndon Johnson told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara: "I don't think anything is gonna be as bad as losing, and I don't see any way of winning."
Johnson had just received a classified briefing saying that the U.S. client regime in South Vietnam was about to collapse. Military experts informed the President that only a huge U.S. military commitment could avert defeat in the short run. They said that looking ahead even "warfare of any design, scale or duration" could not assure lasting success. Maxwell Taylor, then the country's most famous active-duty general and Ambassador to South Vietnam, warned against sending U.S troops, arguing that Vietnamese civilians would turn to patriotic resistance against the "white-faced soldier, armed, equipped and trained as he is" as a successor to the hated French colonialists.
A few days later Johnson commiserated about Vietnam with his old friend Richard
Russell of Georgia, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I guess
we got no choice, but it scares the death out of me," Johnson said. "Those marines, they'll be killing a whole lot of friendly Vietnamese," Russell responded.
"Airplanes ain't worth as damn, Dick," Johnson continued. Bombing only "lets you get your hopes up... A man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere, but there ain't no daylight in Vietnam."
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