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| "Cold Blood": LBJ's Conduct of Limited War in Vietnam |
| 2013-03-25 |
| These are excepts from a lecture held by Professor of History and author George C. Herring, at the U.S. Air Force Academy twenty-three years ago, about a war that ended nearly forty years ago. It's a tad long, but well worth the read if you have the time. Limited war requires the most sophisticated strategy, precisely formulated in terms of ends and means, with particular attention to keeping costs at acceptable levels. What stands out about the Johnson administration's handling of Vietnam is that in what may have been the most complex war ever fought by the United States there was never any systematic discussion at the highest levels of government of the fundamental issue of how the war should be fought. In many ways a great president, Johnson was badly miscast as a war leader. He preoccupied himself with other matters, the Great Society and the legislative process he understood best and so loved. In contrast to Lincoln, Roosevelt, and even Harry Truman, he had little interest in military affairs and no illusions of military expertise. Stephen Peter Rosen has observed "He did not 'define a clear military mission for the military' and did not 'establish a clear limit to the resources to be allocated for that mission.'" Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara might have filled the strategic void left by the president, but he was no more willing to intrude in this area than Johnson. In many ways a superb Secretary of Defense, he was an ineffectual minister of war. Conceding his ignorance of military matters, he refused to interfere with the formulation of strategy, leaving it to the military to set the strategic agenda. Inasmuch as McNamara and Johnson's civilian advisers thought strategically, they did so in terms of the limited war theories in vogue at the time. Strategy was primarily a matter of sending signals to foes, of communicating resolve, of using military force in a carefully calibrated way to deter enemies or bargain toward a negotiated settlement. This approach must have appeared expedient to Johnson and his advisers because it seemed to offer a cheap, low-risk answer to a difficult problem. It also appeared to be controllable, thereby reducing the risk of all-out war. The Kennedy administration's successful handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis seems to have reinforced in the minds of U.S. officials the value of such an approach. "There is no longer any such thing as strategy, only crisis management," McNamara exclaimed in the aftermath of Kennedy's victory. He could not have been more wrong, of course, and the reliance on limited war theory had unfortunate consequences. Lyndon Johnson's entirely political manner of running the war, his consensus-oriented modus operandi, effectively stifled debate. On such issues as bombing targets and bombing pauses, troops levels and troop use, by making concessions to each side without giving any what it wanted, he managed to keep dissent and controversy under control. "He managed to keep dissent and controversy under control." One has to ask, is that irony, or ironic irony, or the irony of ironic irony? Or the ironic irony of ironic irony? ??? For some reason I don't think control of controversy is the pinnacle of presidential achievement. There is plenty of controversy to go around and maintaining a monopoly at the presidential level is not something worthy of admiration. But that's just me. The president and his top advisers also imposed rigid standards of loyalty on a bitterly divided administration. Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, Johnson had no tolerance for controversy, and he imposed on his advisers the "Macy's window at high noon" brand of loyalty made legendary by David Halberstam. Unfortunately, the two men who might have influenced him, McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, shared his perverted notions of team play. Finally, and perhaps even more important, is what might be called the MacArthur syndrome, the pervasive fear among civilians and military of a repetition of the illustrious general's challenge to civilian authority. Johnson, as noted, lived in terror of a military revolt and did everything in his power to avert it. Themselves learning from Korea, the Joint Chiefs carefully refrained from anything even smacking of a direct challenge to civilian authority. Although they remained deeply divided on the conduct of the war, they continued to present unified proposals to the civilians, thus stifling debate within their own ranks. To the end, Johnson continued to deny that significant differences had existed within his administration, and no one could have written a better epitaph for a hopelessly flawed command system than its architect, the man who had imposed his own peculiar brand of unity on a bitterly divided government. "There have been no divisions in this government," he proudly proclaimed in November 1967. "We may have been wrong, but we have not been divided." It was a strange observation, reflecting a curiously distorted sense of priorities. And of course it was not true. The administration was both wrong and divided, and the fact that the divisions could not be worked out or even addressed may have contributed to the wrongness of the policies, at huge costs to the men themselves - and especially to the nation. |
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #7 Richard the First let the AF pick the targets and let the Generals in charge know it was theirr ass. The result was Linebacker II. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-03-25 18:52 |
| #6 LBJ PERSONALLY selected the targets on the bombing list for the Air Force. A fact Professor Herring mentions in his lecture. Like I said - these are excerpts. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2013-03-25 11:21 |
| #5 Janis, I. (1971). Groupthink. In J.T. Wren (ed.), The leader's companion: Insights on leadership through the ages, (pp. 360-373). New York: The Free Press. [Reprinted courtesy of Psychology Today Magazine, (1971) published by Sussex Publishers, Inc.] An excellent writing on the groupthink tyranny in the LBJ administration and other failed administrations. HOWEVER, I do disagree with Herring on one point, LBJ PERSONALLY selected the targets on the bombing list for the Air Force. Every night plane loads of damage assessment photos would be flown from Clark AFB to Washington for LBJ and his drones to select targets. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2013-03-25 10:23 |
| #4 Yet no general officer resigned in protest on the conduct of the war. Posted by Procopius2k .....and the gutless trend continues today with Benghazi as an example. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-03-25 02:46 |
| #3 Post-Cuba was when the Soviets began their full-blown military + nuclear buildup vee the US. Both the Chicoms + Soviets threatened military ground intervention + potential NucWar iff US-Allied forces crossed the DMZ into North Vietnam, or built a Maginot-style borderline. around most or all of South Vietnam. The above left the US wid only two real options -COMPLETE PULLOUT from South Vietnam, or else STAY + DEFEAT THE INSURGENCY. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2013-03-25 01:11 |
| #2 MacArthur wanted to defeat China but Truman wouldn't let him Maybe because after gutting the armed forces after WWII, Truman didn't want WWIII. With the Rosenberg et al group giving the Soviets the balance in nuclear capacity and the forces in Europe lacking sufficient conventional strength, if the US committed the necessary manpower for war in China, Moscow would roll to the Atlantic. Given the satellite imagery of the Korean Peninsula, we know who won today. As for Vietnam, it was surrendered politically from the Beltway, not militarily. Johnson, as noted, lived in terror of a military revolt and did everything in his power to avert it. Themselves learning from Korea, the Joint Chiefs carefully refrained from anything even smacking of a direct challenge to civilian authority. Yet no general officer resigned in protest on the conduct of the war. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-03-25 01:03 |
| #1 They were afraid of the Chinese who in the Korean war, when MacArthur successfully decimated the North Koreans and when just a few miles from the Chinese border, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops poured across the border to drive MacArthur back... Didn't help that they were also afraid of a nuclear Soviet Union also on the side of the North Vietnamese. MacArthur wanted to defeat China but Truman wouldn't let him. From that time on, North Korea and North Vietnam were only containment traps that slowly bled our forces into a stalemate in Korea, a retreat in Vietnam. |
| Posted by: Glineck Angusoth6427 2013-03-25 00:30 |