That war would wreck the Great Society, nearly tear the United States apart, spawn an idealistic albeit drug-oriented youth counterculture, and cost the lives of 58,000 young Americans.
Flashback
World War II left much of the world, including Southeast Asia, dangerously unstable. During the 19th century, France had colonized Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and when France caved in to Germany in 1940, the Japanese allowed French colonial officials puppet authority in Southeast Asia until the Allied liberation of France in 1945. Japan then seized full control, purging the French police agencies and soldiery that had kept various nationalist groups in check. In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) led the most powerful of these independence-seeking groups, the Viet Minh. Aided by U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) personnel, Viet Minh fought a guerrilla war against the Japanese occupiers.
When the war in Europe ended, Allied forces were free to turn their attention to Vietnam (and the rest of Southeast Asia). Nationalist Chinese troops (under Chiang Kai-shek) occupied northern Vietnam. The British secured southern Vietnam for re-entry of the French, who ruthlessly suppressed supporters of Ho Chi Minh. A state of low-level guerrilla warfare developed, which escalated sharply when Chiang Kai-shek, hoping to checkmate communist ambitions in the region, withdrew from northern Vietnam and turned that region over to French control.
The March to Dien Bien Phu
Like Chiang Kai-shek, U.S. leaders feared communist incursions in Southeast Asia and began to supply the French with funding, military equipment, and-on August 3, 1950—the first contingent of U.S. military “advisors.” By 1953, the United States was funding 80 percent of the cost of France’s war effort.
France assigned General Henri Eugene Navarre to strike a decisive blow on the strategically located plain of Dien Bien Phu, near Laos. President Eisenhower stepped up military aid, but despite Navarre’s massing of troops, Dien Bien Phu fell to the forces of Ho Chi Minh on May 7, 1954. This disaster was followed by a string of Viet Minh victories, and, in a July peace conference, the French and the Viet Minh concluded a cease-fire and agreed to divide Vietnam along the 17th parallel.
Domino Theory
During the thick of the Dien Bien Phu campaign, on April 7, 1954, President Eisenhower presented reporters with his rationale for aiding the French—a foreign power-in their fight against communism in Vietnam—a remote country. “You have a row of dominoes set up,” he explained, “you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty it will go over very quickly.” This off-handed metaphor was immediately christened the domino theory, and it became the basis for an escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
American “Advisors”
As a condition of the armistice agreement concluded in Geneva between Ho Chi Minh and the French, the divided Vietnam was to hold elections within two years to reunify. South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem assumed that Ho Chi Minh would win a popular election; therefore, he declined to abide by the Geneva accords, refusing to hold the promised elections. The United States, more concerned with blocking communism that with practicing democracy in Vietnam, backed Diem’s position. Under John F. Kennedy, who succeeded Eisenhower in 1961, the number of military “advisors” sent to Vietnam steadily rose. By June 30, 1962, 6,419 Americans were in South Vietnam. President Kennedy reported to the press that no U.S. combat forces were in the country, but he did admit that the “training units” were authorized to return fire if fired upon.
Flaming, Monks and the Fall of Diem
The Kennedy administration’s desire to stop the falling dominoes caused U.S. officials to turn a blind eye toward the essential unpopularity and corruption of the Diem regime. Diem’s cronies were put into high civil and military positions, and although a small number of urban South Vietnamese prospered under Diem, the rural majority fared poorly. Moreover, the Catholic Diem became tyrannical in his support of the nation’s Catholic minority and openly abused the Buddhist majority. The world was soon horrified by a series of extreme protest demonstrations: Buddhists monks doused themselves in gasoline and set themselves ablaze in the streets of Saigon.
By mid-1963, the Kennedy administration determined that the Diem regime was no longer viable. President Kennedy secretly allowed the CIA to plot the murder of Diem in a U.S.-backed military coup that overthrew him on November 1, 1963. Diem’s death unleashed a series of coups that made South Vietnam even more unstable over the next two years and encouraged the communists to escalate the war, now fueled by increasing Soviet and Chinese aid.
Rolling Thunder
Hindsight, according to a well-worn cliche, is always 20/20, and historians critical of the Kennedy administration often blame JFK for miring the nation in a hopeless war. Actually, evidence exists that, in the months and weeks before his assassination, President Kennedy, recognizing that only the Vietnamese could ultimately resolve the conflict, was planning a withdrawal. Perhaps. What is certain is that Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, moved vigorously to oppose North Vietnamese insurgents, authorizing the CIA to oversee diversionary raids on the northern coast while the navy conducted electronic espionage in the Gulf of Tonkin. The new president also named General William Westmoreland to head the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) and increased the number of military “advisors” to 23,000. Nevertheless, faced with a succession of weak Saigon governments, President Johnson continued to weigh the odds. The domino theory was persuasive, but the conflict began to look increasingly hopeless. In February 1965, LBJ sent his personal advisor, McGeorge Bundy, on a fact-finding mission to Saigon.
Suddenly, action by the Viet Cong moved the president’s hand. On February 7, Viet Cong units attacked U.S. advisory forces and the headquarters of the U.S. Army 52nd Aviation Battalion, near Pleiku, killing nine Americans and wounding 108. Bundy, Westmoreland, and U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor recommended a strike into North Vietnam. Operation Flaming Dart retaliated against an enemy barracks near Dong Hoi, provoking a Viet Cong counterstrike on February 10 against a U.S. barracks at Qui Nhon. The next day, U.S. forces struck back with a long program of air strikes deep into the North. Code named Rolling Thunder, the operation formally began on March 2, 1965, and marked the start of a course of escalation as 50,000 new ground troops were sent to Vietnam, ostensibly to “protect” U.S. air bases.
Escalation and Vietnamization
Johnson’s strategy was to continue a gradual escalation of the war, bombing military targets in a war of attrition that would not provoke overt intervention from China or the U.S.S.R. This scheme proved to be a no-win strategy that only prolonged the war. In an aggressive military campaign, success is measured by objectives attained—cities captured, military targets eliminated—but in a war of attrition, the only measure of success is body count. To be sure, American forces produced a massive body count among the enemy, but, just as Buddhist monks were willing to set themselves aflame, this enemy was prepared to die.