the nightmare of vietnam - cengage · the nightmare of vietnam george c. herring the vietnam war...

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The Nightmare of Vietnam

GEORGE C. HERRING

The Vietnam War was one of the most controversial episodes in United States history.American involvement in that conflict began with Truman and persisted through Demo-cratic and Republican administrations alike, although the largest escalation took placeunder Lyndon Johnson — the subject of this selection.

To place George Herring’s account in proper context, let us review what had gone onin Vietnam before the Johnson escalation. For more than twenty years, war had rackedthat distant Asian land. Initially, Communist and nationalist forces under Ho ChiMinh had battled to liberate their homeland from French colonial rule. The UnitedStates was suspicious of Ho, who was an avowed Communist trained in Moscow. ButHo was also an intense nationalist: he was determined to create a united and independ-ent Vietnam and never wavered from that goal. Suspicious of Ho because of his Com-munist connections, the United States sided with the French against Ho and the Viet-namese; by 1954, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, the United States wasfooting 70 percent of the French cost of prosecuting a war that was highly unpopular inFrance. When Vietnamese forces surrounded and besieged twelve thousand French troopsin Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower’s closest personal advisers urged armed American inter-vention to save the French position. Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the JointChiefs, even recommended dropping the atomic bomb on the Vietnamese. As StephenAmbrose points out in selection 23, Eisenhower would have none of it.

The Eisenhower administration, however, continued using American aid and influ-ence to combat communism in Indochina. In 1955, after suffering a humiliating defeatat Dien Bien Phu, the French withdrew from Vietnam, whereupon the United Statesacted to prevent Ho Chi Minh from gaining complete control there. Eisenhower and hissecretary of state, John Foster Dulles, ignored an international agreement in Geneva that

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called for free elections and helped install a repressive, anti-Communist regime in SouthVietnam, supplying it with money, weapons, and military advisers. From the outset,American policymakers viewed Ho Chi Minh’s government in North Vietnam as partof a world Communist conspiracy directed by Moscow and Beijing. If communism wasnot halted in Vietnam, they feared, then all Asia would ultimately succumb. Eisen-hower himself repeated the analogy that it would be like a row of falling dominoes.

American intervention aroused Ho Chi Minh, who rushed help to nationalist guerril-las in South Vietnam and set out to unite all of Vietnam under his leadership. Withcivil war raging across South Vietnam, the Eisenhower administration stepped up theflow of American military aid to the government there, situated in the capital city ofSaigon. Under President John F. Kennedy, an enthusiast for counterinsurgency (orcounterguerrilla warfare), the number of American advisers rose from 650 to 23,000.But Kennedy became disillusioned with American involvement in Vietnam and deviseda disengagement plan before he was assassinated in November 1963. Whether he wouldhave implemented the plan cannot be stated with certainty. When Vice President John-son succeeded Kennedy, he nullified the disengagement plan and (with the encourage-ment of Kennedy’s own advisers) continued American assistance to South Vietnam.Then, in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, Congress empowered thepresident to use armed force against “Communist aggression” in Vietnam. But Johnsonrepeatedly vowed, “We are not going to send American boys nine or ten thousand milesaway from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

Over the next winter, however, all that changed. In November and December 1964,South Vietnamese guerrillas of the National Liberation Front (or Vietcong) killed sevenUnited States advisers and wounded more than a hundred others in mortar and bombattacks. Johnson’s blood was up: he wasn’t going to let them “shoot our boys” out there,fire on “our flag.” He talked obsessively about Communist “aggression” in Vietnam,about Munich and the lesson of appeasement, about how his enemies would call him “acoward,” “an unmanly man,” if he let Ho Chi Minh run through the streets of Saigon.He couldn’t depend on the United Nations to act — “It couldn’t pour piss out of a bootif the instructions were printed on the heel.” In February 1965, the administration be-came convinced that the coup-plagued Saigon government was about to collapse and thatthe United States had to do something drastic or South Vietnam would be lost andAmerican international prestige and influence severely damaged. Accordingly, Johnsonand his advisers moved to Americanize the war, sending waves of United States war-planes roaring over North Vietnam and 3,200 marines into the South.

The Americanization of the war took place with such stealth that people at home werehardly aware of the change. As reporter David Halberstam later wrote, United Statesdecision makers “inched across the Rubicon without even admitting it,” and the task oftheir press secretaries was “to misinform the public.” The biggest misinformers were

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Johnson and his spokesmen, who lied about costs (which were staggering), casualties, vic-tories, and build-ups. By June, more than 75,000 American soldiers were in Vietnam,and combat troops were fighting Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars in an Asianland war that Johnson had sworn to avoid. Soon troops were pouring in, and the warreeled out of control as each American escalation stiffened Vietcong and North Viet-namese resistance, which in turn led to more American escalation. By 1968, more than500,000 American troops were fighting in that fire-scarred land. In the eyes of the ad-ministration and the Pentagon, it was unthinkable that America’s awesome militarypower could fail to crush tiny North Vietnam and the Vietcong.

This sets the background for “The Nightmare of Vietnam,” the story of the Ameri-canization of the war under Lyndon Johnson. Herring not only offers trenchant insightinto that powerful and pungent man but also captures the inconsistencies, frustration,and horror of America’s longest and costliest war. Because of the similarities between theVietnam War and the Philippine insurrection of 1898–1902, readers might want to re-view Kohler and Wensyel’s “America’s First Southeast Asian War” (selection 9),which draws important parallels between the two conflicts. Why do you think that John-son and his advisers did not draw on the lessons learned in the Philippine war?

GLOSSARY

ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM(ARVN) The South Vietnamese army.

BALL, GEORGE Undersecretary of state and oneof a handful of dissenters within the Johnsonadministration, Ball opposed the bombing of NorthVietnam and Johnson’s entire policy of escalationand Americanization of the war.

DOVES Those who opposed the war in Vietnam.

HAWKS Those who supported the war inVietnam.

HO CHI MINH TRAIL Communist supplyroute from North Vietnam to Vietcong hideouts inSouth Vietnam.

MCNAMARA, ROBERT Johnson’s secretary ofdefense who was so closely associated with escalationthat the Vietnam conflict became known as“McNamara’s war”; by 1967, however, he hadchanged his mind about escalation and now pressed

for a basic change in policy, even for some face-saving way out of Vietnam; he resigned whenJohnson lost confidence in him.

NEW LEFT Radical, upper-middle-class collegestudents who opposed the war and saw it as a meansto overthrow American capitalism itself.

OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER TheAmerican bombing campaign against NorthVietnam that began early in 1965 and was expandedduring the next two years in a vain attempt to checkNorth Vietnamese aid to the Vietcong and force HoChi Minh to negotiate for peace; the bombingwould continue until 1972.

VIETCONG (NATIONAL LIBERATIONFRONT) Communist guerrillas of South Vietnamwho fought with the North Vietnamese regulararmy to unify the country.

WESTMORELAND, GENERAL WILLIAM C.United States commander in Vietnam whoemployed an aggressive strategy of attrition againstthe Vietcong and North Vietnamese.

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W hile visiting the aircraft carrier Rangeroff the coast of Vietnam in 1965,Robert Shaplen overheard a fellow

journalist remark: “They just ought to show this shipto the Vietcong — that would make them give up.”From Lyndon Johnson in the White House to theGI in the field, the United States went to war in1965 in much this frame of mind. The President hadstaked everything on the casual assumption that theenemy could be quickly brought to bay by the appli-cation of American military might. The first combattroops to enter Vietnam shared similar views. When“we marched into the rice paddies on that dampMarch afternoon,” Marine Lieutenant Philip Caputolater wrote, “we carried, along with our packs andrifles, the implicit conviction that the Viet Congwould be quickly beaten.” Although by no meansunique to the Vietnam War, this optimism doesmuch to explain the form taken by American partic-ipation in that struggle. The United States never de-veloped a strategy appropriate for the war it wasfighting, in part because it was assumed that themere application of its vast military power would besufficient. The failure of one level of force ledquickly to the next and then the next, until the warattained a degree of destructiveness no one wouldhave thought possible in 1965. Most important, theoptimism with which the nation went to war morethan anything else accounts for the great frustrationthat subsequently developed in and out of govern-ment. Failure never comes easily, but it comes espe-cially hard when success is anticipated at little cost.

Within two years, the optimism of 1965 hadgiven way to deep and painful frustration. By 1967,the United States had nearly a half million combattroops in Vietnam. It had dropped more bombs thanin all theaters in World War II and was spendingmore than $2 billion per month on the war. Some

American officials persuaded themselves that progresshad been made, but the undeniable fact was that thewar continued. Lyndon Johnson thus faced an ago-nizing dilemma. Unable to end the war by militarymeans and unwilling to make the concessions neces-sary to secure a negotiated settlement, he discoveredbelatedly what George Ball had warned in 1964:“once on the tiger’s back we cannot be sure of pick-ing the place to dismount.”

American strategy in Vietnam was improvisedrather than carefully designed and contained numer-ous inconsistencies. The United States went to warin 1965 to prevent the collapse of South Vietnam,but it was never able to relate its tremendous militarypower to the fundamental task of establishing a vi-able government in Saigon. The administration in-sisted that the war must be kept limited — the SovietUnion and China must not be provoked to inter-vene — but the President counted on a quick andrelatively painless victory to avert unrest at home.That these goals might not be compatible apparentlynever occurred to Johnson and his civilian advisers.The United States injected its military power di-rectly into the struggle to cripple the Vietcong andpersuade North Vietnam to stop its “aggression.”The administration vastly underestimated the en-emy’s capacity to resist, however, and did not con-front the crucial question of what would be requiredto achieve its goals until it was bogged down in abloody stalemate.

While the President and his civilian advisers setlimits on the conduct of the war, they did not pro-vide firm strategic guidelines for the use of Americanpower. Left on its own to frame a strategy, the mili-tary fought the conventional war for which it wasprepared without reference to the peculiar condi-tions in Vietnam. . . .

The United States relied heavily on airpower.Military doctrine taught that bombing could destroyan enemy’s warmaking capacity, thereby forcing himto come to terms. The limited success of airpower as applied on a large scale in World War II and on a more restricted scale in Korea raised serious

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From George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United Statesand Vietnam, 1950–1975 (2nd ed.). Copyright © the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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questions about the validity of this assumption, andthe conditions prevailing in Vietnam, a primitivecountry with few crucial targets, might have sug-gested even more. The Air Force and Navy ad-vanced unrealistic expectations about what airpowermight accomplish, however, and clung to them longafter experience had proven them unjustified. Thecivilian leadership accepted the military’s arguments,at least to a point, because the bombing was cheaperin lives lost and therefore more palatable at home,and because it seemed to offer a quick and compara-tively easy solution to a complex problem. Initiatedin early 1965 as much from the lack of alternatives asanything else, the bombing of North Vietnam wasexpanded over the next two years in the vain hopethat it would check infiltration into the south andforce North Vietnam to the conference table.

The air war gradually assumed massive propor-tions. The President firmly resisted the Joint Chiefs’proposal for a knockout blow, but as each phase ofthe bombing failed to produce results, he expandedthe list of targets and the number of strikes. Sortiesagainst North Vietnam increased from 25,000 in1965 to 79,000 in 1966 and 108,000 in 1967; thetonnage of bombs dropped increased from 63,000 to136,000 to 226,000. Throughout 1965, [Operation]ROLLING THUNDER concentrated on militarybases, supply depots, and infiltration routes in thesouthern part of the country. From early 1966 on,air strikes were increasingly directed against theNorth Vietnamese industrial and transportation sys-tem and moved steadily northward. In the summerof 1966, Johnson authorized massive strikes againstpetroleum storage facilities and transportation net-works. A year later, he permitted attacks on steel fac-tories, power plants, and other approved targetsaround Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as on previ-ously restricted areas along the Chinese border.

The bombing inflicted an estimated $600 milliondamage on a nation still struggling to develop a vi-able, modern economy. The air attacks crippledNorth Vietnam’s industrial productivity and dis-

rupted its agriculture. Some cities were virtually lev-eled, others severely damaged. Giant B-52s, carryingpayloads of 58,000 pounds, relentlessly attacked theareas leading to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, leaving thecountryside scarred with huge craters and litteredwith debris. The bombing was not directed againstthe civilian population, and the administration publicly maintained that civilian casualties were min-imal. But the CIA estimated that in 1967 total casu-alties ran as high as 2,800 per month and admittedthat these figures were heavily weighted with civil-ians; [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara pri-vately conceded that civilian casualties were as highas 1,000 per month during periods of intensivebombing. . . .

The manner in which airpower was used in Viet-nam virtually ensured that it would not achieve itsobjectives, however. Whether, as the Joint Chiefsargued, a massive, unrestricted air war would haveworked remains much in doubt. In fact, the UnitedStates had destroyed many major targets by 1967with no demonstrable effect on the war. Neverthe-less, the administration’s gradualist approach gaveHanoi time to construct an air defense system, pro-tect its vital resources, and develop alternative modesof transportation. Gradualism probably encouragedthe North Vietnamese to persist despite the damageinflicted upon them.

North Vietnam demonstrated great ingenuity anddogged perseverance in coping with the bombing.Civilians were evacuated from the cities and dis-persed across the countryside; industries and storagefacilities were scattered and in many cases concealedin caves and under the ground. The governmentclaimed to have dug over 30,000 miles of tunnels,and in heavily bombed areas the people spent muchof their lives underground. An estimated 90,000North Vietnamese, many of them women and chil-dren, worked full-time keeping transportation routesopen, and piles of gravel were kept along the majorroadways, enabling “Youth Shock Brigades” to fillcraters within hours after the bombs fell. Concrete

FROM THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT TO VIETNAM

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and steel bridges were replaced by ferries and pon-toon bridges made of bamboo stalks which weresunk during the day to avoid detection. Truck driv-ers covered their vehicles with palm fronds and ba-nana leaves and traveled at night, without headlights,guided only by white markers along the roads. B-52sdevastated the narrow roads through the Mu GiaPass leading to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but, to theamazement of the Americans, trucks moved backthrough the pass within several days. “Caucasianscannot really imagine what ant labor can do,” oneAmerican remarked with a mixture of frustrationand admiration.

Losses in military equipment, raw materials, andvehicles were more than offset by increased aid fromthe Soviet Union and China. Until 1965, Russia hadremained detached from the conflict, but the newleaders who succeeded Khrushchev in October 1964took much greater interest in the Vietnam conflict,and U.S. escalation presented opportunities andchallenges they could not pass up. The bombing cre-ated a need for sophisticated military equipment onlythe Soviet Union could provide, giving Moscow achance to wean North Vietnam away from China.At a time when the Chinese were loudly proclaim-ing Soviet indifference to the fate of revolutionsacross the world, the direct threat to a Communiststate posed by the air strikes required the Russians toprove their credibility. American escalation did notforce the two Communist rivals back together, asGeorge Ball had predicted. Fearful of Soviet intru-sion in Vietnam, the Chinese angrily rejectedMoscow’s call for “united action” (a phrase bor-rowed, perhaps consciously, from Dulles) and evenobstructed Russian aid to North Vietnam. The in-creasingly heated Sino-Soviet rivalry over Vietnamdid, however, enable Hanoi to play off one poweragainst the other to get increased aid and prevent ei-ther from securing predominant influence. The Chi-nese continued to supply large quantities of rice,small arms and ammunition, and vehicles. Soviet aidincreased dramatically after 1965, and included such

modern weaponry as fighter planes, surface-to-airmissiles, and tanks. Total assistance from Russia andChina has been estimated in excess of $2 billion be-tween 1965 and 1968. . . .

By 1967, the United States was paying a heavyprice for no more than marginal gains. The cost of aB-52 mission ran to $30,000 per sortie in bombs.The direct cost of the air war, including operation ofthe aircraft, munitions, and replacement of planeslost, was estimated at more than $1.7 billion during1965 and 1966, a period when aircraft losses ex-ceeded 500. Overall, the United States between1965 and 1968 lost 950 aircraft costing roughly $6billion. According to one estimate, for each $1 ofdamage inflicted on North Vietnam, the UnitedStates spent $9.60. The costs cannot be measured indollars alone, however. Captured American airmengave Hanoi hostages which would assume increasingimportance in the stalemated war. The continuedpounding of a small, backward country by theworld’s wealthiest and most advanced nation gavethe North Vietnamese a propaganda advantage theyexploited quite effectively. Opposition to the war athome increasingly focused on the bombing, which,in the eyes of many critics was at best inefficient, atworst immoral.

American ground operations in the south also es-calated dramatically between 1965 and 1967. Evenbefore he had significant numbers of combat forcesat his disposal, [United States commander WilliamC.] Westmoreland had formulated the strategy hewould employ until early 1968. It was a strategy ofattrition, the major objective of which was to locateand eliminate the Vietcong and North Vietnameseregular units. Westmoreland has vigorously deniedthat he was motivated by any “Napoleonic impulseto maneuver units and hark to the sound of can-non,” but “search and destroy,” as it came to becalled, did reflect traditional U.S. Army doctrines ofwarfare. In Westmoreland’s view, North Vietnam’sdecision to commit large units to the war left him nochoice but to proceed along these lines. He did not


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have sufficient forces to police the entire country,nor was it enough simply to contain the enemy’smain units. “They had to be pounded with artilleryand bombs and eventually brought to battle on theground if they were not forever to remain a threat.”Once the enemy’s regulars had been destroyed,Westmoreland reasoned, the South Vietnamese gov-ernment would be able to stabilize its position andpacify the countryside, and the adversary would haveno choice but to negotiate on terms acceptable tothe United States.

Westmoreland’s aggressive strategy required stead-ily increasing commitments of American manpower.Even before the 1965 buildup had been completed,the General requested sufficient additional forces tobring the total to 450,000 by the end of 1966. Incontrast to the air war, over which it retained tightcontrol, the administration gave Westmorelandbroad discretion in developing and executing theground strategy, and it saw no choice but to givehim most of the troops he asked for. In June 1966,the President approved a force level of 431,000 to bereached by mid-1967. While these deploymentswere being approved, Westmoreland was developingrequests for an increase to 542,000 troops by the endof 1967.

Furnished thousands of fresh American troops and amassive arsenal of modern weaponry, Westmorelandtook the war to the enemy. He accomplished whathas properly been called a “logistical miracle,” con-structing virtually overnight the facilities to handlehuge numbers of U.S. troops and enormous volumesof equipment. The Americans who fought in Vietnamwere the best fed, best clothed, and best equippedarmy the nation had ever sent to war. In what West-moreland described as the “most sophisticated war inhistory,” the United States attempted to exploit itstechnological superiority to cope with the peculiarproblems of a guerrilla war. To locate an ever elusiveenemy, the military used small, portable radar unitsand “people sniffers” which picked up the odor ofhuman urine. IBM 1430 computers were pro-

grammed to predict likely times and places of enemyattacks. Herbicides were used on a wide scale and withdevastating ecological consequences to deprive theVietcong of natural cover. C-123 “RANCHHAND”crews, with the sardonic motto “Only You Can Pre-vent Forests,” sprayed more than 100 million poundsof chemicals such as Agent Orange over millions ofacres of forests, destroying an estimated one-half ofSouth Vietnam’s timberlands and leaving human costsyet to be determined. . . .

In a war without front lines and territorial objec-tives, where “attriting the enemy” was the majorgoal, the “body count” became the index ofprogress. Most authorities agree that the figures werenotoriously unreliable. The sheer destructiveness ofcombat made it difficult to produce an accuratecount of enemy killed in action. It was impossible todistinguish between Vietcong and noncombatants,and in the heat of battle American “statisticians”made little effort. “If it’s dead and Vietnamese, it’sVC, was a rule of thumb in the bush,” Philip Ca-puto has recalled. Throughout the chain of com-mand there was heavy pressure to produce favorablefigures, and padding occurred at each level until bythe time the numbers reached Washington they borelittle resemblance to reality. Even with an inflatedbody count — and estimates of padding range ashigh as 30 percent — it is clear that the United Statesinflicted huge losses on the enemy. Official estimatesplaced the number as high as 220,000 by late 1967.Largely on the basis of these figures, the Americanmilitary command insisted that the United States was“winning” the war.

As with the air war, the strategy of attrition hadserious flaws. It assumed that the United States couldinflict intolerable losses on the enemy while keepingits own losses within acceptable bounds, an assump-tion that flew in the face of past experience withland wars on the Asian continent and the realities inVietnam. An estimated 200,000 North Vietnamesereached draft age each year, and Hanoi was able toreplace its losses and match each American escala-


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tion. Moreover, the conditions under which the warwas fought permitted the enemy to control its losses.The North Vietnamese and Vietcong remained ex-traordinarily elusive and were generally able to avoidcontact when it suited them. They fought at timesand places of their own choosing and on ground fa-vorable to them. If losses reached unacceptable lev-els, they could simply melt away into the jungle orretreat into sanctuaries in North Vietnam, Laos, andCambodia.

Thus, the United States could gain no more thana stalemate. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong

had been hurt, in some cases badly, but their mainforces had not been destroyed. They retained thestrategic initiative, and could strike sharply andquickly when and where they chose. Westmorelanddid not have sufficient forces to wage war against theenemy’s regulars and control the countryside. TheVietcong political structure thus remained largelyuntouched, and even in areas such as the Iron Trian-gle, when American forces moved on to fight else-where, the Vietcong quietly slipped back in. It alladded up to a “state of irresolution,” Robert Shaplenobserved in 1967. . . .


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Soldiers evacuating the wounded during the Tet Offensive,

mounted by the North Vietnamese in late January of 1968. By

that time, more than a half million American men were fighting

in Vietnam, and the war bogged down in a stalemate. At home

protests mounted as the war became increasingly unpopular with

ordinary Americans, and Lyndon Johnson, refusing to run for an-

other term, ended his presidency in a cloud of adverse public opin-

ion. (McCullin/Magnum Photos)

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Thus, despite the impressive body count figures, itwas clear to many observers by mid-1967 that thehopes of a quick and relatively inexpensive militaryvictory had been misplaced. Each American blow“was like a sledgehammer on a floating cork,” thejournalist Malcolm Browne observed. “Somehowthe cork refused to stay down.” . . .

. . . Americanization of the war created new andequally formidable problems. Among these, the mostserious — and most tragic — was that of therefugees. The expansion of American and enemymilitary operations drove an estimated four millionSouth Vietnamese, roughly 25 percent of the popu-lation, from their native villages. Some drifted intothe already teeming cities; others were herded intoshabby refugee camps. The United States furnishedthe government some $30 million a year for the careof the refugees, but much of the money neverreached them. Resettlement programs were initiatedfrom time to time, but the problem was so complexthat it would have taxed the ingenuity of the mostimaginative officials. In any event, nothing couldhave compensated the refugees for the loss of theirhomes and lands. A large portion of South Vietnam’spopulation was left rootless and hostile, and therefugee camps became fertile breeding grounds forVietcong fifth columns.

The sudden infusion of half a million Americantroops, hundreds of civilian advisers, and billions ofdollars had a profoundly disruptive effect on a weakand divided nation. The buildup was so rapid and sovast that it threatened to overwhelm South Vietnam.Saigon’s ports were congested with ships and goods,and vessels awaiting unloading were backed up farout to sea. The city itself became a “thorough-goingboom town,” Shaplen remarked, its streets cloggedwith traffic, its restaurants “bursting with boisteroussoldiers,” its bars “as crowded as New York subwaycars in the rush hour.” Signs of the American pres-ence appeared everywhere. Long strips of seedy barsand brothels sprang up overnight around base areas.In a remote village near Danang, Caputo encoun-

tered houses made of discarded beer cans: “red andwhite Budweiser, gold Miller, cream and brownSchlitz, blue and gold Hamm’s from the land of sky-blue waters.”

American spending had a devastating effect on thevulnerable South Vietnamese economy. Prices in-creased by as much as 170 percent during the firsttwo years of the buildup. The United States eventu-ally controlled the rate of inflation by paying its ownsoldiers in scrip and by flooding the country withconsumer goods, but the corrective measures them-selves had harmful side effects. Instead of usingAmerican aid to promote economic development,South Vietnamese importers bought watches, transis-tor radios, and Hondas to sell to people employed bythe United States. The vast influx of American goodsdestroyed South Vietnam’s few native industries andmade the economy even more dependent on con-tinued outside aid. By 1967, much of the urban pop-ulation was employed providing services to theAmericans.

In the bonanza atmosphere, crime and corruptionflourished. Corruption was not new to South Viet-nam or unusual in a nation at war, but by 1966 itoperated on an incredible scale. Government officialsrented land to the United States at inflated prices, re-quired bribes for driver’s licenses, passports, visas,and work permits, extorted kickbacks for contractsto build and service facilities, and took part in the il-licit importation of opium. The black market inscrip, dollars, and stolen American goods became amajor enterprise. On Saigon’s PX Alley, an open-airmarket covering two city blocks and comprised ofmore than 100 stalls, purchasers could buy every-thing from hand grenades to scotch whiskey atmarkups as high as 300 percent. Americans and Viet-namese reaped handsome profits from the illegal ex-change of currencies. International swindlers and“monetary camp followers” quickly got into the act,and the currency-manipulation racket developedinto a “massive financial international network” ex-tending from Saigon to Wall Street with connections


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to Swiss banks and Arab sheikdoms. The pervasivecorruption undermined the U.S. aid program andseverely handicapped American efforts to stabilizethe economy of South Vietnam.

American officials perceived the problem, butthey could not find solutions. [Prime MinisterNguyen Cao] Ky candidly admitted that “most ofthe generals are corrupt. Most of the senior officialsin the provinces are corrupt.” But, he would addcalmly, “corruption exists everywhere, and peoplecan live with some of it. You live with it in Chicagoand New York.” The Embassy pressed the govern-ment to remove officials known to be corrupt, butwith little result. “You fight like hell to get someoneremoved and most times you fail and you just makeit worse,” a frustrated American explained to DavidHalberstam. “And then on occasions you win, whyhell, they give you someone just as bad.” TheUnited States found to its chagrin that as its commit-ment increased, its leverage diminished. Concernwith corruption and inefficiency was always bal-anced by fear that tough action might alienate thegovernment or bring about its collapse. . . .

Tensions between Americans and South Viet-namese increased as the American presence grew.Because of chronic security leaks, the United Stateskept Vietnamese off its major bases, and Vietconginfiltration of the ARVN’s top ranks compelled U.S.officers to keep from their Vietnamese counterpartsthe details of major military operations. . . . Theseeming indifference of many Vietnamese, whileAmericans were dying in the field, provoked grow-ing resentment and hatred. The unerring ability ofthe villagers to avoid mines and booby traps thatkilled and maimed GIs led to charges of collusionwith the enemy.

The Vietnamese attitude toward the foreigner wasat best ambivalent. The Vietnamese undoubtedly ap-preciated American generosity, but they came to re-sent American ways of doing things. They com-plained that American soldiers “acted despicably”

toward the villagers, tearing up roads and endanger-ing the lives of noncombatants by reckless handlingof vehicles and firearms. An ARVN major protestedthat Americans trusted only those Vietnamese whoaccepted without question their way of doing thingsand that they doled out their aid “in the same way asthat given to beggars.” The Vietnamese recognizedtheir need for U.S. help, and some were probablyquite content to let the United States assume com-plete responsibility for the war. On the other hand,many Vietnamese resented the domineering mannerof the Americans and came to consider the U.S.“occupation” a “demoralizing scourge.” ThoughtfulVietnamese recognized that Americans were not“colonialists,” Shaplen observed. But, he added,“there has evolved here a colonial ambiance that cansometimes be worse than colonialism itself.” . . .

The steady expansion of the war spurred stronginternational and domestic pressures for negotiations,but the military stalemate produced an equally firmdiplomatic impasse. American officials later tallied asmany as 2,000 attempts to initiate peace talks be-tween 1965 and 1967. Neither side could afford toappear indifferent to such efforts, but neither waswilling to make the concessions necessary to makenegotiations a reality. Although the North Viet-namese attempted to exploit the various peace initia-tives for propaganda advantage, they counted on theAmerican people to tire of the war and they re-mained certain that they could achieve their goals ifthey persisted. Hanoi adamantly refused to negotiatewithout first securing major concessions from theUnited States. Johnson and his advisers could not ig-nore the various proposals for negotiations, but theydoubted that anything would come of them and sus-pected, not without reason, that Hanoi was express-ing interest merely to get the bombing stopped. De-spite any firm evidence of results, the Presidentremained confident at least until 1967 that NorthVietnam would eventually bend to American pres-sure, and he feared that if he were too conciliatory itwould undercut his strategy. To defuse international


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and domestic criticism, Johnson repeatedly insistedthat he was ready to negotiate, but he refused tomake the concessions Hanoi demanded. As each sideinvested more in the struggle, the likelihood of seri-ous negotiations diminished.

The positions of the two sides left little room forcompromise. The North Vietnamese denouncedAmerican involvement in Vietnam as a blatant viola-tion of the Geneva Accords, and as a precondition tonegotiations, insisted that the United States with-draw its troops, dismantle its bases, and stop all actsof war against their country. Hanoi stressed that theinternal affairs of South Vietnam must be resolved bythe South Vietnamese themselves “in accordancewith the program of the National Liberation Front.”North Vietnam was apparently flexible in regard tothe timing and mechanism for political change in thesouth, but on the fundamental issues it was adamant.The “puppet” Saigon regime must be replaced by agovernment representative of the “people” in whichthe front would play a prominent role. Hanoi madeclear, moreover, that the “unity of our country is no more a matter for negotiations than our inde-pendence.” . . .

By mid-1967, Johnson was snared in a trap he hadunknowingly set for himself. His hopes of a quickand relatively painless victory had been frustrated.He was desperately anxious to end the war, but hehad been unable to do so by force, and in the ab-sence of a clearcut military advantage, or a strongerpolitical position in South Vietnam, he could not doso by negotiations. As the conflict increased in cost,moreover, he found himself caught in the midst ofan increasingly angry and divisive debate at home, adebate which by 1967 seemed capable of wreckinghis presidency and tearing the country apart.

At one extreme were the “hawks,” largely right-wing Republicans and conservative Democrats, whoviewed the conflict in Vietnam as an essential ele-ment in the global struggle with Communism.Should the United States not hold the line, they ar-

gued, the Communists would be encouraged to fur-ther aggression, allies and neutrals would succumb toCommunist pressures, and the United States wouldbe left alone to face a powerful and merciless enemy.Strong nationalists, certain of America’s invincibility,and deeply frustrated by the stalemate in Vietnam,the hawks bitterly protested the restraints imposedon the military and demanded that the administra-tion do whatever was necessary to attain victory. . . .

At the other extreme were the “doves,” a vast,sprawling, extremely heterogeneous and fractiousgroup, which opposed the war with increasing bit-terness and force. The antiwar movement grew al-most in proportion to the escalation of the conflict.It included such diverse individuals as the pediatri-cian Dr. Benjamin Spock, heavyweight boxingchampion Muhammad Ali, actress Jane Fonda, andauthor Norman Mailer, old-line pacifists such as A. J. Muste and new radicals such as Tom Hayden,the black civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., and Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. Thedoves comprised only a small percentage of the pop-ulation, but they were an unusually visible and artic-ulate group. Their attack on American foreign policywas vicious and unrelenting. In time, their move-ment became inextricably linked with the culturalrevolution that swept the United States in the late1960s and challenged the most basic of Americanvalues and institutions.

Although it defies precise categorization, the anti-war movement tended to group along three princi-pal lines. For pacifists such as Muste, who opposedall wars as immoral, Vietnam was but another phaseof a lifelong crusade. For the burgeoning radicalmovement of the 1960s, opposition to the war ex-tended beyond questions of morality. Spawned bythe civil rights movement, drawing its largest follow-ing among upper-middle-class youths on collegecampuses, the “New Left” joined older leftist orga-nizations in viewing the war as a classic example ofthe way the American ruling class exploited helplesspeople to sustain a decadent capitalist system. Anti-


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war liberals far exceeded in numbers the pacifists andradicals. Although they did not generally question“the system,” they increasingly questioned the waron both moral and practical grounds. Many liberalinternationalists who had supported World War II,Korea, and the Cold War found Vietnam morallyrepugnant. By backing a corrupt, authoritarian gov-ernment, they contended, the United States was be-traying its own principles. In the absence of any di-rect threat to American security, the devastationwreaked on North and South Vietnam was indefen-sible. Many more liberals questioned the war onpractical grounds. It was essentially an internal strug-gle, they argued, whose connection with the ColdWar was at best indirect. Liberals questioned the va-lidity of the domino theory. . . . They agreed thatVietnam was of no more than marginal significanceto the security of the United States. Indeed they in-sisted that the huge investment there was divertingattention from more urgent problems at home andabroad, damaging America’s relations with its allies,and inhibiting the development of a more construc-tive relationship with the Soviet Union. The liberalcritique quickly broadened into an indictment ofAmerican “globalism.” The United States had fallenvictim to the “arrogance of power,” Fulbrightclaimed, and was showing “signs of that fatal pre-sumption, that over-extension of power and mission,which brought ruin to ancient Athens, to Napo-leonic France and to Nazi Germany.

. . . Most liberals stopped short of advocatingwithdrawal from Vietnam, much less domestic revo-lution, proposing merely an end to the bombing,gradual deescalation, and negotiations. Disagreementon methods was even sharper. Liberals generally pre-ferred nonviolent protest and political action withinthe system and sought to exclude the Communistsfrom demonstrations. Radicals and some pacifists in-creasingly pressed for a shift from protest to resis-tance, and some openly advocated the use of vio-lence to bring down a system that was itself violent.

Opposition to the war took many different forms.

Fulbright conducted a series of nationally televisedhearings, bringing before the viewing public criticsof administration policies. There were hundreds ofacts of individual defiance. The folk singer Joan Baezrefused to pay that portion of her income tax thatwent to the defense budget. Muhammad Ali de-clared himself a conscientious objector and refusedinduction orders. Three army enlisted men — theFort Hood Three — challenged the constitutionalityof the conflict by refusing to fight in what they la-beled an “unjust, immoral, and illegal war.” ArmyCaptain Howard Levy used the doctrine of individ-ual responsibility set forth in the Nuremberg warcrimes trials to justify his refusal to train combatteams for action in Vietnam. Thousands of youngAmericans exploited legal loopholes, even mutilatedthemselves, to evade the draft; others fled to Canadaor served jail sentences rather than go to Vietnam. A handful of Americans adopted the method ofprotest of South Vietnam’s Buddhists, publicly im-molating themselves. Antiwar rallies and demonstra-tions drew larger crowds in 1966 and 1967, and theparticipants became more outspoken in their opposi-tion. Protesters marched daily around the WhiteHouse chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kidshave you killed today?” and “Ho, Ho, Ho ChiMinh, NLF is going to win.” Antiwar forces at-tempted “lie-ins” in front of troop trains, collectedblood for the Vietcong, and tried to disrupt thework of draft boards, Army recruiters, and the DowChemical Company, one of the makers of the na-palm used in Vietnam. The most dramatic single actof protest came on October 21, 1967, when as manyas 100,000 foes of the war gathered in Washingtonand an estimated 35,000 demonstrated at the en-trance to the Pentagon, the “nerve center of Ameri-can militarism.”

The impact of the antiwar protests remains one ofthe most controversial issues raised by the war. Theobvious manifestations of dissent in the United Statesprobably encouraged Hanoi’s will to hold out forvictory, although there is nothing to suggest that the


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North Vietnamese would have been more compro-mising in the absence of the movement. Antiwarprotest did not turn the American people against thewar, as some critics have argued. The effectiveness ofthe movement was limited by the divisions within itsown ranks. Public opinion polls make abundantlyclear, moreover, that a majority of Americans foundthe antiwar movement, particularly its radical and“hippie” elements, more obnoxious than the war it-self. In a perverse sort of way, the protest may evenhave strengthened support for a war that was not initself popular. The impact of the movement wasmuch more limited and subtle. It forced Vietnamonto the public consciousness and challenged the ra-tionale of the war and indeed of a generation ofCold War foreign policies. It limited Johnson’s mili-tary options and may have headed off any tendencytoward more drastic escalation. Perhaps most impor-tant, the disturbances and divisions set off by the an-tiwar movement caused fatigue and anxiety amongthe policymakers and the public, and thus eventuallyencouraged efforts to find a way out of the war.

The majority of Americans appear to have re-jected both the hawk and dove positions, but as thewar dragged on and the debate became more divi-sive, public concern increased significantly. Expan-sion of the war in 1965 had been followed by a surgeof popular support — the usual rally-round-the-flagphenomenon. But the failure of escalation to pro-duce any discernible result and indications that moretroops and higher taxes would be required to sustaina prolonged and perhaps inconclusive war combinedto produce growing frustration and impatience. Ifany bird symbolized the growing public disenchant-ment with Vietnam, opinion analyst Samuel Lubellobserved, it was the albatross, with many Americanssharing a “fervent desire to shake free of an un-wanted burden.” The public mood was probablybest expressed by a housewife who told Lubell: “Iwant to get out but I don’t want to give up.”

Support for the war dropped sharply during 1967.By the summer of that year, draft calls exceeded

30,000 per month, and more than 13,000 Americanshad died in Vietnam. In early August, the Presidentrecommended a 10 percent surtax to cover thesteadily increasing costs of the war. Polls taken shortlyafter indicated that for the first time a majority ofAmericans felt that the United States had been mis-taken in intervening in Vietnam, and a substantialmajority concluded that despite a growing invest-ment, the United States was not “doing any better.”Public approval of Johnson’s handling of the warplummeted to 28 percent by October. Waning pub-lic confidence was mirrored in the press and in Con-gress. A number of major metropolitan dailies shiftedfrom support of the war to opposition in 1967, and the influential Time-Life publications, fervently hawk-ish at the outset, began to raise serious questionsabout the administration’s policies. Members of Con-gress found it impossible to vote against funds forAmerican forces in the field and hesitated to challengethe President directly, but many who had firmlybacked him at first came out openly against him. Ad-mitting that he had once been an “all-out hawk,” Re-publican Senator Thruston B. Morton of Kentuckyspoke for the converts when he complained that theUnited States had been “planted into a corner outthere” and insisted that there would “have to be achange.” White House aides nervously warned of fur-ther defections in Congress and major electoral set-backs in 1968 in the absence of dramatic changes inthe war.

By late 1967, for many observers the war had be-come the most visible symbol of a malaise that had af-flicted all of American society. Not all would haveagreed with Fulbright’s assertion that the Great Soci-ety was a “sick society,” but many did feel that theUnited States was going through a kind of nationalnervous breakdown. The “credibility gap” — the dif-ference between what the administration said andwhat it did — had produced a pervasive distrust ofgovernment. Rioting in the cities, a spiraling crimerate, and noisy demonstrations in the streets suggestedthat violence abroad had produced violence at home.


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Increasingly divided against itself, the nation appearedon the verge of an internal crisis as severe as the GreatDepression of the 1930s. Anxiety about the war hadnot translated into a firm consensus for either escala-tion or withdrawal, but the public mood — tired,angry, and frustrated — perhaps posed a more seriousthreat to the administration than the anti-war move-ment.

The public debate on Vietnam was paralleled byincreasingly sharp divisions within the government.. . . The major proponent of change by the spring of1967 was, ironically, the Secretary of Defense, a manwho had been so closely associated with escalationthat the war had for a time been called “McNamara’swar.” As early as the summer of 1966, McNamarabegan to fear that the vast expansion of the war wasendangering the global security position he had la-bored so diligently to construct since taking office in1961. He was troubled by the destructiveness of thewar, particularly the civilian casualties, and by thegrowing domestic opposition, brought home to himtime and again in public appearances when he had toshove his way through and shout down protesters.McNamara’s reputation as a businessman and publicservant had been based on his ability to attain maxi-mum results at minimal cost. By early 1967, how-ever, he was forced to admit that escalation of thewar had not produced results in the major “endproducts — broken enemy morale and political ef-fectiveness.” The South Vietnamese governmentseemed no more stable than before; pacification had“if anything, gone backward.” The air war hadbrought heavy costs but no results. “Ho Chi Minh isa tough old S.O.B,” McNamara conceded to hisstaff. “And he won’t quit no matter how muchbombing we do.” Moreover, the Secretary of De-fense admitted that the bombing had cost the UnitedStates heavily in terms of domestic and world opin-ion. “The picture of the world’s greatest superpowerkilling or seriously injuring 1,000 non-combatants aweek, while trying to pound a tiny, backward nationinto submission on an issue whose merits are hotly

disputed, is not a pretty one,” he advised Johnson inearly 1967. McNamara and his advisers were alsodisillusioned with the ground war in South Vietnam.Increases in U.S. troops had not produced corre-spondingly large enemy losses, and there was noth-ing to indicate that further expansion of the warwould place any real strains on North Vietnamesemanpower.

Throughout 1967, McNamara quietly and some-what hesitantly pressed for basic changes in policy.Arguing that the major military targets in NorthVietnam had already been destroyed, he proposedeither an unconditional bombing halt or the restric-tion of the bombing to the area south of the twenti-eth parallel. Such a move, he added, would help toappease critics of the war at home and might lead toserious negotiations. The Secretary of Defense alsoadvocated placing a ceiling on American troop lev-els, and shifting from search and destroy to a morelimited ground strategy based on providing securityfor the population of South Vietnam. In somewhatambiguous terms, he further proposed a scalingdown of American political objectives. Inasmuch asthe United States had gone to war to contain China,he argued, it had succeeded: the Communist defeatin Indonesia, as well as rampant political turmoilwithin China itself, suggested that trends in Asiawere now running against China and in favor of theUnited States. The administration might thereforeadopt a more flexible bargaining position. It couldstill hope for an independent, non-CommunistSouth Vietnam, but it should not obligate itself to“guarantee and insist upon these conditions.”Obliquely at least, McNamara appears to have beensuggesting that the United States modify its militarystrategy and diplomatic stance in order to find a face-saving way out of its dilemma in Vietnam.

By the summer of 1967, Lyndon Johnson was a deeply troubled man, physically and emotionallyexhausted, frustrated by his lack of success, torn between his advisers, uncertain which way to turn.He seems to have shared many of McNamara’s


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reservations, and he flatly rejected the view of themilitary that the solution was expansion of the war.He was disenchanted by the Joint Chiefs. “Bomb,bomb, bomb, that’s all you know,” he is said to havecomplained on several occasions. He was worried bythe implications of Westmoreland’s ground strategyand his request for more troops. “When we add di-visions, can’t the enemy add divisions?” he asked theGeneral pointedly in April. “If so, where does it allend?” He remained firmly opposed to mobilizing thereserves and expanding the war. Such measureswould heighten the domestic opposition. Theywould not satisfy the military but would only lead topressures for further escalation, perhaps even for theuse of nuclear weapons. He continued to fear a con-frontation with the Soviet Union or China. “I amnot going to spit in China’s face,” he insisted.

Johnson could not accept McNamara’s recom-mendations, however. He had gradually lost confi-dence in his Secretary of Defense, whose dovishnesshe incorrectly attributed to the pernicious influenceof his arch-rival Robert Kennedy. The relationshipbetween Johnson and McNamara had so soured bylate 1967 that the Secretary gladly accepted an ap-pointment to head the World Bank. Westmorelandcontinued to report steady progress, moreover, andthe President was not ready to concede defeat. Hewould not consider a return to the enclave strategy— “We can’t hunker down like a jackass in a hail-storm,” he said — or even a ceiling on the trooplevel. Although he seems to have agreed that thebombing had accomplished nothing, he was not pre-pared to stop or even limit it. Denouncing McNa-mara’s proposals as an “aerial Dienbienphu,” theJoint Chiefs had threatened to resign en masse ifJohnson approved them, and the hawkish MississippiSenator John Stennis was planning an investigationinto the conduct of the air war. The President wasnot prepared to risk a major confrontation with thehawks or a potentially explosive public debate on thebombing. . . .

[By the end of 1967, Vietnam was destroying

Johnson’s presidency.] The consensus which John-son had so carefully woven in 1964 was in tatters,the nation more divided than at any time since theCivil War. Opposition in Congress, as well as inat-tention and mismanagement resulting at least par-tially from the administration’s preoccupation withVietnam, had brought his cherished Great Societyprograms to a standstill. The President himself was aman under siege in the White House, his popularitysteadily waning, the target of vicious personal at-tacks. His top aides had to be brought surreptitiouslyinto public forums to deliver speeches.

Johnson was alarmed by the position he found him-self in, stung by his critics, and deeply hurt by the de-sertion of trusted aides such as McNamara. He angrilydismissed much of the criticism as unfair, and he re-peatedly emphasized that his critics offered no alterna-tives. He had accomplished great things at home, heinsisted. But the press could only whine “Veetnam,Veetnam, Veetnam, Veetnam,” he would add, sav-agely mimicking a baby crying. The harsher the criti-cism became, the more Johnson chose to disregard itby discrediting the source. Fulbright was a “frustratedold woman” because he had never been appointedSecretary of State. The dissent of the young sprangfrom ignorance. They had not lived through WorldWar II. They would not “know a Communist if theytripped over one.” . . .

. . . Johnson did not reevaluate his essential goalsin Vietnam. To take such a step would have beendifficult for anyone as long as there was hope ofeventual success. It would have been especially diffi-cult for Lyndon Johnson. Enormously ambitious, hehad set high goals for his presidency, and he was un-willing to abandon them even in the face of frustra-tion and massive unrest at home. It was not a matterof courage, for by persisting in the face of decliningpopularity Johnson displayed courage as well as stub-bornness. It was primarily a matter of pride. ThePresident had not wanted the war in Vietnam, butonce committed to it he had invested his personalprestige to a degree that made it impossible for him


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to back off. He chose to stay the course in 1967 forthe same reasons he had gone to war in the first place— because he saw no alternative that did not requirehim to admit failure or defeat.

While quietly contemplating a change in strategy,the President publicly made clear his determination tosee the war through to a successful conclusion. “Weare not going to yield,” he stated repeatedly. “We arenot going to shimmy. We are going to wind up with apeace with honor which all Americans seek.” At aWhite House dinner for the Prime Minister of Singa-pore, the President expressed his commitment in dif-ferent terms. “Mr. Prime Minister,” he said, “youhave a phrase in your part of the world that puts ourdetermination very well. You call it ‘riding the tiger.’You rode the tiger. We shall!”

Although Johnson continued to boast that “the enemy hadbeen defeated in battle after battle” and that America waswinning the war, the Vietcong on the last day of January1968 launched the massive Tet Offensive in South Viet-nam, attacking thirty-six of forty-four provincial capitals,sixty-four district towns and countless villages, twelveUnited States bases, and even the American embassy inSaigon. This seemed undeniable proof that Johnson’s mili-tary solution was a failure and that the claims of the Presi-dent and his generals could not be believed.

In 1968, the war drove Johnson from office — he re-fused to seek another term — and helped bring RichardNixon to the White House, because he promised to end theconflict. Yet Nixon seemed to take up where Johnson leftoff. Like his predecessors, Nixon worried about “Americancredibility,” about what would happen to American prestigeif the United States sold out its South Vietnamese ally,and in 1970 he sent American troops into contiguousCambodia to exterminate Communist hideouts there. TheCambodian invasion brought antiwar protest to a tragic cli-max, as Ohio national guards troops opened fire onprotesting students at Kent State University and killed fourof them. With the campuses in turmoil and the country di-vided and adrift, Nixon gradually disengaged American

ground troops in Vietnam and sought détente with bothRussia and China.

Although the Nixon administration continued to speakof “peace with honor” in Indochina, and although it con-tinued to bomb Hanoi, it was clear nevertheless that Amer-ican involvement in the Vietnamese civil war was a tragicand costly mistake. Indeed, the signs were unmistakablethat the original premise for American intervention in In-dochina was erroneous. The domino theory, based as it wason the assumption of a worldwide monolithic Communistconspiracy directed by Moscow, appeared more and moreimplausible. For one thing, China and Russia developedan intense and bitter ideological feud that sharply dividedthe Communist world, and they almost went to war overtheir disputed boundary. The Sino-Soviet split explodedthe notion of a Communist monolith out for world domin-ion, and so did the fierce independence of North Vietnamitself. Although Hanoi continued to receive aid from bothRussia and China, North Vietnam apparently never askedChina to intervene in the struggle (and apparently Chinanever offered to do so). The truth was that North Vietnamwas fighting to unite the country under Hanoi’s leadershiprather than under Beijing’s or Moscow’s.

At last, in top-secret negotiations in Paris, UnitedStates Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Viet-nam’s Le Duc Tho worked out a peace agreement. Eventu-ally, the United States removed its combat forces, and in1975 South Vietnam’s regime fell to the North Viet-namese and the National Liberation Front. After almosttwo decades of bitter civil war and the loss of more than 1million lives, Vietnam was united under Hanoi’s Commu-nist government, something that would probably have hap-pened without further violence had general elections beenheld in 1956, according to the Geneva agreements of twoyears before.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 According to Herring, what were the majorproblems with American military strategy in Viet-nam? Why were conditions in Vietnam unsuited forconventional warfare?


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2 What important social and economic conse-quences did Americanization of the war have forSouth Vietnam?

3 What repercussions did the war in Vietnam havein American society? Would you agree with SenatorWilliam Fulbright’s assertion that the Great Societywas a sick society?

4 Compare the prowar and antiwar arguments ofAmerican hawks and doves. How much influencedid the antiwar movement have in shaping public at-titudes?

5 What trait in Lyndon Johnson’s personality andcharacter made him unable to alter his course of ac-tion in Vietnam?


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the nightmare of vietnam - cengage · the nightmare of vietnam george c. herring the vietnam war...

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