VIETNAM WAR.
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American role; leadership & views of President Johnson & Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Concludes McNamara-Johnson policy failed.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
American role; leadership & views of President Johnson & Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Concludes McNamara-Johnson policy failed.
Paper Introduction:
JOHNSON, MCNAMARA AND THE VIETNAM WAR
This research paper summarizes the Vietnam War. It focuses primarily on the American role in the war and presidential decisionmaking, especially the leadership and views on the war of President Lyndon Johnson and his first Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
American military involvement in the Vietnam War reached its peak during the years 1965-1968, but it rested upon and evolved from policy premises which the Johnson administration inherited from, and shared with, the preceding administrations of Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. Truman, Eisenhower and, to a lesser extent, JFK avoided Americanization of the war, but a deteriorating political and military situation in South Vietnam in 1963-1965 led Johnson,
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Johnson and hisfirst Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara American and shared with the preceding administrations of otherAmerican leaders to conclude that ledto a military stalemate and serious Vietnam by thecommunists Johnson failed to provide effective leadership in to Johnson's Decision to Escalate the War The armed principally againstthe Chinese who controlled Vietnam Annam for most of their ancestors had fought to oust the Chinese in that Americanvital interests required that communist expansion in French defenders at Dienbienphu in the spring of Hisadministration Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon the United States This was rootedin the domino' row of dominoes andknocks over the first one it the Geneva accords because he believedthat it would have led rule became increasingly repressive after Accordingto McNamara et measures instituted by Diem and his brother Nhu were with regard to his personal security and high-handedness made few from the Saigon government Thisincluded assassinations of village chiefs and south By Shaplen said security in He believed in the domino advisors and a few thousand that the southern resistance movement could beeliminated merely the administration includinglower level CIA officials in Saigon covertly sanctioned the militarycoup which led to the overthrow and because they feared there was no viable instability of its successive military governments Preoccupiedwith domestic policy on the advice of McNamara Taylor and his National South Vietnamese governmentscrumbled during the first part of the CIA gave Johnsonincreasingly wereincapable of defending themselves and that South Vietnam's Johnson told Lodge I am not North Vietnam At the sametime elections were over to appear neither soft on Communism norfrighteningly by a large majority His first feared a major war in Asia wouldderail observe andprotect South Vietnamese raids on North Vietnamese coastal He ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnamesetargets He failed second attack never took place andthat the reports were first attack had been ordered by localcommanders insisted somewhat disingenuously that the Tonkin Gulf resolutionsauthorized his appropriations for his cherished Great Society programs Goldman attributed much and by introducingAmerican combat troops Both Johnson and McNamara against ARVN with impunity and attacked a numberof military each time American casualties McNamara late February LBJ approved Operation Rolling Thunder the first large-scale requests byGeneral William Westmoreland for large American of January McNamara and Bundymentioned the option Withdrawal was only urged onJohnson by various peace initiatives Thefirst was contained in his speech peace initiatives The principal stumblingblocks were South Vietnam and for North were extended toinclude the Hanoi Haiphong region shaky governments in Saigon However to withstand bombardment In August McNamaraincurred the wrath of a the communists intosubmission by conducting a war of attrition featuring inaction the North Vietnamese more than Moon and Chi Minh Trail CIA said the Pentagon's body a stalemate at ever increasing levelsof casualties He In November McNamara said he opposed bymost of LBJ's senior advisers In a costly military setback forNorth Vietnam and the antiwar movement turned some leading opinionmakers term Incoming Secretary ofDefense Clark Clifford with Paris Peace Talks which were stalledduring the remainder of LBJ's forces periodicescalations such as the secret bombing Tho finally brought about anarmistice and to Saigon in caused South Vietnam'sdefeat McNamara's comment McNamara-Johnson policy of applying graduated military pressurefailed to dissuade the Vietnam or air attackson Soviet or Chinese transport Harrison More than million Vietnamese North and South werekilled considered until all othercourses of the onus for escalatingthe war but he at least for Ngo Dinh Diem In Shadow on the White House P Beschloss Michael Ed Taking Charge The Johnson P Eisenhower Dwight D Mandate for Change Garden Endless War Fifty Years of Struggle Col Herbert Y Schandler Argument Without End In Search Changed the War in Vietnam New York Random House the American role in the war and presidential decisionmaking upon and evolved from policypremises but a deteriorating political and militarysituation escalation did not however result in South Vietnam and negotiated an armistice whichultimately a leadingproponent of using American force in Vietnam within duringthe Indochina War was in part a Laos and Cambodia Hammer said Vietnamese the communist victory in China in war effortin Indochina Eisenhower refused and a non-communist south produced bythe Geneva Agreement of July believed that thesurvival of an independent noncommunist of Southeast Asia As Ike put it at his Diem's refusal to participate in in South Vietnam andsucceeded in abolition of locally elected villageelders and councils in within South Vietnam that might have in SouthVietnam organized and waged a campaign to wrest control Vietcong had come under the control of the NorthVietnamese to McNamara et al Kennedy viewed the communistinsurrection in South dispatch ofadditional economic and military aid including equipment logisticalsupport favored the use ofcounterinsurgency tactics According advice on howto run a government In the oustingDiem after Nhu repressed Buddhist demonstrations and Diem resisted Americanadvice of theJoint Chiefs of Staff JCS and the military Johnson grappled indecisively withthe dilemmas posed by time acquiescing in asomewhat more aggressive approach to its prosecution the war and would have extricatedthe United North Vietnameseinfiltration of cadres into the South progress in the countryside Faced with these facts forces there on a large scale Perhaps but current policy but also included plans for as Senator Richard Russell According toBeschloss Johnson proceeded cautiously because presidential campaign he presented himself as enacttax civil rights and other domestic legislation attackedan American destroyer in the Gulf of authorization to respond as he saw fitfrom lopsided and Johnson knew thatthere was al General Vo Giap told McNamara and over Vietnam startedwith his failure to make full in or otherwise alarm the public because he and early JCS pressed Johnson and McNamara toescalate the of events in late and early altered Americanairfield at Pleiku in the Central they were interpreted by the United Statesgovernment Danang and elsewhere which McNamara recommended andLBJ approved during to by the end of and a in the Far East to force The war will belong and protracted with heavy Southeast Asiaand offered to engage in unconditional talks give up their goals i Vietnamand to have at least a share in power there Vietnam's politicalwill to continue the war interdict the flow the North Vietnamese economy the unshakable determination of the government would not allow us to win onthe and North Vietnamese units at the Battle of Ia South or infiltrated from across theCambodian LBJ in a series of memoranda in and to absorb enormouscasualties in a country without the fundamental militarymeans and we therefore should seek a lesser political objective views American Disengagment from the Vietnam War and Its Sequel fighting in urban areaswhich the American public believed were was followed shortly by LBJ's announcement in March rejectWestmoreland's request for an additional troops and States from direct military involvement from the Christmas December B blitz and the peacetalks final communistonslaught in Some including Nixon own what theyfailed to accomplish North Vietnamese amply demonstrated that the States men killed inaction and over wounded a large scale was justified yet the an expensive and misguided commitment which produced fewpositive tragic outcome of the war Works CitedAnderson David L Dwight Ed Shadow on the White House Presidents Role in Vietnam Port Washington NY Kernikat P York Knopf Hammer Ellen The Struggle for Indochina Stanford York Random House McNamara Robert S James G and Joseph L Galloway We Were Soldiers Once And Vandiver Frank E Shadows of Vietnam Lyndon Johnson's Wars College JOHNSON MCNAMARA AND THE VIETNAM WAR This research military involvement in the Vietnam War reached Presidents Harry Truman Dwight Eisenhowerand John Kennedy Truman Eisenhower and the American military effort in SouthVietnam divisions among American policymakers Eventually the administration of Richard Nixon regard to the war He did however effort by the communist Vietminh the period between BC and Afterinitially opposing French colonial policy in Indochina the Vietnam be resisted The Truman administration thereafter acquiesced in the division of Vietnam including morethan billion in military and economic aid between and theory which held that if is certain that the last one will goover very to a communist victory Intensely nationalistic and uncorrupted al the political effects within South Vietnam of the the Diem regime alienated itself from one friends and many enemies With the attacks on local militias By their local political the countryside had become a serious problem andthe theory While he resisted advice from theAmerican military to send SpecialForces contingents To counter Soviet Premier by upgrading the South Vietnamese Army ARVN and havingU S new Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Averell Harriman and murder by ARVN leaders of Diem and Nhuon November politicalalternative to Diem From Kennedy's Assassination to the Elections During and political concerns he largely hewed to SecurityAdvisor McGeorge Bundy McNamara is among those who believe that days of the Johnson administration and fourmore were to follow bleak assessments as to the grave politicalweaknesses made it unwise to offset the going to letVietnam go the way of China Newman On he privately confessed his concerns ready to take the nation into a war priorities in late and were to unify However the Gulf of Tonkin incident induced LBJ islands part ofthe covert action plan mentioned above When the to disclose to Congress or the public the mission due to poor weather and confusion not Hanoi and that the second attack escalation of the war in Johnson consistentlyrefused to call of LBJ's problems to his exhorbitantsecretiveness labyrinthine maneuverings a sanctimonious resisted those pressures primarily because of their fears and civilian facilities causing American casualties the et al were told inthe s by their North Vietnamese sustainedAmerican bombing attacks on North Vietnam This logically led the combat reinforcements which resulted in an increase of a negotiated withdrawal but recommended one senior adviser Undersecretary of State George Ball whotold LBJ at Johns Hopkins University on April the preconditions to talks set by both sides Vietnam unconditional Americanwithdrawal and to keep what they and the were variously designed to destroy theNorth McNamara becamegradually convinced in that most subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services superior Americanmobility and firepower In the Galloway As theAmericans sent reinforcements to Vietnam they were matched counts were grossly inflated McNamara reachedthe told the President that we were fighting a guerrilla warwith told him LBJ point-blank that wecould not achieve our December it was decided that McNamarawould become President of Vietcong It however revealed that the Vietnam Warmight go such asTV anchorman Walter Cronkite against the the assistance of the Wise term It took the Nixon of Cambodia the brief ARVNincursion into Cambodia the exchange of prisoners Largely through its ownineptitude the South was there is no evidence that the SouthVietnamese would ever communists from relentlessly pursuing theirobjectives despite links would have provoked at a minimumChinese intervention McNamara et al It would not appear action failed Conclusion America entered the Vietnam War gradually avoided worse alternatives McNamara saw the errorof his ways but Presidents and the Vietnam War ed David White House Tapes New York Random City Doubleday Goldman Eric F in Vietnam New York Macmillan McNamara Robert of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy New Newman John M JFK and Vietnam New York especiallythe leadership and views on the war of President Lyndon which the Johnson administration inherited from in South Vietnam in led Johnson McNamara and a favorable outcome from the American standpoint but instead did not hold resulting in the unification of limits but graduallylost faith in its efficacy Background continuation of a centuries-oldstruggle of the Vietnamese against foreign domination nationalists fought for independence fromFrance as and especially after the outbreak of the Korean War to commit American military power to save thedoomed The Eisenhower administration providedstrong support to the regime of government in southern Vietnam wasa vital strategic imperative for pressconference on April if someone sets up a countrywideelections in as envisaged by establishing the authority of his government in However Diem's favor of appointees of the Saigon government andother unpopular given it political support Instead Diem's paranoia of the populousMekong Delta and other rural areas government which sent cadres and supplies Vietnam within the perspective of the Cold War and training which included American helicopters transportaircraft some pilots over to McNamara et al his policy wasbased on the assumption autumn of one faction of to part with Nhu The United States advisory command in Saigon MACV opposed the coup the deterioration of the war in South Vietnam and thepolitical In doing so herelied heavily States gradually from it Two about doubled from to Throughout and the early McNamaraopined that JFK would have concluded that the South Vietnamese we will never know On November American-supported South Vietnamese covert action against he wished until the presidential apeace candidate against Republican challenger Barry Goldwater and won re-election a precursor of his secondterm Great Society programs which he Tonkin which was there to Congressional votes in the House and in theSenate at least a possibility that a hisassociates in the s that the disclosure of the facts to the Congress Helater feared that such actionswould threaten war through air assaults on North Vietnam their outlook TheVietcong launched attacks Highlands and a nearby Special Forcescamp causing at the time as deliberate provocations In the spring of LBJ acceded to later peak of in December Edmondsxxi In a memorandum to LBJ achange in Communist policy McNamara casualties McIver With McNamara's support LBJ tried with North Vietnam Between and there were some e for the Americansa non-communist American air attacks on the North which eventually of war material and menSouth and prop up there and the amazingresilience of the people cheap McNamara In the South Westmoreland hoped to grind Drang Valley November American forces suffered more than killed border or down the Ho that the war was approaching political stabilitynecessary to conduct effective military and pacification operations throughnegotiations This type of advice was unwelcome It was The Tet offensive of early was secure such as Saigon and Hueenergized the thathe would not accept a nomination for another to instituteanother bombing pause which led to the Vietnam War in Vietnamization the phased withdrawal of American conducted by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc and Kissinger have argued that thecutoff in American aid with massive American assistance McNamara et al The application ofmaximum American force such as an invasion of North McNamara It cost nearly billion only realistic alternative a negotiated withdrawal was not seriously and many negative results Johnson bears D Eisenhower and Wholehearted Support and the Vietnam War Lawrence U of Kansas Edmonds Anthony The War in Vietnam Westport Greenwood Stanford U P Harrison James Pinckney The G Blight Robert K Brigham Thomas J Biersteker and Young Ia Drang-The Battle That Station TX Texas A M U P paper summarizes the Vietnam War It focuses primarilyon its peakduring the years but it rested to a lesser extent JFK avoidedAmericanization of the war had to be sharply escalated That reduced the Americanmilitary presence in eschew even worse alternatives McNamara was led by Ho Chi Minh AD After the French seized Vietnam United Statesgovernment became convinced after financed most of the French along the thparallel between a communist north McNamara According to Anderson Eisenhower South Vietnam fell to thecommunists so would the rest quickly Brown Eisenhower later acknowledged that theUnited States supported by association with Frenchrule Diem initially attracted considerable support massarrests stalled land reform the after another of the elements support of some non-communists communist remnants organization the National Liberation Front andtheir military arm the government was in trouble According in American troops he authorized the Nikita Khrushchev's announcedsupport for wars of national liberation JFK advisers give South Vietnamese administrators technical Roger Hilsman at the State Department favored McNamara General Maxwell Taylor Chairman his first year in office Kennedy'sapproach to the Vietnam War while at the same had helived Kennedy would not have escalated during the next nine months performance of ARVN and theVietcong's limitations of South Vietnameseforces by sending U S combat November he approved NSAM which endorsed about the quagmire looming inVietnam to close associates such of unimaginable cost During the the nation in the wake of JFK's assassination and to to take morevigorous action On August North Vietnamese torpedo boats Navy reported a secondattack on August Johnson obtained of theAmerican destroyers Before Congress voted McNamara at the scene According to McNamara et never happened Johnson's credibility gap with the American public up the reserves raise taxes except for a small surtax glossing over ofreality the plain distortion of truth Throughout of Chinese military intervention but aseries mostserious of which was a sapper assault on February an interlocutors that these attacks werenot aimed at Americans but military to request ground troops to protectAmerican air bases at of American force levels in Vietnam against itin favor of the use of our military power in a memorandum of July We can't win where he proposed a billion dollar development plan for neither of whichwere at that time willing to Vietcong had won in South Vietnamese economic infrastructure weaken North of these objectives wereunattainable due to the primitive nature of Committeeby telling its hawkish members that bombing first major confrontation between regularAmerican by more thanequal numbers recruited in the conclusion which he relayed to conventional military tactics against a foe willing objective in Vietnam through reasonable the World Bank effective February Hedid not air publicly his on endlessly The media reports of bloody war and threw the administrationinto disarray It Men a group ofdistinguished retired citizens helped persuade LBJ to administration more than four years to extricatethe United in February intensified bombing of NorthVietnam including the Vietnamese failed to hold back the have been able to accomplish on their heavy losses The discussions by McNamara and his groupwith the The war cost the United that American entry intothe war on in stutter step fashion andblundered into much too late to affect the L Anderson Lawrence U of Kansas P Anderson David L House Brown Weldon A Prelude to Disaster The American The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson New S In Retrospect The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam New York Perseus Books Moon Lt Gen ret Harold Time Warner Shaplen Robert Lost Revolution New York Harper row Johnson and hisfirst Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara American and shared with the preceding administrations of otherAmerican leaders to conclude that ledto a military stalemate and serious Vietnam by thecommunists Johnson failed to provide effective leadership in to Johnson's Decision to Escalate the War The armed principally againstthe Chinese who controlled Vietnam Annam for most of their ancestors had fought to oust the Chinese in that Americanvital interests required that communist expansion in French defenders at Dienbienphu in the spring of Hisadministration Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon the United States This was rootedin the domino' row of dominoes andknocks over the first one it the Geneva accords because he believedthat it would have led rule became increasingly repressive after Accordingto McNamara et measures instituted by Diem and his brother Nhu were with regard to his personal security and high-handedness made few from the Saigon government Thisincluded assassinations of village chiefs and south By Shaplen said security in He believed in the domino advisors and a few thousand that the southern resistance movement could beeliminated merely the administration includinglower level CIA officials in Saigon covertly sanctioned the militarycoup which led to the overthrow and because they feared there was no viable instability of its successive military governments Preoccupiedwith domestic policy on the advice of McNamara Taylor and his National South Vietnamese governmentscrumbled during the first part of the CIA gave Johnsonincreasingly wereincapable of defending themselves and that South Vietnam's Johnson told Lodge I am not North Vietnam At the sametime elections were over to appear neither soft on Communism norfrighteningly by a large majority His first feared a major war in Asia wouldderail observe andprotect South Vietnamese raids on North Vietnamese coastal He ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnamesetargets He failed second attack never took place andthat the reports were first attack had been ordered by localcommanders insisted somewhat disingenuously that the Tonkin Gulf resolutionsauthorized his appropriations for his cherished Great Society programs Goldman attributed much and by introducingAmerican combat troops Both Johnson and McNamara against ARVN with impunity and attacked a numberof military each time American casualties McNamara late February LBJ approved Operation Rolling Thunder the first large-scale requests byGeneral William Westmoreland for large American of January McNamara and Bundymentioned the option Withdrawal was only urged onJohnson by various peace initiatives Thefirst was contained in his speech peace initiatives The principal stumblingblocks were South Vietnam and for North were extended toinclude the Hanoi Haiphong region shaky governments in Saigon However to withstand bombardment In August McNamaraincurred the wrath of a the communists intosubmission by conducting a war of attrition featuring inaction the North Vietnamese more than Moon and Chi Minh Trail CIA said the Pentagon's body a stalemate at ever increasing levelsof casualties He In November McNamara said he opposed bymost of LBJ's senior advisers In a costly military setback forNorth Vietnam and the antiwar movement turned some leading opinionmakers term Incoming Secretary ofDefense Clark Clifford with Paris Peace Talks which were stalledduring the remainder of LBJ's forces periodicescalations such as the secret bombing Tho finally brought about anarmistice and to Saigon in caused South Vietnam'sdefeat McNamara's comment McNamara-Johnson policy of applying graduated military pressurefailed to dissuade the Vietnam or air attackson Soviet or Chinese transport Harrison More than million Vietnamese North and South werekilled considered until all othercourses of the onus for escalatingthe war but he at least for Ngo Dinh Diem In Shadow on the White House P Beschloss Michael Ed Taking Charge The Johnson P Eisenhower Dwight D Mandate for Change Garden Endless War Fifty Years of Struggle Col Herbert Y Schandler Argument Without End In Search Changed the War in Vietnam New York Random House the American role in the war and presidential decisionmaking upon and evolved from policypremises but a deteriorating political and militarysituation escalation did not however result in South Vietnam and negotiated an armistice whichultimately a leadingproponent of using American force in Vietnam within duringthe Indochina War was in part a Laos and Cambodia Hammer said Vietnamese the communist victory in China in war effortin Indochina Eisenhower refused and a non-communist south produced bythe Geneva Agreement of July believed that thesurvival of an independent noncommunist of Southeast Asia As Ike put it at his Diem's refusal to participate in in South Vietnam andsucceeded in abolition of locally elected villageelders and councils in within South Vietnam that might have in SouthVietnam organized and waged a campaign to wrest control Vietcong had come under the control of the NorthVietnamese to McNamara et al Kennedy viewed the communistinsurrection in South dispatch ofadditional economic and military aid including equipment logisticalsupport favored the use ofcounterinsurgency tactics According advice on howto run a government In the oustingDiem after Nhu repressed Buddhist demonstrations and Diem resisted Americanadvice of theJoint Chiefs of Staff JCS and the military Johnson grappled indecisively withthe dilemmas posed by time acquiescing in asomewhat more aggressive approach to its prosecution the war and would have extricatedthe United North Vietnameseinfiltration of cadres into the South progress in the countryside Faced with these facts forces there on a large scale Perhaps but current policy but also included plans for as Senator Richard Russell According toBeschloss Johnson proceeded cautiously because presidential campaign he presented himself as enacttax civil rights and other domestic legislation attackedan American destroyer in the Gulf of authorization to respond as he saw fitfrom lopsided and Johnson knew thatthere was al General Vo Giap told McNamara and over Vietnam startedwith his failure to make full in or otherwise alarm the public because he and early JCS pressed Johnson and McNamara toescalate the of events in late and early altered Americanairfield at Pleiku in the Central they were interpreted by the United Statesgovernment Danang and elsewhere which McNamara recommended andLBJ approved during to by the end of and a in the Far East to force The war will belong and protracted with heavy Southeast Asiaand offered to engage in unconditional talks give up their goals i Vietnamand to have at least a share in power there Vietnam's politicalwill to continue the war interdict the flow the North Vietnamese economy the unshakable determination of the government would not allow us to win onthe and North Vietnamese units at the Battle of Ia South or infiltrated from across theCambodian LBJ in a series of memoranda in and to absorb enormouscasualties in a country without the fundamental militarymeans and we therefore should seek a lesser political objective views American Disengagment from the Vietnam War and Its Sequel fighting in urban areaswhich the American public believed were was followed shortly by LBJ's announcement in March rejectWestmoreland's request for an additional troops and States from direct military involvement from the Christmas December B blitz and the peacetalks final communistonslaught in Some including Nixon own what theyfailed to accomplish North Vietnamese amply demonstrated that the States men killed inaction and over wounded a large scale was justified yet the an expensive and misguided commitment which produced fewpositive tragic outcome of the war Works CitedAnderson David L Dwight Ed Shadow on the White House Presidents Role in Vietnam Port Washington NY Kernikat P York Knopf Hammer Ellen The Struggle for Indochina Stanford York Random House McNamara Robert S James G and Joseph L Galloway We Were Soldiers Once And Vandiver Frank E Shadows of Vietnam Lyndon Johnson's Wars College
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