The Best and the Brightest (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

  But Westmoreland insisted on troops. The situation, he said, was not quite desperate, although perilously near it. He was sure that the Vietcong had not even begun to use its full strength, that it was sitting back preparing a major campaign, and he doubted the ARVN capacity to withstand it. He needed troops, and he wanted the right to maneuver them. Since Westmoreland was the commander, he convinced General Johnson, a man who had many doubts about another land war in Asia, to go along with him, and on his return the Army Chief recommended that an entire American division be sent (and to the highlands, for a mission which would bring greater results). The Harold Johnson recommendations, which would change the nature of the commitment, were so closely held that the highest official at CIA would have to smuggle illicit copies from friends at the White House.

  A division which Westmoreland might have gotten at the time, mid-March. But the Joint Chiefs, always more ambitious, always committed to greater force, had been pushing for three divisions (including one Korean division); the Chiefs wanted to be sure that if force was used, there was enough of it. The JCS recommendation stopped temporarily at McNamara, because neither he nor Lyndon Johnson wanted three divisions; but the three-division idea was not dead and had replaced Harold Johnson’s one division, thus wiping it out. The rest of the Chief of Staff’s recommendations reinforcing ARVN, doing the same things with more vigor, were passed on, leaving Westmoreland with a feeling that had the JCS held back, he would have had his one division, which made him extremely careful about how big a slice of salami he would ask for in the future.

  Yet on March 17 he asked for a Marine battalion landing team for the town of Phu Bai, near Hué; Westy wanted to build a larger base to serve as helicopter field and take the burden of choppers away from the already overcrowded Danang base. Taylor gave his concurrence, but warned again that this was simply a reminder that there would be more requests for troops, that once in, it would not be easy to stop.

  During March, day by day and then week by week, the play was slowly changing. The civilians became increasingly passive in their positions, the military increasingly active, the civilians no longer taking the initiative but sitting back, being overwhelmed by the requests and demands of the military, different generals demanding different things. The civilians were on the defensive, trying to weigh the accuracy and legitimacy of the requests from the military. The JCS wanted a lot of force, and an aggressive policy, three divisions, but then, they always asked for too much. Taylor was far more cautious; he was not saying no, he was casting doubts about the ability of U.S. forces to fight (doubts which his chief political superior Lyndon Johnson did not particularly share, would in fact consider a form of reverse racism, as indeed the Administration would later accuse Fulbright of racism, in believing that Asians were not as valuable as Caucasians). Taylor was trying to hold it down, and he was doing it in part in a very dangerous way; that is, he was challenging not the basic assumption of the war or the commitment but the assessment of Westmoreland of how serious the situation was; he was saying in effect it simply wasn’t that bad. This meant that if the situation deteriorated any further, he would have to sign on or have his arguments completely neutralized. Since the long-range rhythms of the country, growing Vietcong strength and steady ARVN deterioration were on the side of Westmoreland, the future, so to speak, was his. In addition to Westmoreland and the JCS, there was also CINCPAC, constantly calling for more force, more troops. The question soon, then, would be not whether or not to send combat troops, but how many and under what mission and ground rules.

  Taylor returned to Washington at the end of March for a series of meetings which would ostensibly determine strategy. What was significant about these meetings was the timing. After six weeks of Operation Rolling Thunder, the massive bombing of the North, it had become obvious that the bombing was not going to bring Hanoi either to its senses or its knees, and that as a political weapon against the North it had probably failed, which meant that there would be increasing pressures from the Chiefs both to expand it into a military weapon and, now that they were this far in, for more ground forces. It was becoming clearer and clearer that the move which was supposed to have prevented sending troops was not going to affect Hanoi’s decision making, except perhaps to make them escalate. Since Taylor knew that Westmoreland would be submitting a major request for troops, he had already changed his position. From what was an essentially blanket opposition to the use of combat troops and a reluctant approval of even a security mission, he had continued to be eroded. He knew better than most what the military were aiming for, and that the tempo was being speeded up. Now he was arguing not against U.S. troops but for a much more restrained use, for the enclave strategy, for testing out the troops in the enclave strategy, which allowed an easy U.S. exit and which kept the U.S. troop ratio down. The Plimsoll line was very much on his mind. What was it, he asked friends, the point at which for every American you added, you in effect added nothing but simply subtracted one ARVN. Was it 75,000 or 100,000, or perhaps as high as 125,000? At which point did it become an American war? What point would signify the end of the counterinsurgency program, of which he had been the major architect?

  Back in the United States, Taylor met with McNamara and the Joint Chiefs on March 29. The Chiefs were pushing the three-division plan, which would send a Marine division to Danang and an Army division to the highlands, with the third (Korean) division to go to an as yet undetermined place. The Chiefs had already decided on that, and they seemed to have McNamara’s tentative approval. But Taylor said no, he thought it was open-ended and felt uneasy about sending troops into the far reaches of the country. That would mean letting the ARVN sign off; besides, that much force was not yet necessary. McNamara, always more at ease with Taylor than with the other generals, was visibly impressed; the other Chiefs, who had always been dubious about which side Taylor was on and had not wanted him to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs because they felt that he was not one of them, were particularly uneasy about the possibility of getting into Vietnam and using too little force, another Korea, another crippling war. They saw in Taylor the kind of general who would allow the civilians to get away with it.

  Taylor further told McNamara and the Chiefs that he was worried about the political effects of combat troops. Anti-Americanism was just beneath the surface and could be used by the enemy against us. In addition, he was worried about the absorptive capacity of the country—how many Americans could it take, and also the logistical limitations. McNamara said he could understand that, but he was concerned about the force ratios, which were getting worse and worse (the Chiefs, who had alerted Westmoreland on the effectiveness of this on McNamara’s thinking, had done their work well). As Taylor argued, trying to hold the line and slow down the entire process, General Wheeler was making the exact opposite case, that it was quite bad, and saying that it was important to start making decisions so that they could go with logistical planning, otherwise events might move outside their control. At that point McNamara said that he still thought we should go ahead with troops, but we should be very wary of the political problems caused by the troops, and the absorptive capacity of the country. Taylor had slightly held the line, and after the meeting some of the generals were particularly bitter because they felt that Taylor was no longer in the chain of command at all, he was a civilian (only an ambassador, and ambassadors had never outweighed generals), but he was having it both ways, he was still being counted as a general. They sensed in the meeting with McNamara that they were losing it again, they had worked hard to get him to move and accept their position. That goddamn Taylor, one of them thought, as he walked out of the meeting, he can really get away with it, he really knows how to talk. Like a damn politician. Max always looks so good, he thought.

  At the same time Westmoreland had dispatched his own man, General Bill Depuy, with his own plan to Washington. His mission, Westmoreland stated, was to keep South Vietnam from going to the Communists. It was clear that while the bombi
ng might bring some results, it would take a long time, and it would not affect many aspects of the war in the South. With the ARVN continuing to deteriorate, the military situation was critical. Westmoreland wanted seventeen maneuver battalions, and he wanted them for the Central Highlands, where he feared the Vietcong might cut the country in half, or at the least capture a provincial capital and hold it, using it for propaganda benefits. Having been told by the Chiefs that force ratios were effective with McNamara, Westmoreland dwelled on them. The ratio, because of the decline in ARVN, was now down to 1.7-1. If events went as predicted they would soon be down to 1.6-1; however, using his projections, that decline could be turned around (an American Marine battalion with its heavy gear and air support Westmoreland estimated as the equal to three ARVN battalions, and an American airborne battalion, lighter in equipment, as the equal of two ARVN battalions). Westmoreland wanted the equivalent of two full divisions, and he wanted to use them in the Highlands: a full division in the Pleiku­Qui Nhon axis, and a brigade each at An Khe, Pleiku and Kontum. The seventeen battalions would magically become thirty-eight ARVN battalions and this would mean that the force ratio in II Corps, which he considered critical, would go from a dangerous 1.9-1 to a healthy 2.9-1. Nor did he want his troops in enclaves; it was, he thought, too negative a military philosophy to bring in American units with the idea of a Dunkirk uppermost in everyone’s mind. The idea that they were only there to prevent defeat seemed negative. If the Americans were to come and to have effect, they must fight. If the Americans, better equipped, trained tougher than the ARVN, came and did not fight, this would not help the war effort, it might lower ARVN morale. In addition, the enclave theory put the Americans into too much contact with the population. He wanted to send the troops to the highlands and to engage them and get the maximum benefit from their presence.

  On April 1 Taylor made the case against a wide-open search-and-destroy strategy and against the highlands, and for the enclave, and essentially against sending any more troops immediately. There was no desperate crisis in Saigon, he said, and they were not on a crisis footing. Rather there was time to take the American units which had already arrived and experiment with them, see how well they fought, see what the other side’s reaction was. Taylor reminded everyone that to go ahead with the larger force requests was to change a long-standing policy against the use of American troops. And perhaps it wasn’t necessary. There was time to find out. There could be more experimentation with the missions of the Marines already in the country. He himself did not feel it necessary to repeat his doubts about American combat troops in Asia. They would control the land they stood on, nothing more. Those words would be remembered by other civilians long afterward. And he carried the day; the President was not eager for more troops; if there was a chance to slow it down, then he was willing. Rusk too was uneasy about the whole thing, uneasy about getting involved in a ground war, though similarly, being a great chain-of-command man, a great one to go with the man on the spot, a respecter of military expertise, very uneasy about not giving a commander what he wanted. McNamara was willing to wait, telling the JCS to go ahead with the planning of the three-division force.

  So Taylor temporarily held the line, but he also gave up something in the process; in order to buy time, he conceded something on missions. It would no longer be a question of security of bases. The President bought that; they all agreed on it. While they would not give Westmoreland the seventeen battalions he wanted but only two more Marine battalions (and a Marine air squadron), Westmoreland could expand their mission. The Marines were no longer just to sit on the defensive and guard their perimeter; instead, they were to be more aggressive and more active, under guidelines to be worked out by McNamara and Rusk. Thus Taylor, who had been uneasy even with the idea of a security mission for American troops, had, in fending off a search-and-destroy strategy, surrendered the security mission and moved to the enclave strategy. Johnson and the others were all relieved to be able to delay the decisions, although, as in the case of the original Taylor-Rostow mission in 1961, while they had the illusion of holding the line, they had in fact opened it up even wider; they were, step by step, losing control to the military and this was one more crucial step.

  This was not a particularly happy session. They were perilously near sending combat troops, with the knowledge that the bombing would not work as they had hoped, and that they were going to have to do more. It would, said Bill Bundy, take two or three months before they would hear from Hanoi on negotiations, an estimate based on Bundy’s belief that it would take that long for the United States to show clear evidence that it intended to win and had the resources to win in Vietnam (thus the contradiction: at that time they were still talking about a minimal use of force in a limited enclave strategy, yet they wanted maximum response from Hanoi). There was unanimous agreement that the United States had to show that it would win in the South before Hanoi would be willing to talk; Hanoi, they all thought, believed things were going its way. It would take more might, raising the bombing pressure and bringing U.S. troops there. The coming of U.S. troops would show our seriousness. The question, then, was how much pressure the United States could bring to bear on Hanoi without reaching what they called the flash point, the flash point being the point at which the Chinese Communists would enter the war with their own troops. There was a general agreement that the flash point was the destruction of the MIGs and the airfield at Phuc Yen. But, added Bill Bundy, the North would not give in unless we hit them close to the flash point. “The flash point” was an important phrase; it was the point to which they could escalate without really going to war. War was the Chinese coming in and events getting out of hand. What they were doing was below the flash point; thus it was not war. (Almost immediately after they finished the meeting McCone, who was very hawkish in person, though fair in representing the views of the more dubious experts in the Agency, argued that it was all a dark alley, that by changing the mission of U.S. troops to more offensive actions, they would simply bring more requests for more troops without changing the basic nature of the war. The war would remain, under the existing ground rules, unwinnable, since it would not change the basic balance and since Hanoi could simply send down more men.)

  There was one other important thing the President and his aides decided on April 1: although they were changing the nature of the American commitment and the mission of the Marines, there was to be no announcement of it. Quite the reverse; everyone was to minimize any change, to say that the policy had not changed. The President had enough problems with his domestic programs without being hit from the other side about going to war. Let it all take its time. This was crucial. They all understood, and the word did not slip out for another two months, at a State Department briefing when a State Department briefing officer, Bob McCloskey, came upon the fact that the mission had indeed changed. Johnson was predictably furious. James Reston of the Times was later to write that Lyndon Johnson escalated the war by stealth; he could not have been more right.

  The next day Taylor met at the State Department with Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Bill Bundy and Leonard Unger, U.S. ambassador to Laos. Rusk began by saying he was sure that Taylor now understood the political pressures on the President from both directions. Now, as for the new strategy, Rusk said, the Marines could be used in local counterinsurgency, and they could be used as strike reaction forces. They should have an active and aggressive posture. They should carry the fight to the enemy. On the other hand, Rusk emphasized he did not want to lose the ability to describe the mission as defensive.

  Later, when he had returned to Saigon, Taylor summed up for himself his impressions of the Washington meetings. He had gone back to Washington to clarify three problems: the tempo of the bombing campaign, Rolling Thunder; the introduction of combat troops to close the manpower gap; and finally, in his own words, “the political trap on how do we end the war.” Taylor felt he had received clear guidance on the first two questions. On the third he was not so sure.
“We had,” he dictated to his secretary, “two cards to play. The first was to stop the bombing. The second was to withdraw our forces from the South. There was some inclination to play the two cards separately, but the ambassador [Taylor] did not agree with this idea, and he thought the President also did not. We had thought of ways to permit the Communists a way out without abject surrender . . .”

  But Taylor’s confidence that he had been able to hold the line with the enclave theory (he believed there would be two months to experiment with the four Marine battalions, operating within a fifty-mile radius, all nicely laid out) was soon shattered. Disappointed over the loss of his two divisions, Westmoreland renewed an old request about something which had always bothered him, the area around Bien Hoa and Saigon, where two major airfields stood as vulnerable to Vietcong attacks as Danang. In addition, he was anxious to have maneuver forces as mobile as the Airborne around Saigon, and he was anxious to have the precedent of a major elite Army unit brought into the country. So he renewed his request, asking for a brigade to Bien Hoa, and an Army brigade to Qui Nhon. Again the rationale was security, but again the visions went far beyond that. The request went in on April 10; almost immediately the JCS approved it and passed it on to McNamara; on April 13 McNamara approved the brigade for the Bien Hoa area (but not for Qui Nhon, again the illusion of holding the line).