The Best and the Brightest (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

  The sense of the fragility of it all, the delicacy of what happened when American troops entered, was evident at almost the same time in Saigon. There Eugene Black was visiting, having accepted a job from Johnson to be head of Johnson’s Mekong River Redevelopment Commission, and Black had been given a long briefing by Westmoreland. The briefing was very pessimistic indeed; he told of the almost total collapse of the ARVN forces. The 173rd Airborne and the Marines were already in the country, Westmoreland said. He had asked for 100,000 more combat troops, and he thought he would get them. But even if they arrived, the important thing to remember, Westmoreland said, was that we must not take this war away from the Vietnamese. If we did, we would be in the same position as the French, and it would be hopeless. Black then asked what the cutoff point would be. Westmoreland paused for a moment and said 175,000; that would be the figure. Over that figure and they would give up the war, and it would get worse and worse.

  At the end of the briefing Black thanked him for the tough-mindedness of his briefing and said that the general had been very helpful. Now was there anything that Black could do for Westmoreland back in Washington? Yes, said Westmoreland, tell everyone in Washington that if I get the troops I ask for and all the breaks that I could possibly have the right to ask for, it will take six or seven years to turn it around. It will be a slow and hard thing. It was, thought someone who was present at the Westmoreland-Black meeting, almost a Greek thing, that Westmoreland knew that 175,000 would be the cutoff figure, and yet when it didn’t work out, he was carried along by the force of the thing, demanding more and more troops.

  Even while Johnson was going through what was in effect the count-down meeting with his top officials, McNamara was in Saigon during the weekend of July 17, clearing everything with Westmoreland, checking out the number of troops, trying to sense what might be needed in thefuture, and what the mission would be. Westmoreland’s request for a troop commitment which would go to 200,000 was already in, and while McNamara was in Saigon he learned in a cable from his deputy, Cy Vance, that the President was going ahead with the thirty-four battalions (which with the Korean and Australian battalions would bring it to a total of forty-four battalions). Thus at a minimum the U.S. troop level would be 175,000, and if the Koreans did not have the troops, then we would go their part too, bringing it to 200,000. (Curiously, in his memoirs Johnson does not tell the story this way; instead he makes it appear that he waited for McNamara’s return and McNamara’s request for the additional forces before going ahead, thus putting more of the burden on the Secretary of Defense.) McNamara did return to Washington on July 20 and did report immediately to the President saying that the President had three options. The first was to withdraw under conditions which would be humiliating, the second to continue at the present level of about 75,000, which would mean that the United States might be faced with equally harsh decisions in the near future, or finally a sharp increase in the U.S. military pressure against the Vietcong in the South. This last was, he said, “the course involving the best odds of the best outcome with the most acceptable cost to the United States.”

  But in any real sense, that decision had already been reached. The only loose ends left were the questions of how public to go with the decisions and whether to call up the reserves (McNamara forcefully argued for a reserve call-up of 235,000 men). On his return McNamara prepared a draft press release which announced that 100,000 more Americans were going, but that was not what the President wanted and it was sidetracked. There was some talk of putting together a major speech outlining the gist of the decisions: that we were entering a major war, that it might be a long war, and that it would demand great American tenacity and endurance. At Defense some of the young civilians had been uneasy with the covert way the decision making had been going, and it was agreed that a speech should be written. The speech put the blame mostly on China for her aggressive policies, and it ended: “They are watching us to see whether we have the determination and resolution to stick with it. They are betting that we don’t have it. We are, finally, being tested. The enemy is looking for the answer to how long we will resist. We have that answer in the words of a distinguished American, who recently died, 'till hell freezes over.’ ” The author of the speech was Daniel Ellsberg.

  But it was not what the President was looking for; he was afraid of being too overt with his policy of scaring the Congress and the press. Instead he decided that he would make public only 50,000 of the agreed-upon 100,000 to 125,000. (That week Ellsberg ran into Douglas Kiker of the Herald Tribune, who had just spent two hours with the President, and Johnson had assured Kiker that it was all a bunch of rumors, this talk of changing policy, this gossip about a new strategy and combat troops. Just filling out a few units, the President said.) It was in fact the real beginning of the credibility gap; and Johnson was a part of it and so were all his top advisers. They knew they had decided on the larger figure, that it was a quantum jump, and that they were being party to a major deception of the American people, that many more far-reaching decisions had been made than they were admitting. (In his memoirs this is a particularly tricky question for the President. He admits that they had made decisions involving up to 200,000 men, and notes briefly that the commanders said that they could get by with 50,000 for the immediate needs.)

  It was all over; the only thing left was the actual notification of the bureaucracy (the charade of a National Security Council meeting) and of congressional leaders. The first came on July 27. There Johnson had McNamara, just back from Vietnam, summarize the situation, growing Communist strength, steady government deterioration. Then Johnson took over. He had five choices. One was to blast the North off the map with bombers. Another was simply to pack up and go home. The third choice was to stay the way we were, perhaps lose more territory and suffer more casualties. “You wouldn’t want your boy to be out there crying for help and not get it,” he said. The fourth was to go to the Congress for great sums of money, to call up the reserves and go on a wartime footing. But, he said, if we did that, went to that kind of a land war, then North Vietnam would turn to China and Russia and get greater aid (one thing he did not mention was that he was uncertain what treaties Hanoi had with Peking and Moscow and was afraid that an actual declaration of war might involve them immediately and directly). “For that reason I don’t want to be overly dramatic and cause tensions,” he said. “I think we can get our people to support us without having to be too provocative and warlike.”

  So he said the fifth choice was really very much the fourth: to expand the war without going on a wartime footing, to give the commanders what they needed. He had, he said, decided that this was the correct one, the centrist, moderate one: only Lyndon Johnson could go to war and be centrist and moderate. Then he turned to them and asked if anyone there had objections. He asked the principals one by one. The key moment was when he came to General Wheeler and stood looking directly at him for a moment. “Do you, General Wheeler, agree?” Wheeler nodded his agreement. It was, said someone who was present, an extraordinary moment, like watching a lion tamer dealing with some of the great lions. Everyone in the room knew Wheeler objected, that the Chiefs wanted more, that they wanted a wartime footing and a call-up of the reserves; the thing they feared most was a partial war and a partial commitment. But Wheeler was boxed in; he had the choice of opposing and displeasing his Commander in Chief and being overruled, anyway, or going along. He went along. It was the beginning of what was to be a very difficult war for him, of being caught again and again between his civilian authorities and the other Chiefs (whose views he shared but was always able to contain himself). It was for him an endless series of frustrations, and only his brilliant political negotiations kept the Chiefs together and prevented several resignations at different points. He came out of it an exhausted and depleted man, his health ruined by major heart attacks, and the questions which he had faced at that July meeting still unanswered.

  The congressional leaders came later that e
vening. Johnson had been extremely careful in past meetings with them to make sure that if both Mansfield and Fulbright were there, they would be called upon for their views last. Call the hawkish ones first. Thus the easy ones like McCormack and the hawkish ones like Dirksen would already be on board, he would seem to have a majority already going with him, and then he would ask Mansfield and Fulbright last what they thought. This time he did not even bother to invite Fulbright; their friendship had declined rapidly in recent weeks in part because of Vietnam and in part because of the Dominican Republic. With the congressional leaders Johnson again made the same pitch he had given earlier to the NSC, then he went around and summoned their views. One by one they signed on. Finally he turned to Mansfield. The Senate Majority Leader had all along expressed doubts; he knew too much about the French experience to want to see a U.S. entry. His own sense of the problem was that things were worse than we realized and that an American presence would work against us. He strongly opposed sending troops. He thought there was growing discontent in the country about the war, and that it would divide rather than unite the country. He hoped deeply and desperately that there was some other course of action, but if this was the President’s decision, he would support him loyally.

  The next day at his press conference Johnson announced that we would increase the number of men from 75,000 to 125,000. We were sending combat troops. The “lesson of history” dictated that the United States use its might to resist aggression. He said:

  “We did not choose to be the guardians at the gate, but there is no one else.

  “Nor would surrender in Vietnam bring peace, because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country, bring with it perhaps even larger and crueler conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history.”

  As for troops, he had asked Westmoreland what he needed to meet what was called “this mounting aggression. He has told me. We will meet his needs.”

  Later in the press conference a reporter asked if the sending of additional troops implied any change in the policy of relying mainly on South Vietnamese troops and using American troops to guard installations and act as emergency backup.

  Johnson answered: “It does not imply any change in policy whatever. It does not imply change of objective.” On the contrary, it was the beginning of an entirely new policy which would see what was the South Vietnamese war become primarily an American war. That would become evident in the forthcoming months.

  The next day the President’s decision was hailed by most people. Taxicab drivers and barbers were interviewed, and like Speaker McCormack, they said they supported their President, he knew best. The most interesting story that day, however, was written by Hanson Baldwin, the New York Times’s special military correspondent, a man who was close to most of the senior generals and admirals. Baldwin had in the past been faithfully passing on and advocating their belief that it would take time, and perhaps one million men. Now on a day when, to the average civilian at least, the military appeared to have won out, Baldwin was reporting shock and dismay among the nation’s top officers, including the JCS. They had expected a good deal more—a reserve call-up, a wartime footing. Instead it was going to be one more tricky war, with civilians making the decisions, keeping the military out of the decision making. The Baldwin story was important because it reflected that even from the start it was going to be an aborted war.

  But the decision had been made and there was seemingly a consensus, but it had only developed because no one was being particularly candid with anyone else. Despite the veneer of having been consulted, the Congress had not been consulted; despite Johnson’s signing on of General Wheeler, the military were restless; and the exact decisions were being kept as cloudy as possible so that the President could still get his domestic proposals through the Congress. It was a consensus, all right, but a very frail one indeed.

  Westmoreland would get everything he wanted. Well, almost everything. That was the decision. Of course, right from the start there was a decision against the reserves, which meant that there had to be considerable juggling of the units already ticketed for Vietnam, and some units would arrive later than expected. But still, he would get anything he wanted. He wanted a lot, of course. He saw it as a major war, a real war, their first-line units against our first-line units, a long struggle, perhaps two or three bitter years of fighting, and then a trailing down. But he was prepared for it on his side. And the troops would be his: he knew he would have to negotiate for them, that McNamara would control the purse strings, and that the Administration did not want to be too exact about figures at a given time, for fear of scaring the enemy as well as the Congress and the public, which nevertheless would dutifully rally to the war. And so it would be done in slices. When McNamara returned in late July, he had not only brought back the battalion request, but he had also brought back the estimate that Westmoreland would probably need another 100,000 for 1966; thus the unofficial, private consensus figure was about 300,000. It was not a figure which would last long, large as it was, for it was based on the optimum possibility, that the other side would not make a major reinforcement if we upped the ante. That hope would turn out to be one of the most short-lived of the war as the North, which had been sending men down the trails since early 1965, began to escalate as we escalated, matching our commitment with theirs.

  In August the American troops were streaming into the country, and by September it was clear that the original estimate of 175,000 for 1965 would probably go as high as 210,000. Still there was a sense that we were in control. One of the great illusions of the war for both the French and the Americans was that they could control the rate of the war; in reality the other side always did. It could escalate or de-escalate the tempo by deciding how many of its own men to send into battle at a given time.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  In 1954 General Ridgway had carefully programmed exactly what would be needed to fight the Vietminh and to help the French. The cost for one year would be an estimated $3.5 billion. Eisenhower thereupon called in his economic advisers and his Secretary of the Treasury, George Humphrey. “George, what would all this do to the budget?” he asked. Humphrey thought for a few moments and then gave a quick answer: “It’ll mean a deficit, Mr. President.” In a way, thought one man present at the meeting, any idea of intervening in Indochina died at that moment.

  War had not become any less costly in the ensuing eleven years, particularly a war whose principal architects felt it could all be accomplished by expensive technology and modern military machinery, a war part of whose purpose was to spare Western, if not Asian, lives, a war in which the most expensive new helicopters replaced tanks. So the cost of the war would soon become one more public relations problem for the President. The full dimensions of the American commitment could be kept partially secret from the press and the Congress and the allies. But eventually someone had to pay for it, and in the very process of the payment, some of the plans, projections and realities would have to become public. Early in 1965 the Joint Chiefs were pushing for special funding for the war, knowing that it would be expensive; and knowing that the more open the Administration was about funding the war, the more open it was likely to be in admitting to the nation that it was, in fact, at war. The Chiefs wanted a wartime footing which included traditional wartime budgetary procedures—invariably meaning higher taxes—and they lost that fight in July 1965 when Johnson decided to go ahead and make it open-ended, without really announcing how open the end was. As a result even at that point, when one might have expected, by checking defense expenditure projections, to find an honest assessment of what the war would be, the reverse was true. In his attempt to keep the planning for the war as closely held as possible, Lyndon Johnson would not give accurate economic projections, would not ask for a necessary tax raise, and would in fact have his own military planners be less than candid with his own economic plann
ers, a lack of candor so convincing that his economic advisers later felt that McNamara had seriously misled them about projections and estimates. The reasons for Johnson’s unwillingness to be straightforward about the financing were familiar. He was hoping that the worst would not come true, that it would remain a short war, and he feared that if the true economic cost of the war became visible to the naked eye, he would lose his Great Society programs. The result was that his economic planning was a living lie, and his Administration took us into economic chaos: the Great Society programs were passed but never funded on any large scale; the war itself ran into severe budgetary problems (the decision in 1968 to put a ceiling on the American troops was as much economic as political); and the most important, the failure to finance the war honestly, would inspire a virulent inflationary spiral which helped defeat Johnson himself. Seven years after the commitment of combat troops, that inflation was still very much alive and was forcing a successor Administration into radical, desperate economic measures in order to restore some financial balance.

  The economy in the spring of 1965 had already reached the point of overheating, and some of the President’s economic advisers were becoming worried about inflationary dangers, even without the prospect of a major war. After years of high unemployment, the level had dropped close to the target of 4 percent. Now, with a war in sight, the advisers were even more uneasy. Johnson and McNamara were implying that it would not be a big war, but there were already rumblings in the early fall of 1965 from people on the Hill that this was likely to become a very big war. The rumbling came from men like John Stennis and Mendel Rivers, who estimated that the cost for fiscal 1966, which ended in June 1966, would be about $10 billion. The Administration was denying this, but for the moment Johnson had fairly good credibility. He had claimed in the past year that he intended to cut back defense spending, and although Rivers and others contradicted him, lo and behold, the President had cut defense spending. So for the moment his reputation was reasonably good. Later it would turn out that Stennis and Rivers knew quite well what they were talking about, since they were tapped into the best of the back-channel military messages through their close liaisons with Westmoreland and the Chiefs. Thus they had a very good idea of what Westmoreland was asking for and what McNamara had promised him. Which made it a big war. Based on this, they were claiming that it would cost about $10 billion for the year ending July 1966. That figure was of course far above the estimates coming from the White House (in his July messages Johnson had talked about a projected figure of only $2 billion more than previously estimated Defense funds).