LBJ tapes teach lesson in how to lose war

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 23, 2002 | by Ralph de Toledano

Pointing the finger of blame over the American defeat in Vietnam once was a cottage industry for politicians, the media and the military. A case can be made against the media, exhibit A being outrageous reportage of the Tet Offensive, a stunning blow to the Viet Cong and the communist forces that was reported falsely as their victory. This gave the so-called "antiwar" movement in America its biggest argument, turned up the heat among the schoolboy Lenins on the campuses and marked the turning point against the war.

Much can be ascribed to the political cowardice of President Richard Nixon, who briefly set out to fight in Southeast Asia as we later would fight in Kuwait, but bowed down to pressure from student hoodlums and left-wing storm troopers. Had he proceeded militarily as planned, carpet-bombing Haiphong and closing its harbor, he would have cut off most of the North's war supplies. Instead he continued the battle on the communists' terms, guaranteeing defeat and the bloody betrayal of South Vietnam and its people. For all his weakness, Nixon nonetheless was clobbered by the political left and set himself up for what happened after Watergate.

This may be speculation, but there is an immutable record--President Lyndon B. Johnson's White House tapes--that points to another causative factor, ironically the same deus ex machina which toppled Poor Richard. A partial transcript, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964--the period between the Kennedy assassination and the 1964 election--was published in 1997. I do not recall any review of the book that focused on Johnson's role in Vietnam or, for that matter, on what the tapes tell about how he bribed Senate Republican leader Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois with a few favors for which the mellifluous "Duke of Pekin" undercut Barry Goldwater's enthusiastic but unlikely presidential campaign. The commentary by the editor of the tapes for March 2, 1964 sums it up:

"During this period, Johnson privately shows himself determined, if possible, to defer irrevocable decisions on war in Southeast Asia until the 1964 election is over. Eager to win the presidency in a landslide, he wishes to appear neither soft on communism nor frighteningly ready to take the nation into a war of unimaginable cost--even if this means leaving the American people confused.... Certainly Johnson was reluctant to make that crucial decision amid the heat and pressures of a campaign, if he could help it. But his approach kept Americans from fully knowing whom and what they were voting for."

Talking to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, LBJ said: "I want you to dictate to me a memorandum--a couple of pages ... so I can study it and commit it to memory ... on the situation in Vietnam.... Or we could pull out and say `To hell with you, we're going to have Fortress America. We're going home.' And here's what would happen in Thailand, and ... the Philippines....

"Or we can say this is the Vietnamese's war and they've got 200,000 men, they're untrained, and we've got to bring their morale up, and they have nothing really to fight for because of the type of government they've had. We can put in socially conscious people and try to get them to improve their own government.... I would like to have for this period, when everybody is asking me, something in my own words. I can say, `Why here are the alternatives and here's our theory.' ... How we don't say that we'll win. We don't know. We're doing the best we can.... Do you think it's a mistake to explain what I'm saying now about Vietnam and what we're faced with?"

McNamara's answer: "I do think, Mr. President, it would be wise for you to say as little as possible. The frank answer is we don't know what's going on out there."

On a later occasion, Johnson again requested that "piece of paper" so that he could answer "in his own words" the questions about Vietnam being thrown at him by the press--the halt leading the blind. To everyone with whom he discussed Vietnam, he asked for guidance and for answers. He even sought help from Robert F. Kennedy. The tapes show that his relations with Bobby, touted as a feud by the media and by his supporters, were friendly on both sides.

This indecision, this lack of understanding and LBJ's reliance on others to tell him what to do--vacillating between military action and social consciousness--is evident throughout the tapes. As the war progressed, however, the president, who diplomatically and militarily didn't know which way was up, exercised his role as commander in chief by dictating strategy and tactics almost down to the platoon level.

Is it any wonder that, in GI terms, the war in Vietnam was snafu, tarfu and eventually fubar?

To Secretary of State Colin Powell's credit, he realized in his military days that there is only one way to win a win, and that is to throw in everything you've got to ensure victory. The policy of incremental escalation, such as Johnson and McNamara followed in Vietnam, guarantees defeat.