The Vietnam War Revisited- Part XVI- Coming Apart at the Seams

Barbara Tuchman’s analysis of the Vietnam War in her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is the inspiration behind this series of posts. All of the previous posts in the series can be found at the bottom of this post.

I recall 1968 as one of the most chaotic years of my lifetime. A year or so prior, I had come back to San Francisco to complete my surgical residency following my USAF air evacuation experience in Vietnam as a flight surgeon. I was greeted with a wild, mindboggling “cultural revolution”, full-blown anti-war protests, and no respect. Like most other vets, it seemed an unreal experience. We were not gone that long, but America had radically changed.

For a few hours of diversion, I went to a 49ers/ Viking football game in Golden Gate Park at Kezar stadium. I waded through the hippie encampments and tripped-out druggies to watch a Viking ‘Purple People Eater’ lineman recover a fumble and run the wrong way!  It was as if the world had gone mad during my absence in Southeast Asia. Jim Marshall running the wrong way seemed symbolic of the jumbled times. A lot of crazy things were going on back then in the sixties, the Age of Aquarius.

I chronicled many of the mind-blowing events in my historical narrative, RECALL, and in recent blogs. I hope you read them to get an idea what it was like over fifty years ago. It might help you understand our polarized society five decades later and how we got here. More importantly, why we view the world from such divergent perspectives. It’s my contention that the 1960’s birthed our polarized society and antipathy. If you read all my blogs and RECALL, perhaps you might agree with me. Or, like other subjective aspects of Vietnam, disagree. It’s all a matter of perspective and ideology. Feel free to express your opinion.

Meanwhile, back in SE Asia, North Vietnam launched a major offensive on the Chinese New Year, Tet, 1968. The objective aspiration was to cause local South Vietnamese uprisings and expelling American troops motivated them. The fighting was fierce, the most intense of the war. We lost 4,000 troop and the enemy close to 200,000 by year-end. The NVR and VC often accepted a 50 % casualty rate to attain their goal, but still failed. Militarily, Tet went down as an American victory from a statistical standpoint.

Ironically, despite hard fought military victories evidenced by no loss of a major city in South Vietnam, not a single one, the war became a pivotal year politically in the States. General sentiment changed, asking the question, “Is Vietnam worth it?”

Support for the war and the Johnson administration waned as political divisions deepened and conflicting opinions worsened. Daily news and war photos bombarded the public, as pundits shaped national dialogue with an anti-war slant.

As the year went on, public opinion turned sour. Protests escalated, becoming violent. The media fanned the turmoil. The media sage, Walter Cronkite, deemed the war “unwinnable”, leading LBJ to comment, “If we’ve lost Walter, we’ve lost middle America.”

The pressure on the LBJ administration increased exponentially with a Presidential election looming. Let me briefly summarize the events in case you weren’t around back then. In fact, half our population was not even born in the Sixties, and many of those who were, may not recall the clamor and civic unrest. America appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

JBJ faced pressure from not only from the political right and left, but growing resentment of the military for his restraints on vital targets and limiting rules of engagement. The open rift became evident during McNamara’s testimony before Congress when the Secretary of Defense admitted that their Rolling Thunder strategy failed to break the will of the North Vietnamese, adding, “They cannot be bombed to the negotiating table.”

This was the “Open Kimono” moment- confessing the whole purpose of the administration’s bombing strategy had failed. His shocking testimony cracked the Johnson administration with his exposure of the inner workings of the administrations’ policies to the Congress and the public. Spin had kept a lid on the policy until McNamara’s candid acknowledgement. The administration would not recover.

McNamara was soon shuffled off to the World Bank. But he never disavowed the war, and continued loyal to LBJ. Tuchman observed he “Remained somewhere in between the duty to the truth and loyalty.” At least he admitted his role in the mistakes.

Later in the Congressional discussion, Senator Stennis lambasted LBJ’s “civilian interference” in overruling the military’s “true potential of air power.” I have to agree with him for the reasons I point out in RECALL. Mainly, LBJ’s ill-advised micromanagement and poor selection of targets prevented the Air Force from bombing critical, strategic targets early on and in full force. Instead, LBJ dictated the Air Force bomb targets the administration selected in “graduated” increments. The concept of “limited war” ignores the fact that war is a zero-sum proposition by definition.

In contrast, the CIA estimated that Hanoi would find no level of bombing intolerable enough to force them to capitulate, another point I make in my historical narrative.  I reviewed CIA Intelligence Estimates from the 1960’s that were declassified in the early 1980’s. It was an eye opener… So much good intel was ignored by those calling the shots, literally and figuratively. It suggested to me Vietnam did not have to turn out the way it did. The strategy was seriously flawed.

So, there you see one of the key problems in conducting the Vietnam War. We poorly understood the complexity of our leaders’ decisions and the enemy’s. And, we forgot that actions have consequences, some unintended. By the end of 1967, 1.5 million tons of bombs were dropped in North and South Vietnam. The bombs in the North exceeded 75,000 dropped in Europe during WWII.

By 1968 over 525,000 soldiers were serving in Vietnam. Reserves had been called up. Nevertheless, Ho Chi Minh never gave up, an unanticipated reaction at that time, despite CIA predictions.

So, the administration took a different tack- a bombing pause.

Unfortunately, back channel negotiations failed during the bombing halt. This time Hanoi missed the opportunity, misreading sincere LBJ intentions. LBJ wanted out and would make a deal. The situation was becoming desperate.

At the military’s insistence, the bombing resumed, but despite the tonnage and troop increases, control of the South Vietnam countryside remained at pre-August 1965 levels. Anti-war sentiment mounted, equating the Democratic party with Johnson, perceived as the one who got the country into a quagmire in Vietnam. Further complicating matters, McCarthy challenged LBJ’s election hopes, with RFK waiting in the wings.

On the global scene, the chaos continued. It seemed all humanity was coming apart at the seams, as one episode after another shocked the world. Disorder and madness were not confined to the United States. But that’s a story for another blog.

I’ll close out the LBJ era in the next blog. Suffice it to say “1968 ended with a bang.”

The blogs are intended to be educational.  Comments welcomed if civil.