The Montreal Review, December, 2009

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In 1965, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson, recovering from gall bladder surgery, lifted his shirt to show the assembled reporters his scar. David Levine immortalized the moment with a cartoon popularly known as "The Vietnam Scar." Levine's drawing originally appeared in Vietnam: The Turning Point in the New York Review of Books, May 12, 1966.

There are truths. One of them is that everything conceived in a lie has no future. Some believe in this simple pre-modern adage, others do not. But there is more: if a lie is the result of a mistake, it must be confessed in order to be forgiven and forgotten. Some are strong enough to confess, others are not. The war in Vietnam started, at least officially, as a lie with the adoption of the Tonkin Declaration, later it turned out to be a mistake, and President Lyndon B. Johnson did not have the courage to admit, if not the lie, at least the mistake. This weakness cost him the dream of remaining with Lincoln and Roosevelt in the pantheon of the greatest American presidents. But the real tragedy is that this unacknowledged mistake cost nearly 60,000 American lives and more than a million Vietnamese victims. The story of the Vietnam War, like many other stories of war and conflict, shows how fragile our world is, how easily human weakness can mix with political power in a fusion that causes death.

The reasons for the Vietnam War were complex. It was a legacy conflict; three American presidents (Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy) had been involved in Indochina before Johnson. The war was part of the biggest conflict dividing the world after World War II - the Cold War, or the struggle between the communist world led by Soviet Russia and the so-called "free" capitalist world dominated by the United States. Two days after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson vowed not to let Vietnam fall to the communists. Johnson had no impressive foreign policy experience and knowledge, but he had "excellent" Harvard-educated advisors (Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk) and he relied on their advice. Vietnam was necessary for him to show in the coming 1964 elections that he was a tough man, determined to build a Great American Society while dealing with the communist threat. A limited, successful, painless war in Vietnam would give him a chance to assert himself as a great president with victories at home and abroad.

The war had begun two months before the election, without an official declaration by Congress, but only on the basis of dubious claims of an "unprovoked" North Vietnamese attack on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson won the election by a landslide on a platform of progressive education, conservation, consumer protection, civil rights, and anti-poverty legislation. At the time, the war seemed to go unnoticed by the American public at large.

Johnson and his advisors believed the war would be short and successful. He had no intention of sending American boys to fight and die in Asia. He had a plan for a Great Society. He and his advisors believed that America had the technology, the money, and the experience to win this war without significant casualties. And, yes, what could be more predictable than the world's superpower defeating one of the most backward societies in Asia? America would check the advance of the Communist North, suppress Ho Chi Minh's Communists, and show its willingness to prevent the spread of Russo-Chinese influence. That was the plan. In fact, that was the desired outcome. The administration had no real plan. Years later, Johnson would admit that there was "no plan for victory, either military or diplomatic. " 1

At the time, the administration was considering three basic questions regarding Indochina: whether to continue Kennedy's policy of providing advice and military and financial support to the South Vietnamese regimes; whether to begin a massive air bombing campaign against North Vietnam; or whether to begin a gradual bombing campaign until the Communists surrendered. They chose the gradual bombing. They did not seriously ask themselves, do they know the character of the Vietnamese, do they know the motives that drove this small nation to oppose America, the guerrillas against Saigon, they did not know why Ho Shi Minh was fighting - because he was a Communist, a protégé of the Soviets and Beijing, or because he was a nationalist. If he was a nationalist, how vicious would he be and how long would he fight? How big was his stake and how much was he willing to sacrifice? These were the really important questions, because America was only prepared for a limited war. Vietnam would prolong this conflict to infinity if it could. Ho Chi Minh warned that if the Americans "want to make war for twenty years, we will make war for twenty years. If they want to make peace, we will make peace and invite them to afternoon tea." 2 Johnson had a more important domestic goal, to build the Great Society; Vietnam was, in every sense, on the periphery. Before action was taken, no one around Johnson asked what was really at stake. Among his advisers, only Undersecretary of State George Ball tried to persuade the president that this war was doomed. No one (except perhaps Ball) expected Vietnam to kill the Great Society.

In the Vietnam War, Johnson had two main enemies - time and the number of deaths America could endure. Ironically, McNamara's plan for success in Vietnam was as follows: "The body count was a measure of the enemy's loss of manpower; we did it because one of Westy's objectives was to reach a so-called crossover point where the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese casualties would be greater than they could sustain. "This guy McNamara," they [critics] said, "he tries to quantify everything." Obviously, there are things you cannot quantify; honour and beauty, for example. But things that can be counted, you can count. Loss of life is one, when you are fighting a war of attrition." 3 In the end, it turned out that the Americans were the ones who suffered more casualties than they could sustain. And they lost the war.

On April 7, 1965, at John Hopkins University, the future of the "limited war" in Vietnam was decided in what some analysts have called Johnson's most influential foreign policy speech. On the surface, the speech pledges "unconditional negotiations" and promises aid for the development and reconstruction of North Vietnam if the Communists agree to compromise. The interesting thing about this speech is that by talking about peace and negotiations, it actually paved the way for further escalation. Johnson, a great communicator and dealmaker, hoped to reach an agreement with Ho Shi Minh; he believed that if Ho Shi Minh refused to compromise, Johnson would have no choice but to impose it. Bombing and limited ground action had not worked; therefore, the massive ground invasion would finish the job. It was clear that Ho Shi Minh would not accept a cease-fire on American terms.

Let us analyze the speech. It begins with the suggestion that behind Hanoi is the "shadow" of Communist China, which intends to bring all of Asia under the yoke of Communist totalitarianism. "Why are these realities our concern?" asks Johnson. The answer is because America promised to defend South Vietnam in 1954, and because America cares about the world. The U.S. does not want to "shake the confidence" of its allies, and therefore does not want to increase unrest and instability. An abandoned Vietnam will have a domino effect in the region. "Central lesson of our time," says Johnson, "is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied." America has a responsibility to defend freedom in the world. This is an idealistic struggle. "We want nothing for ourselves," says Johnson. He explains the escalation of the war in recent months with the intensification of the North's aggression. "We do this to slow down aggression... And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam... of a very simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw..." These words are followed by the offer of a "peaceful settlement." The goal is the creation of an "independent South Vietnam." Johnson says the offer of "unconditional peace" has been made "fifty times and more" without success. "We have no desire to see thousands die, Asians or Americans." But America will oppose one nation to conquer another. And here, in a slight departure from the general idealistic tone, Johnson says that America will oppose because its "own security is at stake." The president quickly returns to idealism with a talk about the "dream" in which human conflicts are resolved not by wars but by "law and reason," we are all human, we all need the same - peace, love and hope. The speech ends with the following: "Every night before I turn the lights to sleep, I ask myself this question "Have I done everything that I can do to unite this country?.. Have we done enough?"

Biographers and friends say that Johnson suffered from nightmares since childhood. I suspect that he really did ask himself hard questions every night before he went to sleep. Someone somewhere said that L.B.J. could not tell the difference between lying and persuasion. The April 7 speech was well written and persuasive. At the time of its delivery, it was interpreted as a peace proposal, an intention to end the war. But if we examine it more closely, we will find that 2/3 of it was devoted to the defense of American actions, even the peace proposal was actually used to justify the escalation - the U.S. offered peace "fifty times and more" and it was not accepted. The speech was entitled "Peace without Conquest", it was delivered a month after the first ground troops were sent, and a few months later the number of American troops would begin to rise sharply. It was a defensive speech; it was a justification for action. There were references to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, but the general emphasis was on the Communist threat, on American obligations, on Hanoi's unwillingness to cooperate, and on the justification for continued military effort.

In his final speech in Austin (December, 1972) Johnson said, "If our efforts continue, and if our will is strong, and if our hearts are right, and if courage remains our constant companion, then, my fellow Americans, I am confident we shall overcome." We know that people are most passionate about the things they find most difficult to achieve. Johnson lacked the courage to stop this war at the beginning, and later he was not sure if his heart was right. The words of his last speech are the words of a man of experience and wisdom. They should be remembered. 

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1 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam , (Random House, 1995), pp. 190-191.

2 Ho Chi Minh. Letter to Martin Niemoeller. December, 1966. quoted in Marilyn B. Young. The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990. New York, NY. Harper, 1991, p. 172.

3 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam , (Random House, 1995),  (John Hollitz, Thinking through the Past ( Houghton Mifflin, 2004 ) p. 292)