Baby Boomers can recall the '60's with vivid recollection: they lived through the period at the height of physical strength and educational achievement. The world was in upheaval in many locations-take your pick: China, Europe, America, India, and Africa. Colonizers were forced to reckon with their past policies and admit defeat.
America and Americans had to confront the Cold War realities: Russya and its allies were still powerful enough to confront the West. Politicians everywhere had tough decisions to make; and some succeeded, some did not. President Kennedy was a victim of the Cold War when a sad, lone wolf assassin got in a lucky shot in Dallas ,Texas, from a high window perch along the route of the motorcade. LBJ was thrust suddenly onto the world stage. His first mission: get elected on his own in 1964. He was able to accomplish this, running on his record as a congressman from Texas and a southerner of some repute.
After his election in '64, he gained traction for his domestic program-The Great Society programs to lift that segment of America that needed broad assistance to move out of poverty. And then: Vietnam came onto his desk in the Oval Office. It wouldn't go away. No matter how hard he tried, Vietnam hung over his presidency like a shroud.
Kennedy's Sec. of Defense, Robert McNamara, had been dealing with Southeast Asia since he arrived in Washington after a stint as head of Ford Motors. He brought with him a gang of young techno wizards who had been convinced after Ivy League graduate programs that statistical analysis could solve all problems. The military minds that generated solutions on foreign policy were shunted aside. Soldiers were not the people to be tasked with finding long term answers-they were thought to be parochial and narrow thinkers locked in a fixed/rigid mindset. Vietnam could/would be solved by statistical analysis: numbers.
By 1965, LBJ started to think of his re-election efforts. He would need to start the campaign right away since Republicans were already grooming prospective opponents to Democratic candidates. Vietnam appeared more and more as a problem to overcome, to remove from the campaign early on. He asked his advisors for solutions. He got lies and falsehoods instead. He lost all confidence in his military advisors, save Maxwell Taylor. McNamara was no help; he continued to obfuscate the situation, advising that success was in the offing soon.
As time went on, LBJ decided that a gradual response would ameliorate opponents while also appearing to hawks that LBJ was not "soft" on Communism, in SE Asia or anywhere else. He followed Kennedy's lead in massaging the draft deferments, expanding, then eliminating categories of exemptions. He callously called for reaching deeper into the male ranks of 18 year olds expressing the desire not to sacrifice the future for college educated types expected to continue America's leadership in the world. Use up the poor, uneducated workers and their children.
When the casualties mounted, LBJ lost his nerve and his will to continue. He did not have what it takes to make the decision to leave Vietnam. Despite having a plan for just that, that Pres. Richard Nixon would agree to in 1973. Nixon would be exposed years later as the most insidious person to have ever been president. Along with Henry Kissinger, they prolonged the war in 1968 by promising Pres. Thieu of South Vietnam that when president, Nixon would take care of the government of Thieu. He prolonged the casualty list of those young Americans in the field for his political ends. A most despicable man/men, both. And Kissinger would receive the Nobel Peace Prize. What a farce.
Nixon's biographer discovered the "smoking" gun in the files of Nixon advisor, H.R. Halderman, in 2007, when he discovered notes of a conversation with Nixon directing him to make the offer to Thieu about avoiding any peace deal in Paris with the North Vietnamese.
So, this is what we can recall 50 years after the tragedy ended in 1975.
