The politics of the Vietnam War in 1967

Vice President Hubert Humphrey with President Lyndon Johnson

I'm always leery of historical analogies applied to present policies. That doesn't mean they're all bad. Just that most of them are.

Analogy or not, people inevitably are comparing the Iraq War to the Vietnam War. This is complicated by the fact that our Republican "culture warriors" have an image of their domestic political Enemy (the liberals, the dirty hippies, scary black people, etc.) that derives heavily from rightwing mythology about the 1960s, including about the antiwar movement and the Vietnam War itself.

The print edition of the New York Review of Books for 10/11/07 has some excerpts from Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s, diaries for the year 1967 under the title "The Turning Point", focusing on the Vietnam War. During that period, the military brass were sure of "victory" in Vietnam. The antiwar movement in 1967 was growing among the public and Senators like William Fulbright, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern were expressing their skepticism about Lyndon Johnson policy in the war. The practice at that time, to summarize very briefly, was to escalate the number of troops and call periodic bombing pauses to make a show of "peaceful intentions" but actually not believing any serious willingness to negotiate with the enemy was necessary.

Despite the later public impression that no one knew what we were fighting for in Vietnam - an understandable notion in light of the changing official justifications for the war - there was a defined goal in the war: to preserve an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam. As Schlesinger put it in a diary entry of March 11, the generals at that time were persuaded that they could "force a retreat of the regular Hanoi forces back over the 17th parallel and a dissolution of the Viet Cong". (In historical writing now, the Vietcong is often referred to by its official name, the National Liberation Front [NLF], though Vietcong is also still used because that was the term so commonly used by Americans during the war.)

In light of recent Congressional concern over the blaspheming of the divine presence of our Saviour-General David Petraeus, that diary entry is worth quoting at greater length:

The effect of [Bobby Kennedy's] intervention [by publicly encouraging meaningful peace talks], I think, was to make the administration think concretely about the meaning of negotiation - and, having thought about it, they did not like it. Or, to put it more exactly, having thought about it in the context of the military optimism now sweeping Washington, they feel it would be a great mistake. One has the impression that very little would embarrass the administration now more than a peace overture from Hanoi. The military have the bit between their teeth and are confident that they can "win" the war - i.e., that they can force a retreat of the regular Hanoi forces back over the 17th parallel and a dissolution of the Viet Cong. If they are right, LBJ may still pull himself out of this. But if they are wrong - and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are almost always wrong in their military predictions - then we are committed to a steady enlargement of the war; for, if one thing does not break the resistance, the pressure will increase to do something more - to bomb large population centers, harbors, the industrial complex, to strike along the Chinese border, until we force China into the war. (my emphasis)

Shocking, shocking that a supposedly responsible American and leading historian would suggest even in private that our glorious military leaders might be "wrong" about "their military predictions", and this in a time of war!

Of course, they were wrong about their optimistic predictions on the Vietnam War. And some of the generals finding themselves in that position found it convenient to hide behind conservative idolatry of the military and a dishonest stab-in-the-back theory about the war's outcome.

Sadly, the idea of attacking critics of the war generally as unpatriotic hasn't entirely a Republican habit, as Schlesinger observed in his entry for April 27:

We are reaching some sort of crisis on Vietnam. LBJ has evidently decided on a quick and brutal escalation of the war. It was clear in February that he did not wish negotiation until the existing military balance could be turned considerably in our favor; and his clear intention now is to bomb North Vietnam until Hanoi is prepared to sue for peace on terms which will meet Rusk's idea of a satisfactory settlement. More than that, the administration is apparently determined to advance the proposition that dissent is unpatriotic, and has brought General Westmoreland back for this purpose.

He continued in that same entry with an observation about the practical power the American President has to continue a war, even in the face of major Congressional opposition:

The irony is that all of us for years have been defending the presidential prerogative and regarding the Congress as a drag on policy. It is evident now that this delight in a strong presidency was based on the fact that, up to now, all strong presidents in American history have pursued policies of which one has approved. We are now confronted by the anomaly of a strong president using these arguments to pursue a course which, so far as I can see, can lead only to disaster. It is not hard to assert a congressional role; but, given the structure of the American system, it is very hard to see how the Congress can restrain the presidential drive toward the enlargement of the war. Voting against military appropriations is both humanly and politically self-defeating. The only hope is to organize a broad political movement; and even this cannot take effect until, at the very earliest, the 1968 primaries, which may be too late.

I don't read this as a statement of hopelessness on his part. He was just saying that bringing Congress to the point of forcing a change in Vietnam War policy onto the President would require very significant public political pressure.

Here is one case in which I think we need to be careful not to assume a parallel between then and now. The Vietnam War was intensely unpopular among a significant minority in 1967, but it would still be years before that became a distinct majority sentiment. A majority of the public have been opposed to the Iraq War for quite some time now. The fact that the much-publicized appearance of our Saviour-General Petraeus in Washington, blessing us with his personal divine presence, caused hardly a ripple in public opinion on the war is a sign of the level of opposition to this current war. The situation Schlesinger describes in 1967 is not a parallel in that regard.

His observation about the fact that Congress can only be moved to do their job in restraining a President on a destructive course in the war by continued strong public pressure is, unfortunately, all too relevant today.

The numbing effects of war on people's thinking comes out in his April 18 entry describing a meeting of the previous day with Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey later came to be regarded as what was then called a "Cold War liberal" (at least by critics who wanted to move beyond the Cold War). But up until 1967 or so, Humphrey had been regarded as more of an aggressive, activist liberal, particularly on the civil rights issue. In that entry, Schlesinger writes:

I think I was depressed most of all by the lack of the sense of the concrete human dimension of problems which characterized the old Hubert. Not once in his long discourse on Vietnam did he express any dismay over the human wreckage wrought by the American policy.... This trailing off of humanity is accompanied by an obvious delight in hobnobbing with statesmen - many mentions of the Pope, de Gaulle, [Sarvepalli] Radhakrishnan, etc., etc., etc. (my emphasis)

The courtier is an ever-present feature around the seats of power. Walt Rostow was one of the key advisers on the Vietnam War during the Kennedy and Johnson administration and is widely regarded as a hack. In his diary entry of July 28, he described Rostow's then-resurgent influence on LBJ:

Walt Rostow has suddenly emerged from a long eclipse and is now established as the Pangloss of the White House, telling the President with great authoritativeness all the things the President wants to hear. Everything, according to Walt, is getting better and better; and I can see him when the bombs begin to fall on Washington, assuring LBJ that the deep-running historic tendencies are on our side, that we are turning the corner in Zambia and Tasmania, and that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I last saw him at dinner at Jane McBaine's in Washington on June 14. He exuded self-satisfaction with his resurrection and set forth a tedious and misconceived analogy between LBJ and Lincoln, casting the opposition to the war in the role of the Copperheads [pro-Southern Northern Democrats] and saying that, if LBJ only kept up the military momentum, he would be in the clear in another few months. (my emphasis)

As tempting as it is to see this as a parallel to the neocons and their "cakewalk" fantasies, the similarities probably have more to do with the persistence of hackery and flattering the king than anything else.

But also in light of the present-day polemics over the war-loving Trotskyist neoconservatives and "chickenhawks", these two passages from that same diary entry are striking:

The big issue, of course, has been Vietnam. I would say that this period has marked, if not a change in Lyndon Johnson, at least a change in my own perception of him. I had thought until rather recently that the tendency toward a widening of the war represented a triumph of his advisers over his instincts - that the last thing he wanted was American involvement in a ground war in Asia, or, even less, a war with China, and that his dearest hope was a negotiated solution making possible American withdrawal. If this was once his mood, I fear it is so no longer. He would seem to have turned a corner toward the systematic enlargement of the war. Why? I cannot resist the feeling that domestic politics - his precipitous decline in the public opinion polls - constitute a major factor. He once told Dick Goodwin that there was far more chauvinism in the United States than easterners understood, and it now looks as if a course of playing the war to the hilt has recommended itself to him as the best way of reversing the polls and bringing about Democratic gains in November. There may be other, deeper pressures working on him. Dick has hinted that he may have a streak of personal cowardice (as demonstrated in his panic after the murder in Dallas), which may force him into public virility in order to prove something about himself (in the sense that a war hero, like JFK, felt no need to prove himself by invading Cuba after the Bay of Pigs or the missile crisis). ...

The conversation was resumed over the weekend of July 24, which I spent at Ken Galbraith's in Newfane, Vermont, with George McGovern and Seymour Harris. But now I had begun to think for the first time of the possibility of RFK's going for the nomination in 1968. Of course, this is a long time away - and two years would give LBJ plenty of opportunity for all the escalation he seeks and needs. But, assuming he follows the present course without getting into a nuclear war with China, there might be just the possibility of reversing all historical precedent and rejecting the nomination of an incumbent president.

George said that he would be all for it; adding that he thought that LBJ had a "great yellow streak" and might conceivably be bluffed out of trying for renomination, citing his health and the 22nd Amendment as reasons for not running again. This is all remote and unlikely, but a month ago none of us would have thought it worth a moment's consideration. (my emphasis)

Aside from the psychological speculations, it could certainly be argued that Johnson's withdrawal from the 1968 Presidential race is at least partly a confirmation of McGovern's thought that Johnson could be "bluffed" out of the race. Because at the time of his withdrawal, it was by no means a done deal that Gene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy could have captured the nomination.

In fairness to Johnson, I would also say that he had a genuine concern for the well-being of the country and a real feeling of responsibility about the Vietnam War (however misguided or reprehensible his policies were) that is difficult to even imagine in men like Dick Cheney, George Bush or Rummy.

On biographical matters, I also found this to be a valuable observation about Hubert Humphrey from a March 11 entry:

... Hubert [Humphrey] went on the air on Issues and Answers. We all watched it before lunch at Hickory Hill (except Bobby [Kennedy], who was so irritated and upset by Hubert's performance that, after a few minutes, he went silently away). It was a new and different Hubert - hard-faced, except for some unctuous smiles, and uncharacteristically coarse in his language. His trouble, I fear, is that he cannot say something publicly without deeply believing it privately; and when, as now, he has no choice in his public utterances, he whips up a fervency of private belief. I fear also that Max Kampelman or someone has persuaded him that this is the issue on which he can knock out RFK. His sense of splitting with the liberal community, a probable feeling of guilt over the positions he is taking - all this has made him self-righteous and irascible. (my emphasis)

The trait of being unable to "say something publicly without deeply believing it privately" would be quite a handicap for most politicians!

Tags: arthur schlesinger, george mcgovern, lyndon johnson, robert kennedy, vietnam war