The Day It Became the Longest War
Lt. Gen. Charles Cooper, USMC (Ret.)
1-20-07
History News Network
http://hnn.us/articles/34024.html
Lt. Gen. Charles Cooper, USMC (Ret.) is the author of "Cheers and Tears: A Marine's Story of Combat in Peace and War" (2002), from which this article is excerpted. The article recently drew national attention after it was posted on MILINET. It is reprinted with the author's permission.
"The President will see you attwo o'clock ."
Lt. Gen. Charles Cooper, USMC (Ret.)
History News Network
http://hnn.us/articles/34024.html
Lt. Gen. Charles Cooper, USMC (Ret.) is the author of "Cheers and Tears: A Marine's Story of Combat in Peace and War" (2002), from which this article is excerpted. The article recently drew national attention after it was posted on MILINET. It is reprinted with the author's permission.
"The President will see you at
It was a beautiful fall day in November of 1965; early in the Vietnam War-too beautiful a day to be what many of us, anticipating it, had been calling "the day of reckoning." We didn't know how accurate that label would be.
The Pentagon is a busy place. Its workday starts early-especially if, as the expression goes, "there's a war on." By
The Vietnam War was in its first year, and its uncertain direction troubled Admiral McDonald and the other service chiefs. They'd had a number of disagreements with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara about strategy, and had finally requested a private meeting with the Commander in Chief-a perfectly legitimate procedure. Now, after many delays, the Joint Chiefs were finally to have that meeting. They hoped it would determine whether the
The situation was not a simple one, and for several reasons. The most important reason was that
Now, in this new war, the North Vietnamese aggressor had the logistic support of the
Both
The
Despite the lack of a clear-cut intelligence estimate, Admiral McDonald and the other Joint Chiefs did what they were paid to do and reached a conclusion. They decided unanimously that the risk of the Chinese or Soviets reacting to massive US measures taken in North Vietnam was acceptably low, but only if we acted without delay.
Unfortunately, the Secretary of Defense and his coterie of
civilian "whiz kids" did not agree with the Joint Chiefs, and
McNamara and his people were the ones who were actually steering military
strategy. In the view of the Joint Chiefs, the United
States was piling on forces in Vietnam
without understanding the consequences. In the view of McNamara and his
civilian team, we were doing the right thing. This was the fundamental dispute
that had caused the Chiefs to request the seldom-used private audience with the
Commander in Chief in order to present their military recommendations directly
to him. McNamara had finally granted their request.
The 1965 Joint Chiefs of Staff had ample combat experience. Each was serving in his third war. The Chairman was General Earle Wheeler, US Army, highly regarded by the other members.
General Harold Johnson was the Army Chief of Staff. A World War II prisoner of the Japanese, he was a soft-spoken, even-tempered, deeply religious man.
General John P. McConnell, Air Force Chief of Staff, was a native of
The Commandant of the Marine Corps was General Wallace M. Greene, Jr., a slim, short, all-business Marine. General Greene was a
Last and by no means least was Admiral McDonald, a
The Joint Chiefs intended that the prime topics of the meeting with the President would be naval matters-the mining and blockading of the port of
The Military Office at the White House agreed to set up an easel in the Oval Office to hold the map. I would accompany Admiral McDonald to the White House with the map, put the map in place when the meeting started, then get out. There would be no strap-hangers at the military summit meeting with Lyndon Johnson.
The map and I joined Admiral McDonald in his staff car for the short drive to the White House, a drive that was memorable only because of the silence. My admiral was totally preoccupied.
The chiefs' appointment with the President was for
Precisely at
To the right of the door, not far inside the office, large windows framed evergreen bushes growing in a nearby garden. The President's desk and several chairs were farther in, diagonally across the room from the windows. The President positioned me near the windows, then arranged the chiefs in a semicircle in front of the map and its human easel.
He did not offer them seats: they stood, with those who were
to speak-Wheeler, McDonald, and McConnell-standing nearest the President.
Paradoxically, the two whose services were most affected by a continuation of
the ground buildup in Vietnam-Generals Johnson and Greene-stood farthest from
the President. President Johnson stood nearest the door, about five feet from
the map.
In retrospect, the setup - the failure to have an easel in place, the positioning of the chiefs on the outer fringe of the office, the lack of seating-did not augur well. The chiefs had expected the meeting to be a short one, and it met that expectation. They also expected it to be of momentous import, and it met that expectation, too. Unfortunately, it also proved to be a meeting that was critical to the proper pursuit of what was to become the longest, most divisive, and least conclusive war in our nation's history-a war that almost tore the nation apart.
As General Wheeler started talking, President Johnson peered at the map. In five minutes or so, the general summarized our entry into
The essence of General Wheeler's presentation was that we had come to an early moment of truth in our ever-increasing
Speaking for the chiefs, General Wheeler offered a bold
course of action that would avoid protracted land warfare. He proposed that we
isolate the major port of Haiphong
through naval mining, blockade the rest of the North Vietnamese coastline, and
simultaneously start bombing Hanoi
with B-52's.
General Wheeler then asked Admiral McDonald to describe how the Navy and Air Force would combine forces to mine the waters off
Normally, time dims our memories-but it hasn't dimmed this one. My memory of Lyndon Johnson on that day remains crystal clear.
While General Wheeler, Admiral McDonald, and General
McConnell spoke, he seemed to be listening closely, communicating only with an
occasional nod. When General McConnell finished, General Wheeler asked the
President if he had any questions.
Johnson waited a moment or so, then turned to Generals
Johnson and Greene, who had remained silent during the briefing, and asked,
"Do you fully support these ideas?" He followed with the thought that
it was they who were providing the ground troops, in effect acknowledging that
the Army and the Marines were the services that had most to gain or lose as a
result of this discussion. Both generals indicated their agreement with the
proposal. Seemingly deep in thought, President Johnson turned his back on them
for a minute or so, then suddenly discarding the calm, patient demeanor he had
maintained throughout the meeting, whirled to face them and exploded.
I almost dropped the map. He screamed obscenities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their "military advice." Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders, he called them filthy names - shitheads, dumb shits, pompous assholes - and used "the F-word" as an adjective more freely than a Marine in boot camp would use it. He then accused them of trying to pass the buck for World War
After the tantrum, he resumed the calm, relaxed manner he had displayed earlier and again folded his arms. It was as though he had punished them, cowed them, and would now control them. Using soft-spoken profanities, he said something to the effect that they all knew now that he did not care about their military advice. After disparaging their abilities, he added that he did expect their help.
He suggested that each one of them change places with him and assume that five incompetents had just made these "military recommendations." He told them that he was going to let them go through what he had to go through when idiots gave him stupid advice, adding that he had the whole damn world to worry about, and it was time to "see what kind of guts you have." He paused, as if to let it sink in. The silence was like a palpable solid, the tension like that in a drumhead. After thirty or forty seconds of this, he turned to General Wheeler and demanded that Wheeler say what he would do if he were the President of the
General Wheeler took a deep breath before answering. He was not an easy man to shake: his calm response set the tone for the others. He had known coming in, as had the others that Lyndon Johnson was an exceptionally strong personality and a venal and vindictive man as well. He had known that the stakes were high, and now realized that McNamara had prepared Johnson carefully for this meeting, which had been a charade.
Looking President Johnson squarely in the eye, General Wheeler told him that he understood the tremendous pressure and sense of responsibility Johnson felt. He added that probably no other President in history had had to make a decision of this importance, and further cushioned his remarks by saying that no matter how much about the presidency he did understand, there were many things about it that only one human being could ever understand. General Wheeler closed his remarks by saying something very close to this: "You, Mr. President, are that one human being. I cannot take your place, think your thoughts, know all you know, and tell you what I would do if I were you. I can't do it, Mr. President. No man can honestly do it. Respectfully, sir, it is your decision and yours alone."
Apparently unmoved, Johnson asked each of the other Chiefs the same question. One at a time, they supported General Wheeler and his rationale. By now, my arms felt as though they were about to break. The map seemed to weigh a ton, but the end appeared to be near. General Greene was the last to speak.
When General Greene finished, President Johnson, who was nothing if not a skilled actor, looked sad for a moment, then suddenly erupted again, yelling and cursing, again using language that even a Marine seldom hears. He told them he was disgusted with their naive approach, and that he was not going to let some military idiots talk him into World War
The Joint Chiefs of Staff had done their duty. They knew that the nation was making a strategic military error, and despite the rebuffs of their civilian masters in the Pentagon, they had insisted on presenting the problem as they saw it to the highest authority and recommending solutions. They had done so, and they had been rebuffed. That authority had not only rejected their solutions, but had also insulted and demeaned them. As Admiral McDonald and I drove back to the Pentagon, he turned to me and said that he had known tough days in his life, and sad ones as well, but ". . . this has got to have been the worst experience I could ever imagine."
The
Why had Johnson not only dismissed their recommendations,
but also ridiculed them? It must have been that Johnson had lacked something.
Maybe it was foresight or boldness. Maybe it was the sophistication and
understanding it took to deal with complex international issues. Or, since he
was clearly a bully, maybe what he lacked was courage.
We will never know. But had General Wheeler and the others
received a fair hearing, and had their recommendations received serious study,
the United States may well have saved the lives of most of its more than 55,000
sons who died in a war that its major architect, Robert Strange McNamara, now
considers to have been a tragic mistake.
So the reality of a ground war and its associated expenses and kickbacks... along with the assurance of a rich and well cared for life.... was not the main reason for the decision?
ReplyDeleteKicking the crap out of little N Vietnam in a week only saves lives....
it does not make anyone rich, nor shift the balance of drug power back to the USA...
I think ole LBJ knew EXACTLY what he was doing.
While at the same time enjoying most what he liked to do - intimidate and control.
DJ