Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (74 page)

According to Stanley Karnow’s
Vietnam: A History,
“Even Johnson privately expressed doubts only a few days after the second attack supposedly took place, confiding to an aide, ‘Hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.’”

But that didn’t stop Lyndon Johnson. Without waiting for a review of the situation, he ordered an air strike against North Vietnam in “retaliation” for the “attacks” on the U.S. ships. American jets flew more than sixty sorties against targets in North Vietnam. One bitter result of these air raids was the capture of downed pilot Everett Alvarez Jr., the first American POW of the Vietnam War. He would remain in Hanoi prisons for eight years.

President Johnson followed up the air strike by calling for passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This proposal gave the president the authority to “take all necessary measures” to repel attacks against U.S. forces and to “prevent further aggression.” The resolution not only gave Johnson the powers he needed to increase American commitment to Vietnam, but allowed him to blunt Goldwater’s accusations that Johnson was “timid before Communism.” The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed the House unanimously after only forty minutes of debate. In the Senate, there were only two voices in opposition. What Congress did not know was that the resolution had been drafted several months before the Tonkin incident took place.

Congress, which alone possesses the constitutional authority to declare war, had handed that power over to a man who was not a bit reluctant to use it. One of the senators who voted against the Tonkin Resolution, Oregon’s Wayne Morse, later said, “I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution.” After the vote, Walt Rostow, an adviser to Lyndon Johnson, remarked, “We don’t know what happened, but it had the desired result.”

MILESTONES IN THE VIETNAM WAR

While American involvement in Vietnam and much of Southeast Asia came after the Second World War, the roots of Western involvement in the region date to the nineteenth-century colonial era when France took control of parts of the Vietnamese Empire in 1862. During World War II, Japan fought the French in Indochina. It was during that time that Ho Chi Minh (born 1890 in central Vietnam) emerged to create the Vietminh to battle both France and Japan. In 1918, Ho had left Vietnam for the West, and had tried to influence President Wilson to allow Vietnam self-determination at the Versailles peace talks after World War I. When that failed, he joined the French Communist Party and went to Moscow, returning in secret to Vietnam in 1941. In 1945, the Japanese seized control of Indochina, allowing the emperor to declare his independence from France.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Ho declared the country independent as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, encompassing the whole country. He dissolved the Communist Party to form a coalition government with other nationalists, and in 1946, France recognized the DRV as a free state within the French Union. But later that year, the French and Vietnamese would begin to fight the French-Indochina War.

1950

While U.S. troops fight in Korea, President Truman grants military aid to France for its war against Communist rebels in Indochina. The United States will ultimately pay the lion’s share—75 to 80 percent—of France’s military costs in the war against the Ho Chi Minh–led Vietminh rebels.

1954

Although the use of an atomic bomb is actively considered, President Eisenhower decides against providing direct military support to the French in their stand at their base at Dienbienphu. Eisenhower instead favors continued aid for France in Indochina, and tells the press in April that Southeast Asia may otherwise fall to Communism. Says Eisenhower, if you “have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.”

May
The French stronghold at Dienbienphu is overrun by Vietnamese forces under General Giap. The French withdraw from Indochina, and Vietnam is partitioned at a conference in Geneva, creating the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North and the Republic of South Vietnam with its capital at Saigon. A political settlement to the country’s division is left to a future election that will never take place. The United States continues its direct involvement in Vietnam by sending $100 million in aid to the anti-Communist Saigon government led by Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem.

1955

Direct aid and military training are provided to the Saigon government. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos receive more than $200 million in U.S. aid this year.

October
The Republic of Vietnam is proclaimed by Prime Minister Diem following a rigged election organized by the United States. Diem had rejected a unification election with the North.

1959

July 8
Two American soldiers, Major Dale Buis and Master Sergeant Chester Ovnard, are killed by Vietcong at Bienhoa. They are the first Americans to die in Vietnam during this era. By year’s end, there are some 760 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam.

1960

At the request of the Diem government, the number of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group is increased to 685.

November
A military coup against Diem is foiled. The U.S. government advises Diem to implement radical reforms to eliminate corruption.

December
In the North, the Hanoi government announces a plan calling for reunification and overthrow of the Diem government. The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam is formed, and its guerrillas will be known as the Vietcong.

1961

After touring Vietnam, President Kennedy’s advisers, Walt Rostow and General Maxwell Taylor, recommend sending 8,000 U.S. combat troops there. Instead, President Kennedy chooses to send more equipment and advisers. By year’s end, there are 3,205 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam.

1962

February 6
The American Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) is formed, based in Saigon.

May
President Kennedy sends 5,000 marines and fifty jets to Thailand to counter Communist expansion in Laos. The number of American advisers is increased to nearly 12,000.

1963

January
The Army of the Republic of South Vietnam suffers a major defeat against a much smaller Vietcong force at the Battle of Ap Bac. The performance of the Vietnamese troops and commanders, under American guidance, is disastrous.

May–August
Antigovernment demonstrations by Buddhist monks provoke violent reprisals. In protest, numerous monks commit suicide by setting themselves afire.

November
General Duong Van Minh and other South Vietnamese officers stage a coup and overthrow the Diem government with U.S. knowledge and CIA assistance. Diem and his brother are murdered. Three weeks later, President Kennedy is assassinated.

December
By the end of the year, President Johnson has increased the number of American advisers to 16,300, and the United States has sent $500 million to South Vietnam in this year alone. The CIA begins training South Vietnamese guerrillas as part of an ambitious covert sabotage operation against the North, under American direction.

1964

January
Lieutenant General William Westmoreland (1914–2005) is appointed deputy commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam.

January 30
General Nguyen Khanh seizes power in Saigon; General Minh is retained as a figurehead chief of state.

June
Westmoreland is promoted to commander of MACV.

August 2
While conducting electronic surveillance ten miles off North Vietnam, in the Gulf of Tonkin, the American destroyer
Maddox
is pursued by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. As the patrol boats close in, the
Maddox
opens fire and the patrol boats respond with torpedoes, which miss. The destroyer calls for air support from the nearby carrier
Ticonderoga,
and three United States fighter planes attack the boats. The
Maddox
sinks one patrol boat, cripples the other two, and withdraws. Two days later, the
Maddox
and a second destroyer, the
Turner Joy,
are ordered back to Tonkin to “reassert freedom of international waters.”

August 4
President Johnson reports to congressional leaders that a second attack has been made on the
Maddox
, although this attack was never confirmed and was later shown not to have taken place.

August 5
U.S. planes bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for the “attacks” on the U.S. ships. The American bombing mission is called “limited in scale,” but more than sixty sorties are flown, destroying oil depots and patrol boats. Two American planes are shot down and Everett Alvarez is captured, the first American prisoner of war in Vietnam. He is held for more than eight years.

August 7
By a unanimous vote in the House, and with only two dissenting votes in the Senate, Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson powers to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Johnson later says the resolution was “like grandma’s nightshirt—it covered everything.”

August 26
President Johnson is nominated at the Democratic National Convention and chooses Hubert Humphrey as his running mate. Pledging before the election to “seek no wider war,” Johnson defeats Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in a landslide, with a plurality of 15.5 million votes.

September
UN Secretary General U Thant proposes mediating talks with North Vietnam to avert a war. Withholding some information from Johnson, American officials reject these negotiations.

October 30
In a Vietcong attack on the U.S. airbase at Bien Hoa, six B-57 bombers are destroyed and five Americans are killed.

December 31
The number of American military advisers rises to 23,300.

1965

February 7
Following a Vietcong attack on a U.S. base at Pleiku in which eight Americans are killed, President Johnson orders air raids against North Vietnam and the beginning of a new round of escalation in the war, in what is named Operation Flaming Dart. Communist guerrillas then attack another American base, and Flaming Dart II is ordered in retaliation.

February 19
A series of competing coups result in Nguyen Cao Ky, an air force general, taking control of South Vietnam.

March 2
The United States begins Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing of North Vietnam. It will continue until October 31, 1968.

March 8
Two battalions of American marines land and are assigned to protect the airbase at Danang. They are the first American combat troops in Vietnam.

April 7
President Johnson calls for talks with Hanoi to end the war. The plan is rejected by Hanoi, which says any settlement must be based on its Vietcong program.

April 15
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) sponsors a large antiwar rally in Washington.

June 11
Fellow generals choose Nguyen Cao Ky, a flamboyant young officer, as prime minister of a South Vietnamese military regime.

November 14–17
In the first major conventional clash of the war, U.S. forces defeat North Vietnamese units in the Ia Drang Valley.

December 25
President Johnson suspends bombing in an attempt to get the North to negotiate. By year’s end, American troop strength is nearly 200,000, combat losses total 636 Americans killed, and at home, draft quotas have been doubled.

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

P
RESIDENT
L
YNDON B. JOHNSON,
to his secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara (June 1965), quoted in
Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965
:

It’s going to be difficult for us to very long prosecute effectively a war that far away from home with the divisions we have here—and particularly the potential divisions. I’m very depressed about it. Because I see no program from either Defense or State that gives me much hope of doing anything, except just praying and gasping to hold on during monsoon and hope they’ll quit. I don’t believe they’re ever going to quit. And I don’t see . . . that we have any . . . plan for a victory—militarily or diplomatically.