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The Confessions of Robert S. McNamara

Robert S. McNamara could give duplicity a bad name. In his new memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, he says that the Vietnam War was a mistake and that he knew it all along. We should have gotten out in 1963, when fewer than 100 Americans had been killed. When he and other US policymakers took us to war, they “had not truly investigated what was essentially at stake.”

McNamara was Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 in the Kennedy Administration, which led the US into the Vietnam adventure, and in the Johnson Administration, which widened the involvement to a war in which 58,000 American troops died. He was not some star-crossed functionary who went passively along with a policy he opposed. He was so fiery an advocate that Vietnam became known as “McNamara’s War.” His actions then and his statements now cannot be reconciled with honor.

The duplicity has another dimension. News accounts bill In Retrospect as a stark admission of guilt, but an actual reading of it tells a different story. McNamara does, to be sure, acknowledge that he and his colleagues were “wrong, terribly wrong,” but the admissions account for relatively little of the book’s substance. The bulk of it explains how these were honest mistakes and not altogether the fault of McNamara and his friends. They were deceived, undercut, poorly served, badly advised, and distracted by “the staggering variety and complexity of other issues we faced.”

Somehow, it is not altogether surprising that McNamara comes close to ignoring the rank and file of the US armed forces. In the entire book, there are just four brief instances, one of them in a footnote, when the troops cross his mind. The best he can bring himself to say for those killed in action is that “the unwisdom of our intervention” does not “nullify their effort and their loss.”

The people who get McNamara’s attention and regard are the anguished insiders of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and assorted antiwar activists, intelligentsia, and others operating on the fashionable left flank of the Democratic Party in the 1960s. McNamara was able to skip a personal crisis when the draft board reclassified his son, Craig–who, like the rest of McNamara’s family, opposed the war–from 1-A to 4-F (for ulcers). McNamara says he was “just as concerned” about those who could not or did not sit out the war at home, but his claim is not convincing. Vietnam veterans called on McNamara to donate the profits from the book to Vietnam veteran charities. He declined and will give the proceeds instead to a program to establish “dialogue” between Americans and Vietnamese.

Reaction to In Retrospect has been overwhelmingly negative, but a few voices have spoken in McNamara’s favor. President Clinton–who evaded the military draft in 1969–said that McNamara’s revelations “vindicated his view.” The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry in Hanoi agreed with McNamara that the United States had been “terribly wrong.”

McNamara never learned the real lessons of the war. In Retrospect ticks off “eleven major causes for our disaster in Vietnam,” but they run mostly to philosophical mush like “We misjudged then–as we have since–the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries” and “We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions.”

Incredibly, McNamara recalls–but regards it as insignificant–that the service chiefs told him in 1964 that the US had not defined a “militarily valid objective for Vietnam.” With similar arrogance, McNamara continues to believe that his strategic and tactical abilities were better than those of the military professionals and that his micromanagement of the war was a good idea. (Air Force operations, in particular, were so controlled that President Johnson once bragged that “they can’t even bomb an outhouse without my approval.”)

He does not seem to understand that North Vietnam was fighting a war, whereas the United States was sending signals and trying to play mind games with Hanoi. He remains oblivious to the actual lessons of Vietnam, embodied in the “Weinberger Doctrine” of 1984 by his successor, Caspar Weinberger. Before committing US forces to combat, we should ask ourselves six questions: Is a vital US interest at stake? Will we commit sufficient resources to win? Will we sustain the commitment? Are the objectives clearly defined? Is there reasonable expectation that the public and Congress will support the operation? Have we exhausted our other options? The Persian Gulf War of 1991 followed the Weinberger Doctrine to the letter, but Vietnam failed on all counts.

McNamara denies that his purpose is self-justification. In Retrospect, however, reveals him to be as stubborn as ever and working to ensure that whatever blame sticks to him or his friends is nominal. Recently, he has been a spokesman for liberal concepts and causes, and he seems to regard his Vietnam memoir as a springboard for further comment. He is irritated that people are ignoring the book’s preachy appendix on nuclear weapons.

Given McNamara’s disclosures about his judgment and character–on top of what we already knew–it is difficult to imagine that anyone wants to hear any more from him about anything. His best service now would be to go away and shut up.

Robert S. McNamara (born June 9, 1916, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died July 6, 2009, Washington, D.C.) U.S. secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 who revamped Pentagon operations and who played a major role in the nation’s military involvement in the Vietnam War.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937, McNamara earned a graduate degree at the Harvard Business School (1939) and later joined the Harvard faculty. Disqualified from combat duty during World War II by poor vision, he developed logistical systems for bomber raids and statistical systems for monitoring troops and supplies.

After the war, McNamara was one of the “Whiz Kids” hired to revitalize the Ford Motor Company. His plans, including the institution of strict cost-accounting methods and the development of both compact and luxury models, met with success, and McNamara rose rapidly in the corporate ranks. In 1960 he became the first person outside the Ford family to assume presidency of the company.

After just one month as Ford’s president, however, McNamara resigned to join the John F. Kennedy administration as secretary of defense. In his new post he successfully gained control of Pentagon operations and the military bureaucracy, encouraged the modernization of the armed forces, restructured budget procedures, and cut costs by refusing to spend money on what he believed were unnecessary or obsolete weapons systems. McNamara was also at the centre of a drive to alter U.S. military strategy from the “massive retaliation” of the Eisenhower years to a “flexible response,” emphasizing counterinsurgency techniques and second-strike nuclear-missile capability.

McNamara initially advocated the deepening military involvement of the United States in Vietnam. On visits to South Vietnam in 1962, 1964, and 1966, the secretary publicly expressed optimism that the National Liberation Front and its North Vietnamese allies would soon abandon their attempt to overthrow the U.S.-backed Saigon regime. He became the government’s chief spokesman for the day-to-day operations of the war and acted as Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s principal deputy in the war’s prosecution.

As early as 1965, however, McNamara had privately begun to question the wisdom of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, and by 1967 he was openly seeking a way to launch peace negotiations. He initiated a top-secret full-scale investigation of the American commitment to Vietnam (later published as The Pentagon Papers), came out in opposition to continued bombing of North Vietnam (for which he lost influence in the Johnson administration), and in February 1968 left the Pentagon to become president of the World Bank.

In his 13-year tenure as head of that institution, McNamara displayed what was generally regarded as great sensitivity to the needs of Third World nations. He retired from the World Bank in 1981 but remained active in many other organizations. He addressed issues such as world hunger, East-West relations, and other policy matters. His policy papers were published in two volumes, and his book Blundering into Disaster: Surviving the First Century in a Nuclear Age (1986) discusses nuclear war.

In 1995 McNamara published a memoir, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, in which he describes the anticommunist political climate of the era, mistaken assumptions of foreign policy, and misjudgments on the part of the military that combined to create the Vietnam debacle. In Errol Morris’s documentary film The Fog of War (2003), McNamara discusses his career in the Pentagon as well as U.S. failures in Vietnam.

McNamara and His Vietnam War

Robert S. McNamara, one of John F. Kennedy’s Whiz Kids, was educated at Harvard
Business School and served as the longest and most controversial Secretary of Defense in
American history. During his tenure, McNamara oversaw the increase of advisors and troops that were deployed to Vietnam. He had been hopeful when he stated that America could begin to withdraw support from Saigon in 1962 as a result of the progress made. However, after a trip to Vietnam, his response to the disaster laid the groundwork for which the Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations would follow in aiding South Vietnam. Even so, McNamara, who had initially supported the cause, never seemed to have a long-term plan, which frustrated military officials. All the while, he became Johnson’s most trusted advisor and lied on his behalf on multiple occasions. In 1966, McNamara introduced Project 100,000, which called for theenlistment of individuals who were mentally deficient and had already flunked the Armed Forces Qualification Test, resulting in tragedy. The historiography and public perception have shifted since the release of his memoirs in 1995, his subsequent speaking tour, and the 2003 documentary The Fog of War. His inconsistency towards Vietnam, the multitude of deceits and lies expressed, and his disastrous attempt to draft mentally deficient individuals displays the man not as a hero, but as incompetent and deceiver.

President John F. Kennedy inherited from his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, a
deteriorating situation in what had once been French Indochina. While Eisenhower had desired a “limited-risk gamble”, Kennedy was on a crusade to contain communism and aid the Republic of Vietnam. Pentagon analysts believe that Kennedy, although avoiding a full-frontal deployment of ground troops, “took a series of actions that significantly expanded the American military and political involvement in Vietnam”. General Maxwell D. Taylor recommended that the Kennedy administration commit between “6,000 to 8,000 American ground troops” to aid in Vietnam. Robert McNamara subsequently sent a memorandum to Kennedy on 5 November 1961 which stated that “he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were ‘inclined to recommend’ General Taylor’s proposal”. However, he warned that more troops were likely to be required in the future but that it wouldn’t “exceed six divisions,” which was roughly 205,000 men. Kennedy would ultimately reject this proposal. However, he approved the increase of advisors. Nevertheless, McNamara refused to concede, and on 8 November wrote another memorandum to the president. This time he reinforced the policy of containment, stating that the United States ought to commit “to the clear objective of preventing the fall of South Vietnam to Communism” which could only succeed through the use of “necessary military actions”. The Secretary of State Dean Rusk and McNamara stated that providing additional advisors, and even deploying troops, would violate the 1954 Geneva accords, but they believed it was justified as a result of
the North Vietnamese violations. McNamara, it would appear, lacked a long-term goal in
Vietnam. He began the process of “planning for American withdrawal from Vietnam” and called for the reduction of “financial aid to the Saigon Government” because of “tremendous progress” in early 1962”. Additionally, McNamara was obsessed with lowering budgets and believed there would only be roughly 1,500 troops in Vietnam by 1968. Whereas, Michael V. Forrestal, President Kennedy’s senior White House Aid, forecasted “a long and costly war”.

By 1963, the United States appeared to be “without a policy and with most of its bridges
burned”. On the 31st of August, Rusk specified that the United States ought to remain in
Vietnam until the war had been won and that they wouldn’t support a coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm – a view endorsed by McNamara. For an additional five consecutive weeks, Kennedy moved along without a clear policy towards the situation. McNamara and General Taylor were sent to South Vietnam on 23 September, upon their return, and for the first time, McNamara had serious doubts about the situation in Saigon.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff and McNamara were aware of a plot to overthrow Diệm. General Paul D. Harkins on 5 October was under the impression that there was “no initiative” to “encourage a coup”; but the Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., insisted that “a change of government is desired … the only way to bring about such a change is by a coup”. The coup ultimately took place on the 2nd of November 1963 against Diệm. Herbert McMaster stated in his book Dereliction of Duty that America had been complicit “in precipitating a violent change of government in South Vietnam” which resulted in an expansion of “American military and political commitment to Diem’s successor”.

If McNamara and the Chiefs of Staff had warned Diệm, the United States would likely have continued with its current policy. On 21 December McNamara believed that the new
regime was ineffective and that the situation in the countryside hadn’t been as positive as Diệm had insisted. The situation in the countryside had “been deteriorating… since July to a far greater extent than we realize” as a result of “distorted Vietnamese reporting”. He continued, stating that the current trend was “very disturbing” and “unless reversed in the next two-three months” it could lead to a “Communist-controlled state”. His assessment ultimately laid the “groundwork for decisions in early 1964”, which included covert operations against North Vietnam and additional aid for South Vietnam. McNamara progressed from wanting to phase-out troops and support in 1962 to the belief that additional American support was required to bolster the South Vietnamese nation. He stated in 1964 that he didn’t “object to it being called McNamara’s war” because he viewed it as “a very important war”, wanting to “be identified with it and do whatever I can to win it”.

In March 1964, McNamara once more returned from a trip to Vietnam, believing that plans ought to be drawn up for “new and significant pressures on North Vietnam” due, in large part, to the fact that the newly established Nguyễn Khánh government was ineffective and unable to improve significantly. That being said, McNamara, in May 1964, was, as observed previously, hesitant to commit to a long-term plan. Ambassador Lodge had
suggested that to support and boost Saigon, the United States needed to provide action through the use of bombing attacks. McNamara, even though in agreement with Lodge, believed that “such actions must be supplementary to and not a substitute for” success against the Vietcong in the South”. By June, Lodge had convinced McNamara, Rusk, and John McCone that it was paramount to bomb North Vietnamese military targets. The Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred on 2 August 1964 with a follow-up incident on 4 August. The incident on 2 August, according to McNamara in the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, occurred without the Defense Department responding; while the 4 August attack had never actually happened. As a result of McNamara’s intel and testification before the Senate regarding the situation, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted Johnson the legal authority to deploy United States troops in countries that were in danger of falling to communism.

McNamara’s sheer incompetence towards maintaining a long-term policy or plan for
Vietnam and the addition of doubting that the war was winnable was disconcerting for many high-ranking officials in the military. Their doubts of McNamara would ultimately turn into outright hatred. Matters were made worse once he became “the president’s dominant advisor on military affairs”. McNamara additionally had an act for deception and manipulation. Until the publication of his memoirs in 1995, he had never publicly criticized the Vietnam War or stated to the press, during his tenure as Secretary of Defense, that the war was unwinnable. Another example was when the military defense budget had reportedly exceeded $400 million for the fiscal year of 1964, which left Johnson worried. McNamara came to his aid and simply manipulated the numbers and “volunteered to underestimate deliberately what moneys were spent for defense and later feign surprise when spending exceeded his department’s forecast”.

Republican Representative Gerald Ford “confronted McNamara with charges that Navy yards had been withheld from a base closure list” and McNamara responded by blaming “incompetent naval officers for the omission”, stating that “the Navy don’t know their [sic] ass from a hole in the ground”. Although he eventually grew hesitant towards the war in Vietnam, McNamara had established the groundwork for an American commitment to the South Vietnamese. Additionally, his belief that it would be a quick incident resulted in him not having a long-term plan or goal for the region – with the only ultimate goal being to contain communism. The Vietnam War was, in essence, McNamara’s war. He ultimately lost control of this war once the situation in Saigon grew worse, tried to hide the true cost of the war, misled reporters and congress, and there wasn’t a central plan.

McNamara’s Project 100,000

Many middle-class American males had been successful in evading the draft. These
young men avoided being drafted by attending college or claiming they had a disability.
Loopholes existed such as working “certain occupations, such as engineers, farmers, teachers, ministers, and divinity students”. Additionally, a willing doctor “would attest to a medical problem, such as flat feet, extreme allergies, or skin rashes”. A University of Notre Dame study concluded that an estimated 75% of excused men had been active in avoiding the draft. Many men found refuge in the National Guard or the Reserves. As a result, a standard infantry platoon, according to historian James E. Westheider, consisted primarily of “minorities, the poor, and the working class, with a sprinkling of middle-class youth”. The majority of the war’s burden was placed upon the less fortunate of society. This, going into 1966, would continue drastically.

President Johnson and McNamara were faced with a dilemma. As a result of so many
middle-class Americans evading the draft and the Pentagon only demanding tours lasting less than a year, the military always demanded “thousands of fresh troops… to be deployed to Vietnam every month to replace the thousands that were departing”. Johnson refused to anger “the vote-powerful middle class”, which would have meant drafting college boys and calling up the National Guard and Reserves. Thus the working class and poor were called upon to fill the military’s manpower requirements. However, issues emerged due to many men from poorer neighborhoods having already “flunked the military’s entrance exam”. As such, McNamara and Johnson planned to lower the standards for passing the Armed Forces Qualification Test. Men who had once been declared unfit to serve would ultimately be drafted.

In August 1966, Robert McNamara revealed his plan to the Veterans of Foreign Wars
that the military would, in addition to waging war in Vietnam, assist Johnson’s War on
Poverty. The undereducated and disadvantaged young men had initially been rejected by the military “because their mental aptitude scores were at the lower end of the Armed Forces Qualification Test”. This scheme was ultimately called Project 100,000 because it called for the enlistment of roughly “one hundred thousand lower aptitude recruits a year”. McNamara exclaimed that “These young men… can be rehabilitated… Many are poorly motivated when they reach us. They lack initiative. They lack pride. They lack ambition”. He believed “through the use of videotapes and closed-circuit TV lessons” the intelligence of these recruits would increase immensely. McNamara truly believed that “videotapes as an aid to… formal instruction” would result in them “becoming as proficient as high-aptitude student”. Educators and psychologists chaffed at McNamara’s stance on audiovisual instruction, with biographer Deborah Shapley asserting that he was “a naïve believer in technological miracles”. Additional critics believed that Project 100,000 was a cynical dream dreamt up by McNamara to enlist more less-fortunate instead of middle-class Americans. Interestingly, this proposal hadn’t originated with McNamara. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist, believed the “best way to solve poverty in America was to draft… young men rejected annually as unfit for military service”. This, according to Moynihan, and later McNamara, would teach these individuals critical work skills, implement discipline, and, as such, would become middle-class citizens.

Lyndon Johnson admired Moynihan’s vision and stated to McNamara that the military
could teach these men how to “get up at daylight and work till dark and shave and bathe”. In
response, McNamara stated that the Defense Department opposed such an idea because “they don’t want to be in the business of dealing with ‘morons’”. The Defense Department’s stance didn’t deter McNamara, who, from 1964 till 1965, attempted time and again to lower the Armed Forces Qualification Test standards; however, military leaders, the Pentagon, and Senators resisted McNamara’s scheme. Richard Russel, a Democratic Senator from Georgia, “accused McNamara of trying to establish a “moron corps” and the Department of the Army responded, stating they only desired “the highest caliber of men”. Ultimately, once the need for more men emerged in 1966, military leaders capitulated to Johnson and McNamara’s plan. Before Project 100,000’s implementation, to be drafted into the army, a man had to have an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 92 or higher. However, once the standards were lowered, men with an IQ between 72 and 91 were now eligible – even some with an IQ lower than 72 were considered adequate.

McNamara’s “Moron Corps” was, according to the initial unveiling of Project 100,000,
supposed to receive training from the military “in special skills that would lift them out of
poverty”. However, this promise never came to fruition. Marine Captain David Anthony
Dawson proclaimed that “The real tragedy of Project 100,000 lay in McNamara’s refusal to find additional funding for special training” and that he “allotted just enough to provide the minimum amount of training for all Marines”. Drill Instructor Gregg Stoner was shocked that “mentally slow” individuals who were “unable to read” were inducted into the Marines. Upon the death of McNamara in 2009, war correspondent Joseph Galloway, who had been awarded a Brown Star with Valor due to his service in Vietnam, believed it was shameful to have drafted “mentally deficient. Illiterate. Mostly black and redneck whites… By drafting them the Pentagon would not have to draft an equal number of the middle class and elite college boys whose mothers could and would raise hell”. The majority “of the 354,000 men of Project 100,000” were deployed to Vietnam, half being assigned to combat roles. In total, 5,478 of these individuals perished with a fatality rate “three times that of other GIs”. These men were referred to as cannon fodder, simply more bodies to throw into Vietnam.

Lieutenant colonel Leslie John Shellhase, a World War II veteran, served under
McNamara and “played a central role in planning Project 100,000. From his account, Shellhase stated that he believed the concept was a terrible idea. Going on to say that the Pentagon planners had “resisted Project 100,000 because we knew that wars are not won by using marginal manpower as cannon fodder”. Once resistance failed, the Pentagon planners attempted to persuade McNamara to no avail. Shellhase, and his fellow Pentagon planners, never “envisioned that these men would be used in combat”, simply for service and support roles. General William Westmoreland complained that Project 100,000 resulted in declining success in Vietnam because they sent him “dummies”, including “low-quality officers” such as Lieutenant William Calley – a man who “flunked out of Palm Beach Junior College… and reportedly managed to get through officer candidate school without even learning to read a map or use a compass”. In the trial for Calley’s role in the My Lai Massacre, his own attorney “used Calley’s low intelligence as a courtroom defense” and blamed the Army for lowering their mental standards.

Four-star Marine Corps general Tony Zinni stated that “the need for bodies had been so great that recruiters were sending people into the military who never should have been there” and that promotions were granted too quickly. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Charles L. Armstrong believed the “single biggest blunders” during the Vietnam era was the introduction of Project 100,000. In addition to taking longer to train, anxiety and stress had a profound effect upon these men. American military leaders believed that these individuals ought to have only been used for “menial tasks performed away from the battlefield” and never “used in combat”. With a death rate three times higher than fellow GIs, false promises of training, and an attempt to simply please middle-class voters, McNamara’s decision to implement Project 100,000 resulted in disaster.

Conclusion

Robert S. McNamara was ultimately relieved of his position in 1968 due, in part, because
high-ranking generals and admirals believed he was mismanaging the war. His inability to stick to a policy for the region resulted in inconsistencies and no long-term goal. The coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm, of which he and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were aware, occurred without intervention. He misled the Senate regarding the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, he was willing to cover up a $400 million excess in defense spending, and, while publicly stating to journalists that the war was going well, privately, he felt otherwise. This behavior exposes McNamara as a consistent liar. His Project 100,000 was, although on the surface altruistic and an attempt to aid Johnson’s Great Society, a miserable failure, since military commanders complained that these mentally deficient draftees took longer to train, didn’t receive the proper training since McNamara slashed the promised budget, most couldn’t read or comprehend instructions, and died at greater rates than other soldiers while in combat. All in an attempt to please middle-class voters, the war was a perfect example of the poor fighting a rich man’s war. McNamara’s shortcomings expose the man not as a hero of the Vietnam War but as a consistent calamity.

Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson

Recommendations of additional deployments to Vietnam

1.Introduction. Our object in Vietnam is to create conditions for a favorable outcome by demonstrating to the VC/DRV that the odds are against their winning. We want to create these conditions, if possible, without causing the war to expand into one with China or the Soviet Union and in a way which preserves support of the American people and, hopefully, of our allies and friends. The following assessments, made following my trip to Vietnam with Ambassador-designate Lodge and General Wheeler, are my own and are addressed to the achievement of that object. My specific recommendations appear in paragraph Five; they are concurred in by Ambassador Taylor, Ambassador-designate Lodge, Ambassador Johnson, General Wheeler, Admiral Sharp and General Westmoreland. I have neither asked for nor obtained their concurrence in other portions of the paper.

2.Favorable outcome. In my view, a “favorable outcome” for purposes of these assessments and recommendations has nine fundamental elements:

(a)VC stop attacks and drastically reduce incidents of terror and sabotage.

(b)DRV reduces infiltration to a trickle, with some reasonably reliable method of our obtaining confirmation of this fact.

(c)US/GVN stop bombing of North Vietnam.

(d)GVN stays independent (hopefully pro-US, but possibly genuinely neutral).

(e)GVN exercises governmental functions over substantially all of South Vietnam.

(f)Communists remain quiescent in Laos and Thailand.

(g)DRV withdraws PAVN forces and other North Vietnamese infiltrators (not regroupees) from South Vietnam.(h)VC/NLF transform from a military to a purely political organization.

(i)US combat forces (not advisors or AID) withdraw.

A favorable outcome could include also arrangements regarding elections, relations between North and South Vietnam, participation in peace-keeping by international forces, membership for North and South Vietnam in the UN, and so on. The nine fundamental elements can evolve with or without an express agreement and, except for what might be negotiated incidental to a cease-fire, are more likely to evolve without an express agreement than with one. We do not need now to address the question whether ultimately we would settle for something less than the nine fundamentals; because deployment of the forces recommended in paragraph Five is prerequisite to the achievement of any acceptable settlement, and a decision can be made later, when bargaining becomes a reality, whether to compromise in any particular.

3.Estimate of the situation. The situation in South Vietnam is worse than a year ago (when it was worse than a year before that). After a few months of stalemate, the tempo of the war has quickened. A hard VC push is now on to dismember the nation and to maul the army. The VC main and local forces, reinforced by militia and guerrillas, have the initiative and, with large attacks (some in regimental strength), are hurting ARVN forces badly. The main VC efforts have been in southern I Corps, northern and central II Corps and north of Saigon. The central highlands could well be lost to the National Liberation Front during this monsoon season. Since June 1, the GVN has been forced to abandon six district capitals; only one has been retaken. US combat troop deployments and US/VNAF strikes against the North have put to rest most South Vietnamese fears that the United States will foresake them, and US/VNAF air strikes in-country have probably shaken VC morale somewhat. Yet the government is able to provide security to fewer and fewer people in less and less territory as terrorism increases. Cities and towns are being isolated as fewer and fewer roads and railroads are usable and power and communications lines are cut.

The economy is deteriorating—the war is disrupting rubber production, rice distribution, Dalat vegetable production and the coastal fishing industry, causing the loss of jobs and income, displacement of people and frequent breakdown or suspension of vital means of transportation and communication; foreign exchange earnings have fallen; and severe inflation is threatened.

The odds are less than even that the Ky government will last out the year. Ky is “executive agent” for a directorate of generals. His government is youthful and inexperienced, but dedicated to a “revolutionary” program. His tenure depends upon unity of the armed forces behind him. If the directorate holds together and the downward trend of the war is halted, the religious and regional factions will probably remain quiescent; otherwise there will be political turbulence and possibly uncoordinated efforts to negotiate settlement with the DRV. The Buddhists, Catholics, out-politicians and business community are “wait-and-seeing;” the VC, while unable alone to generate effective unrest in the cities, can “piggy-back” on any anti-government demonstration or cause.

Rural reconstruction (pacification) even in the Hop Tac area around Saigon is making little progress. Gains in IV Corps are being held, but in I and II Corps and adjacent III Corps areas it has lost ground fast since the start of the VC monsoon offensive (300,000 people have been lost to the VC, and tens of thousands of refugees have poured out of these areas).

The Government-to-VC ratio over-all is now only a little better than 3-to-1, and in combat battalions little better than 1.5-to-1. Some ARVN units have been mauled; many are understrength and therefore “conservative.” Desertions are at a high rate, and the force build-up has slipped badly. The VC, who are undoubtedly suffering badly too (their losses are very high), now control a South Vietnamese manpower pool of 500,000 to 1 million fighting-age men and reportedly are trying to double their combat strength, largely by forced draft (down to 15-year-olds) in the increasing areas they control. They seem to be able more than to replace their losses.

There are no signs that we have throttled the inflow of supplies for the VC or can throttle the flow while their materiel needs are as low as they are; indeed more and better weapons have been observed in VC hands, and it is probable that there has been further build-up of North Vietnamese regular units in the I and II Corps areas, with at least three full regiments (all of the 325th Division) there. Nor have our air attacks in North Vietnam produced tangible evidence of willingness on the part of Hanoi to come to the conference table in a reasonable mood. The DRV/VC seem to believe that South Vietnam is on the run and near collapse; they show no signs of settling for less than a complete take-over.

4.Options open to us. We must choose among three courses of action with respect to Vietnam all of which involve different probabilities, outcomes and costs:

(a)Cut our losses and withdraw under the best conditions that can be arranged—almost certainly conditions humiliating the United States and very damaging to our future effectiveness on the world scene.

(b)Continue at about the present level, with the US forces limited to say 75,000, holding on and playing for the breaks—a course of action which, because our position would grow weaker, almost certainly would confront us later with a choice between withdrawal and an emergency expansion of forces, perhaps too late to do any good.

(c)Expand promptly and substantially the US military pressure against the Viet Cong in the South and maintain the military pressure against the North Vietnamese in the North while launching a vigorous effort on the political side to lay the groundwork for a favorable outcome by clarifying our objectives and establishing channels of communication. This alternative would stave off defeat in the short run and offer a good chance of producing a favorable settlement in the longer run; at the same time it would imply a commitment to see a fighting war clear through at considerable cost in casualties and materiel and would make any later decision to withdraw even more difficult and even more costly than would be the case today.

My recommendations in paragraph 5 below are based on the choice of the third alternative as the course of action involving the best odds of the best outcome with the most acceptable cost to the United States.

5.Military recommendations. There are now 15 US (and 1 Australian) combat battalions in Vietnam; they, together with other combat personnel and non-combat personnel, bring the total US personnel in Vietnam to approximately 75,000.

a.I recommend that the deployment of US ground troops in Vietnam be increased by October to 34 maneuver battalions (or, if the Koreans fail to provide the expected 9 battalions promptly, to 43 battalions). The battalions—together with increases in helicopter lift, air squadrons, naval units, air defense, combat support and miscellaneous log support and advisory personnel which I also recommend—would bring the total US personnel in Vietnam to approximately 175,000 (200,000 if we must make up for the Korean failure). It should be understood that the deployment of more men (an additional perhaps 100,000) may be necessary in early 1966, and that the deployment of additional forces thereafter is possible but will depend on developments.

b.I recommend that Congress be requested to authorize the call-up of approximately 235,000 men in the Reserve and National Guard. This number—approximately 125,000 Army, 75,000 Marines, 25,000 Air Force and 10,000 Navy—would provide approximately 36 maneuver battalions by the end of this year. The call-up would be for a two-year period; but the intention would be to release them after one year, by which time they could be relieved by regular forces if conditions permitted.

c.I recommend that the regular armed forces be increased by approximately 375,000 men (approximately 250,000 Army, 75,000 Marines, 25,000 Air Force and 25,000 Navy). This would provide approximately 27 additional maneuver battalions by the middle of 1966. The increase would be accomplished by increasing recruitment, increasing the draft and extending tours of duty of men already in the service.

d.I recommend that a supplemental appropriation of approximately $X for FY 1966 be sought from the Congress to cover the first part of the added costs attributable to the build-up in and for the war in Vietnam. A further supplemental appropriation might be required later in the fiscal year.

It should be noted that in mid-1966 the United States would, as a consequence of the above method of handling the build-up, have approximately 600,000 additional men (approximately 63 additional maneuver battalions) as protection against contingencies.

6.Use of forces. The forces will be used however they can be brought to bear most effectively. The US/third-country ground forces will operate in coordination with South Vietnamese forces. They will defend their own bases; they will assist in providing security in neighboring areas; they will augment Vietnamese forces, assuring retention of key logistic areas and population centers. Also, in the initial phase they will maintain a small reserve-reaction force, conducting nuisance raids and spoiling attacks, and opening and securing selected lines of communication; as in-country ground strength increases to a level permitting extended US and third-country offensive action, the forces will be available for more active combat missions when the Vietnamese Government and General Westmoreland agree that such active missions are needed.

The strategy for winning this stage of the war will be to take the offensive—to take and hold the initiative. The concept of tactical operations will be to exploit the offensive, with the objects of putting the VC/DRV battalion forces out of operation and of destroying their morale. The South Vietnamese, US and third-country forces, by aggressive exploitation of superior military forces, are to gain and hold the initiative—keeping the enemy at a disadvantage, maintaining a tempo such as to deny them time to recuperate or regain their balance, and pressing the fight against VC/DRV main force units in South Vietnam to run them to ground and destroy them. The operations should combine to compel the VC/DRV to fight at a higher and more sustained intensity with resulting higher logistical consumption and, at the same time, to limit his capability to resupply forces in combat at that scale by attacking his LOC. The concept assumes vigorous prosecution of the air and sea anti-infiltration campaign and includes increased use of air in-country, including B-52s, night and day to harass VC in their havens. Following destruction of the VC main force units, the South Vietnamese must reinstitute the Program of Rural Reconstruction as an antidote to the continuing VC campaign of terror and subversion.

7.Actions against North Vietnam. We should continue the program of bombing military targets in North Vietnam. While avoiding striking population and industrial targets not closely related to the DRV’s supply of war materiel to the VC, we should announce to Hanoi and carry out actions to destroy such supplies and to interdict their flow. The number of strike sorties against North Vietnam—against fixed targets and for armed reconnaissance—should increase slowly from the present level of 2,500 a month to 4,000 or more a month. We should be prepared at any time to carry out a severe reprisal should the VC or DRV commit a particularly damaging or horrendous act (e.g., VC interdiction of the Saigon river could call for a quarantine of DRV harbors, or VC assassination of a high-ranking US official could call for destruction of all of the major power plants in North Vietnam); the chances of our reprisal action leading to escalation is not large in such an instance.

After the 44 US/third-country battalions have been deployed and after some strong action has been taken in the program of bombing the North (e.g., after the key railroad bridges north of Hanoi have been dropped), we could, as part of a diplomatic initiative, consider introducing a 6-8 week pause in the program of bombing the North.

8.Other actions in South Vietnam. The military program cannot do the job alone. Among others, the following actions should also be taken in South Vietnam.

a.Continue doggedly to “strengthen the rear” by pressing forward with the rural reconstruction (pacification) program, realizing both that the program has little chance of meaningful success unless and until security can be provided, and that the program is fundamental to full success once security is provided.

b.Keep working with the government in Saigon to make it more stable. Consider using the deployment of the US troops as the occasion to lay down some terms—e.g., regarding the presence and use of a US-controlled rice reserve, an effective US veto on major GVN military commanders, statements about invading North Vietnam, and so on.

c.Take steps to meet the economic shortages and disruptions. Especially, the recurring threat of rice inflation should be countered by the provision of an in-country US-controlled rice reserve.

d.Take informational actions to undermine VC morale by reference to VC defeats, to GVN/US weapon superiority, to air attacks on their bases, etc., and by encouraging VC to defect either to the government or “back home.” In this connection, the Chieu Hoi program (to induce VC defections) must be revitalized immediately.

9.Expanded political moves. Together with the above military moves, we should take political initiatives in order to lay a groundwork for a favorable political settlement by clarifying our objectives and establishing channels of communications. At the same time as we are taking steps to turn the tide in South Vietnam, we should make quiet moves through diplomatic channels

(a) to open a dialogue with Moscow and Hanoi, and perhaps the VC, looking first toward disabusing them of any misconceptions as to our goals and second toward laying the groundwork for a settlement when the time is ripe;

(b) to keep the Soviet Union from deepening its military involvement and support of North Vietnam and from generating crises elsewhere in the world until the time when settlement can be achieved; and

(c) to cement support for US policy by the US public, allies and friends, and to keep international opposition at a manageable level. Our efforts may be unproductive until the tide begins to turn, but nevertheless they should be made.

10.South Vietnamese reaction to expansion of US forces. Three factors dominate the psychological situation in South Vietnam:

(a) the military situation (i.e., the security problem),

(b) the effectiveness of the government as a vehicle for dynamic leadership, and

(c) the implications of the growing American presence. The deployments recommended in paragraph five run some risk of causing the Vietnamese to “turn the war over to us” and of generating an “anti-colonial” type resentment toward us. The GVN has requested the additional US forces urgently (indeed, they want 9 battalions more than the 44 recommended here). When Ky was asked about the popular reaction, he said, “We will explain it to our people.” Thieu agreed saying, “They know that you are not here to make us a colony.” Former Prime Minister Quat told me, “The only way to save Vietnam is to send a large number of troops.” He added, “The people of South Vietnam will not object.” The spectres of widespread adverse public reaction have been raised each time we deployed personnel in the past, and, while no deployment has been so massive as this one, no such reaction appeared. Furthermore, the key requirement for continued viability of the Vietnamese spirit in the short run is evidence that RVNAF/US/third-country forces can contain the VC/DRV monsoon offensive and reopen communications; in the longer run the requirement will be evidence of bringing the war to a satisfactory close.

11.Communist reaction to the expanded program. The Soviets can be expected to continue material assistance to North Vietnam and to lodge verbal complaints, but not to intervene otherwise. The Chinese—at least so long as we do not invade North Vietnam, do not sink a Chinese ship and, most important, do not strike China—will probably not send regular ground forces or aircraft into the war. The DRV, on the other hand, may well send up to several divisions of regular forces in South Vietnam to assist the VC if they see the tide turning and victory, once so near, being snatched away. This possible DRV action is the most ominous one, since it would lead to increased pressures on us to “counter-invade” North Vietnam and to extend air strikes to population targets in the North; acceding to these pressures could bring the Soviets and the Chinese in. The Viet Cong, especially if they continue to take high losses, can be expected to depend increasingly upon the PAVN forces as the war moves into a more conventional phase; but they may find ways to continue almost indefinitely their present intensive military, guerrilla and terror activities, particularly if reinforced by some regular PAVN units. A key question on the military side is whether POL, ammunition, and cadres can be cut off and, if they are cut off, whether this really renders the Viet Cong impotent.

12.Evaluation. ARVN overall is not capable of successfully resisting the VC initiatives without more active assistance from more US/third-country ground forces than those thus far committed. Without further outside help, the ARVN is faced with successive tactical reverses, loss of key communication and population centers particularly inn the high-lands, piecemeal destruction of ARVN units, attrition of RVNAF will to fight, and loss of civilian confidence. Early commitment of additional US/third-country forces in sufficient quantity, in general reserve and offensive roles, should stave off GVN defeat.

The success of the program from the military point of view turns on whether the Vietnamese hold their own in terms of numbers and fighting spirit, and on whether the US forces can be effective in a quick-reaction reserve role, a role in which they are only now being tested. The number of US troops is too small to make a significant difference in the traditional 10-1 government-guerrilla formula, but it is not too small to make a significant difference in the kind of war which seems to be evolving in Vietnam—a “Third Stage” or conventional war in which it is easier to identify, locate and attack the enemy.

The plan is such that the risk of escalation into war with China or the Soviet Union can be kept small. US and South Vietnamese casualties will increase—just how much cannot be predicted with confidence, but the US killed-in-action might be in the vicinity of 500 a month by the end of the year. The South Vietnamese under one government or another will probably see the thing through and the United States public will support the course of action because it is a sensible and courageous military-political program designed and likely to bring about a success in Vietnam.

It should be recognized, however, that success against the larger, more conventional VC/PAVN forces could merely drive the VC back into the trees and back to their 1960-64 pattern—a pattern against which US troops and aircraft would be of limited value but with which the GVN, with our help, could cope. The questions here would be whether the VC could maintain morale after such a set-back, and whether the South Vietnamese would have the will to hang on through another cycle. It should be recognized also that, even in “success,” it is not obvious how we will be able to disengage our forces from Vietnam. It is unlikely that a formal agreement good enough for the purpose could possibly be negotiated—because the arrangement can reflect little more than the power situation. A fairly large number of US (or perhaps “international”) forces may be required to stay in Vietnam.

The overall evaluation is that the course of action recommended in this memorandum—if the military and political moves are properly integrated and executed with continuing vigor and visible determination—stands a good chance of achieving an acceptable outcome within a reasonable time in Vietnam.

Robert S. McNamara

The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed in One Epic Document

With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public’s trust in the government was forever diminished.

Brandishing a captured Chinese machine gun, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara appeared at a televised news conference in the spring of 1965. The United States had just sent its first combat troops to South Vietnam, and the new push, he boasted, was further wearing down the beleaguered Vietcong.

“In the past four and one-half years, the Vietcong, the Communists, have lost 89,000 men,” he said. “You can see the heavy drain.”

That was a lie. From confidential reports, McNamara knew the situation was “bad and deteriorating” in the South. “The VC have the initiative,” the information said. “Defeatism is gaining among the rural population, somewhat in the cities, and even among the soldiers.”

Lies like McNamara’s were the rule, not the exception, throughout America’s involvement in Vietnam. The lies were repeated to the public, to Congress, in closed-door hearings, in speeches and to the press. The real story might have remained unknown if, in 1967, McNamara had not commissioned a secret history based on classified documents — which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. I have written an Article on the Pentagon Papers and can be read by clicking on the following link. https://common-sense-in-america.com/2023/02/03/what-is-wrong-with-our-country-the-pentagon-papers/

By then, he knew that even with nearly 500,000 U.S. troops in theater, the war was at a stalemate. He created a research team to assemble and analyze Defense Department decision-making dating back to 1945. This was either quixotic or arrogant. As secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, McNamara was an architect of the war and implicated in the lies that were the bedrock of U.S. policy.

Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst on the study, eventually leaked portions of the report to The New York Times, which published excerpts in 1971. The revelations in the Pentagon Papers infuriated a country sick of the war, the body bags of young Americans, the photographs of Vietnamese civilians fleeing U.S. air attacks and the endless protests and counterprotests that were dividing the country as nothing had since the Civil War.

The lies revealed in the papers were of a generational scale, and, for much of the American public, this grand deception seeded a suspicion of government that is even more widespread today.

Officially titled “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force,” the papers filled 47 volumes, covering the administrations of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Their 7,000 pages chronicled, in cold, bureaucratic language, how the United States got itself mired in a long, costly war in a small Southeast Asian country of questionable strategic importance.

They are an essential record of the first war the United States lost. For modern historians, they foreshadow the mind-set and miscalculations that led the United States to fight the “forever wars” of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The original sin was the decision to support the French rulers in Vietnam. President Harry S. Truman subsidized their effort to take back their Indochina colonies. The Vietnamese nationalists were winning their fight for independence under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, a Communist. Ho had worked with the United States against Japan in World War II, but, in the Cold War, Washington recast him as the stalking horse for Soviet expansionism.

American intelligence officers in the field said that was not the case, that they had found no evidence of a Soviet plot to take over Vietnam, much less Southeast Asia. As one State Department memo put it, “If there is a Moscow-directed conspiracy in Southeast Asia, Indochina is an anomaly.”

But with an eye on China, where the Communist Mao Zedong had won the civil war, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said defeating Vietnam’s Communists was essential “to block further Communist expansion in Asia.” If Vietnam became Communist, then the countries of Southeast Asia would fall like dominoes.

This belief in this domino theory was so strong that the United States broke with its European allies and refused to sign the 1954 Geneva Accords ending the French war. Instead, the United States continued the fight, giving full backing to Ngo Dinh Diem, the autocratic, anti-Communist leader of South Vietnam. Gen. J. Lawton Collins wrote from Vietnam, warning Eisenhower that Diem was an unpopular and incapable leader and should be replaced. If he was not, Gen. Collins wrote, “I recommend re-evaluation of our plans for assisting Southeast Asia.”

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles disagreed, writing in a cable included in the Pentagon Papers, “We have no other choice but continue our aid to Vietnam and support of Diem.”

Nine years and billions of American dollars later, Diem was still in power, and it fell to President Kennedy to solve the long-predicted problem.

After facing down the Soviet Union in the Berlin crisis, Kennedy wanted to avoid any sign of Cold War fatigue and easily accepted McNamara’s counsel to deepen the U.S. commitment to Saigon. The secretary of defense wrote in one report, “The loss of South Vietnam would make pointless any further discussion about the importance of Southeast Asia to the Free World.”

The president increased U.S. military advisers tenfold and introduced helicopter missions. In return for the support, Kennedy wanted Diem to make democratic reforms. Diem refused.

A popular uprising in South Vietnam, led by Buddhist clerics, followed. Fearful of losing power as well, South Vietnamese generals secretly received American approval to overthrow Diem. Despite official denials, U.S. officials were deeply involved.

“Beginning in August of 1963, we variously authorized, sanctioned and encouraged the coup efforts …,” the Pentagon Papers revealed. “We maintained clandestine contact with them throughout the planning and execution of the coup and sought to review their operational plans.”

The coup ended with Diem’s killing and a deepening of American involvement in the war. As the authors of the papers concluded, “Our complicity in his overthrow heightened our responsibilities and our commitment.”

Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated, and the Vietnam issue fell to President Johnson.

He had officials secretly draft a resolution for Congress to grant him the authority to fight in Vietnam without officially declaring war.

Missing was a pretext, a small-bore “Pearl Harbor” moment. That came on Aug. 4, 1964, when the White House announced that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S.S. Maddox in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. This “attack,” though, was anything but unprovoked aggression. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the head of U.S. forces in Vietnam, had commanded the South Vietnamese military while they staged clandestine raids on North Vietnamese islands. North Vietnamese PT boats fought back and had “mistaken Maddox for a South Vietnamese escort vessel,” according to a report. (Later investigations showed the attack never happened.)

Testifying before the Senate, McNamara lied, denying any American involvement in the Tonkin Gulf attacks: “Our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any.”

Three days after the announcement of the “incident,” the administration persuaded Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to approve and support “the determination of the president, as commander in chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression” — an expansion of the presidential power to wage war that is still used regularly. Johnson won the 1964 election in a landslide.

Seven months later, he sent combat troops to Vietnam without declaring war, a decision clad in lies. The initial deployment of 20,000 troops was described as “military support forces” under a “change of mission” to “permit their more active use” in Vietnam. Nothing new.

As the Pentagon Papers later showed, the Defense Department also revised its war aims: “70 percent to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat … 20 percent to keep South Vietnam (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands, 10 percent to permit the people of South Vietnam to enjoy a better, freer way of life.”

Westmoreland considered the initial troop deployment a stopgap measure and requested 100,000 more. McNamara agreed. On July 20, 1965, he wrote in a memo that even though “the U.S. killed-in-action might be in the vicinity of 500 a month by the end of the year,” the general’s overall strategy was “likely to bring about a success in Vietnam.”

As the Pentagon Papers later put it, “Never again while he was secretary of defense would McNamara make so optimistic a statement about Vietnam — except in public.”

Fully disillusioned at last, McNamara argued in a 1967 memo to the president that more of the same — more troops, more bombing — would not win the war. In an about-face, he suggested that the United States declare victory and slowly withdraw.

And in a rare acknowledgment of the suffering of the Vietnamese people, he wrote, “The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.”

Johnson was furious and soon approved increasing the U.S. troop commitment to nearly 550,000. By year’s end, he had forced McNamara to resign, but the defense secretary had already commissioned the Pentagon Papers.

In 1968, Johnson announced that he would not run for re-election; Vietnam had become his Waterloo. Nixon won the White House on the promise to bring peace to Vietnam. Instead, he expanded the war by invading Cambodia, which convinced Daniel Ellsberg that he had to leak the secret history.

After The New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers on Sunday, June 13, 1971, the nation was stunned. The response ranged from horror to anger to disbelief. There was furor over the betrayal of national secrets. Opponents of the war felt vindicated. Veterans, especially those who had served multiple tours in Vietnam, were pained to discover that Americans officials knew the war had been a failed proposition nearly from the beginning.

Convinced that Ellsberg posed a threat to Nixon’s re-election campaign, the White House approved an illegal break-in at the Beverly Hills, Calif., office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist, hoping to find embarrassing confessions on file. The burglars — known as the Plumbers — found nothing, and got away undetected. The following June, when another such crew broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, they were caught.

The North Vietnamese mounted a final offensive, captured Saigon and won the war in April 1975. Three years later, Vietnam invaded Cambodia — another Communist country — and overthrew the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. That was the sole country Communist Vietnam ever invaded, forever undercutting the domino theory — the war’s foundational lie.

Resources

airandspaceforces.com, “The Confessions of Robert S. McNamara.” By John T. Carrell; britannica.com, “Robert S. McNamara:United States statesman.” By Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica aand Jeff Wallenfeldt; nytimes.com, “The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed in One Epic Document: With the Pentagon Papers revelations, the U.S. public’s trust in the government was forever diminished.” By Elizabeth Becker; histroy.state.gov, “Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson.” By Robert McNamara; digitalcommons.lasalle.edu, “McNamara and His Vietnam War.” By Connor L. Haupert;

Common Sense and Ramblings In America

McNamara’s Effect on the Vietnam War

The Secrets and Lies of the Vietnam War, Exposed in One Epic Document

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