University of Virginia Library

Johnson Rides Into Battle

President Johnson's record
majority in 1964 owed much
to the electorate's feeling that
Barry Goldwater would
convert the Indochinese
conflict into the major war
that Johnson had pledged by
implication to avoid; Johnson
could have withdrawn from
Indochina to little more than a
corporal's guard of protest
from the Republican right
wing. But partly because he
himself was a product of the
Cold War demonology and was
confident of America's
limitless capacity to do good,
partly because he projected his
own ego into the situation, he
rode into battle. "I am not
going to be the first President
to lose a war," he boldly
declared.

By Mr. Nixon's inauguration
in 1969, few informed
observers still believed in the
monolithic communism thesis
or still thought that control of
Vietnam had the remotest
relationship to the security of
the United States. Yet many
policy makers insisted that the
logical response to what was at
last recognized as a civil war
– total withdrawal forthwith –
would materially compromise
the geopolitical position of the
most powerful nation in the
world. There was also a
personal factor. Mr. Nixon, like
Mr. Johnson, was determined
not to be the first president to
lose a war.

Mr. Nixon's solution was to
defuse the militant, draft-prone
university students by
disengaging on the ground
while bringing the North
Vietnamese to bay by
escalating in the air. This
agonizing process lasted four
years, caused the death of
20,000 additional Americans,
and killed nobody knows how
many Vietnamese; by its end
Mr. Nixon had rained more
bombs on Indochina than the
Allies dropped on Hitler's
Germany in World War II. Out
of the holocaust came the
face-saving agreement of last
October. But then, prodded by
President Thieu, Mr. Nixon
violated what the authority on
Nuremberg, Gen. Telford
Taylor, terms the principle of
proportionality by instituting,
in Taylor's words, the
"wanton" Christmas bombings
for essentially "trivial
objectives.