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Operation Rolling Thunder Part 2 of 3


Page 191

March 18th Meeting
The men who have come to be known to a small circle in the government as the President’s “senior informal advisory group” convened in the White House early on the evening of March 18th.

Present in addition to Ball were: Arthur Dean, a Republican New York lawyer who was a Korean War negotiator during the Eisenhower administration; Dean Acheson, former President Truman’s Secretary of State; Gen. Matthew B. Ridgeway, the retired commander of United Nations troops in Korea; Gen. Mawell Taylor, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Cirrus Vance, former Deputy Defense Secretary and a key troubleshooter for the Johnson Administration; McGeorge Bundy, Ford Foundation President Tho had been special assistant for National security affairs to Mr. Johnson and former President Kennedy; former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon and Gen. Omar Bradley, a leading supporter of the President’s war policies.

First the group met over dinner with Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Defense Secretary Clark M. Clifford; Ambassador W. Averell Harriman; Walt W. Rostow, the President’s special assistant for National security affairs; Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Richard Helms, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Paul Nitze, Deputy Defense Secretary; Nicholas Katzenbach, Under Secretary of State; and William P. Bundy, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

The outsiders questioned the government officials carefully on the war, the pacification program and the condition of the South Vietnamese government after the Tet offensive. They included in their deliberations the effect of the war on the United States.

Three Briefings After dinner the government officials left and the group received three briefings.

Philip C. Habib, a deputy to William Bundy and now a member of the American negotiating team in Paris, delivered an unusually frank briefing on the conditions in Vietnam after the Tet offensive. He covered such matters as corruption in South Vietnam and the growing refugee problem. Habib, according to reliable sources, told the group that the Saigon government was generally weaker than had been realized as a result of the Tet offensive. He related the situation, some said, with greater frankness than the group had previously heard.

Page 193

Striking Turnabout
The morning of March 19, the advisory group assembled in the White House to discuss what they had heard the previous evening and arrived at their verdict. It was a striking turnabout in attitude for all but Ball.

After their meeting, the group met the President for lunch. It was a social affair. No business was transacted. The meal finished, the advisers delivered their verdict to the President.

He was reportedly greatly surprised at their conclusions. When he asked them where they had obtained the facts on which the conclusions were based, the group told him of the briefings by Habib, DePuy and Carver.

Mr. Johnson knew that the three men had also briefed his governmental advisers, but he had not received the same picture of the war as Rostow presented the reports to him.

As a result of the discrepancy, the President ordered his own direct briefings. At least Habib and DePuy – and almost certainly Carver — had evening President.

Habib was reportedly as frank with had been with the advisory group. The questions, “Habib stuck to his guns,” sessions with the President as the President asked tough one source reported.

On top of all this, Clifford, since he had become Defense Secretary, came to the same conclusions Robert S. McNamara had reached — that the bombing of North Vietnam was not achieving its objectives.

Page 196

2. The Speech
At 9:00 Lyndon Johnson stepped White House and began, p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Thursday March 31 before the TV cameras in the Oval Room of the in grave, and measured tones , one of the most important speeches of his life . His first words struck the theme of what was to come:

Good Evening, my fellow Americans. Tonight I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Underscoring the peaceful motivations of past and present U.S. policy in the area, he reviewed the recent history of U.S. attempts to bring peace to Vietnam: For years, representatives of our government and others have travelled the world — seeking to find a basis for peace talks.

Since last September, they have carried the offer that I made public at San Antonio. That offer was this: That the United States would stop its bombardment of North Vietnam when that would lead promptly to productive discussions — and that we would assume that North Vietnam would not take military advantage of our restraint.

Hanoi denounced this offer, both privately and publicly. Even while the search for peace was going on, North Vietnam rushed their preparations for a savage assault on the people, the government, and the allies of South Vietnam.

The President noted that the Viet Cong had apparently decided to make 1968 the year of decision in Vietnam and their Tet offensive had been the unsuccessful attempt to win a breakthrough victory. Although they had failed, the President acknowledged their capability to renew the attacks if they wished. He forcefully asserted, however, that the allies would again have the power to repel their assault if they did decide to attack. Continuing, he led up to his announcement of the bombing halt in this way:

If they do mount another round of heavy attacks, they will not succeed in destroying the fighting power of South Vietnam and its allies. But tragically, this is also clear: many men on both sides of the struggle — will be lost. A nation that has already suffered 20 years of warfare will suffer once again. Armies on both sides will take new casualties. And the war will go on.

There is no need for this to be so. There is no need to delay the talks that could bring an end to the long and this bloody war. Tonight, I renew the offer I made last August to stop the bombardment of North Vietnam. We ask that talks begin promptly, that they be serious talks on the substance of peace. We assume that during those talks Hanoi will not take advantage of our restraint. We are prepared to move immediately toward peace through negotiations. So, tonight, in the hope that this action, will lead to early talks, I am taking the first step to de-escalate the conflict. We are reducing — substantially reducing — the present level of hostilities.

And we are doing so unilaterally, and at once. Tonight, I have ordered our aircraft and our naval vessels to make no attacks on North Vietnam, except in the area north of the Demilitarized Zone where the continuing enemy build-up directly threatens allied forward positions and where the movements of their troops and supplies are clearly related to that threat.

The President then defined, albeit vaguely, the area within which the bombing would be restricted and suggested that all bombing could halt if the other side would reciprocate by scaling down hostilities.

The area in which we are stopping our attacks includes almost 90 percent of North Vietnam’s population, and most of its territory. Thus there will be no attacks around the principal populated areas, or in the food-producing areas of North Vietnam.

Even this very limited bombing of the North could come to an early end — if our restraint is matched by restraint in Hanoi. But I cannot in good conscience stop all bombing so long as to do so would immediately and directly endanger the lives of our men and our allies. Whether a complete bombing halt becomes possible in the future will be determined by events.

In the hope that the unilateral U.S. initiative would “permit the contending forces to move closer to a political settlement,” the President called on the UK and the Soviet Union to do what they could to get negotiations started. Repeating his offer to meet at any time and place he designated his representative should talks actually occur:

I am designating one of our most distinguished Americans, Ambassador Averell Harriman, as my personal representative for such talks. In addition, I have asked Ambassador Lewellyn Thompson, who returned from Moscow for consultation, to be available to join Ambassador Harriman at Geneva or any other suitable place — just as soon as Hanoi agrees to a conference.

I call upon President Ho Chi Minh to respond positively, and favorably, to this new step toward peace.

But if peace does not come now through negotiations, it will come when Hanoi understands that our common resolve is unshakable, and our common strength is invincible.

Turning his attention to other matters, the ~resident outlined the limited steps that the U.S. would take to strengthen its forces in South Vietnam and the measures he would push to improve the South Vietnamese Army. He then discussed the costs of the new efforts, the domestic frugality they would require, and the balance of payments efforts necessary to their implementation. Next he outlined his own views of the unlikelihood of peace, in an attempt to head off any false hope that the bombing cessation might generate:

Now let me give you my estimate of the chances for peace: the peace that will one day stop the bloodshed in South Vietnam, — that all the Vietnamese people will be permitted to rebuild and develop their land, — that will permit us to turn more fully to our own tasks here at home.

I cannot promise that the initiative that I have announced tonight will be completely successful in achieving peace any more than the 30 others that we have undertaken and agreed to in recent years.

But it is our fervent hope that North Vietnam, after years of fighting that has left the issue unresolved, will now cease its efforts to achieve a military victory and will join with us in moving toward the peace table.

And there may come a time when South Vietnam — on both sides — are able to work out a way to settle their own differences by free political choice rather than by war.

As Hanoi considers its course, it should be in no doubt of our intentions. It must not miscalculate the pressures within our democracy in this election year.

We have no intention of widening this war. But the United States will never accept a fake solution to this long and arduous struggle and call it peace. No one can foretell the precise terms of an eventual settlement.

Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective taking over the South by force – – could not be achieved.

We think that peace can be based on the Geneva Accords of 1954 — under political conditions that permit the South Vietnamese — all the South Vietnamese — to chart their course free of any outside domination or interference, from us or from anyone else.

So tonight I reaffirm the pledge that we made at Manila — that we are prepared to withdraw our forces from South Vietnam as the other side withdraws its forces to the North, stops the infiltration, and the level of violence thus subsides.

Our goal of peace and self-determination in Vietnam is directly related to the future of all of Southeast Asia where much has happened to inspire confidence during the past 10 years. They have done all that we knew now to do to contribute and to help build that confidence.

The President praised the progressive developments in much of Asia in recent years and offered the prospect of similar progress in southeast Asia if North Vietnam would settle the war. He repeated the Johns Hopkins offer of assistance to North Vietnam to rebuild its economy. In his peroration he spoke with deep conviction and much feeling about the purposes and reasons for the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia’s destiny which he had authorized. It represents perhaps our best” insight into the President’s understanding and motivation in the war, as well as his hopes and dreams:

One day, my fellow citizens, there will be peace in Southeast Asia. It will come because the people of Southeast Asia want it — those whose armies are at war tonight, and those who, though threatened, have thus far been spared.

Peace will come because Asians were willing to work for it — and to sacrifice for it — and to die by the thousands for it never be forgotten: peace will come also sent her. sons to help secure it been easy — far from it. During the past years, it has been my fate and my responsibility to be commander-in-chief. I have lived — daily and nightly — with the cost of this war. I know the pain that but let it because America it has inflicted. I know perhaps better than anyone the misgivings that it has aroused.

Throughout this entire, long period, I have been sustained by a single principle:
— that what we are doing now in Vietnam, is vital not only to the security of Southeast Asia, but it is vital to the security of every American.

Surely we have treaties which we must respect. Surely we have commitments that we are going to keep. Resolutions of the Congress testify to the need to resist aggression in the world and in Southeast Asia.

But the heart of our involvement in South Vietnam under three Presidents, three separate Administrations has always been America’s own security.

And the larger purpose of our involvement has always been to help the nations of Southeast Asia become independent and stand alone, self-sustaining as members of a great world community.

At peace with themselves, and at peace with all with such an Asia, our country — and the world – will others be far more secure than it is tonight.

I believe that a peaceful Asia is far nearer to reality, because of that America has done in Vietnam. I believe that the men who endure the dangers of battle fighting there for us tonight — are helping the entire world avoid far greater conflicts, far wider wars, far more destruction, than this one.

The peace’ that will bring them home some day will come. Tonight I have offered the first in what I hope will be a series of mutual moves toward peace.

I pray that it will not be rejected by the leaders of North Vietnam. I pray that they will accept it as a means by which the sacrifices of their own people may be ended.

And I ask your help and your support, my fellow citizens, for this effort to reach across the battlefield toward an early peace.

Listing the achievements of his administration and warning against the perils of division in America, the President ended his speech with his emotional announcement that he would not run for re-election.

Through all time to come, I think America will be a stronger nation, a more just society, and a land of greater opportunity and fulfillment because of what we have all done together in these years of unparalleled achievement.

Our reward will come in the life of freedom, peace, and hope that our children will enjoy through ages ahead.

What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness, and politics among any of our people.

Believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year.

With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world ‘ s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the Presidency of your country.

Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my Party for another term as your President.

But let men everywhere know, however, that a strong, a confident, and a vigilant America stands ready tonight to seek an honorable peace — and stand ready tonight to defend an honored cause — whatever the price, whatever the burden, whatever the sacrifices that duty may require.

Thank you for listening. Good night and God bless all of you.

The speech had an electric effect on the U.S. and the whole world. It completely upset the American political situation, spurred world-wide hopes that peace might be imminent and roused fear and concern in South Vietnam about the depth and reliability of the American commitment. As already noted, no one in the Administration had seriously expected a positive reaction from Hanoi, and when the North Vietnamese indicated three days later that they would open direct contacts with the U.S. looking toward discussions and eventual negotiation of a peaceful settlement of the conflict, the whole complexion and context of the war was changed. TO’ be sure, there was the unfortunate and embarrassing wrangle about exactly where the northern limit of the U.S. bombing ‘would be fixed, with CINCPAC having sent extremely heavy sorties to’ the very limits af the 20th parallel on the day after the announcement only to’ be subsequently ordered to’ restrict his attacks below 190′ on April 3. And there was the exasperatingly long public struggle between the U.S. and the DRV about where their representative would meet and what title the contacts would be given, not finally resolved until May. But it was unmistakably clear throughout all this time that a major corner in the war and in American policy had been turned and that there was no going back. The President’s decision was enormously well received at home and greeted with enthusiasm abroad where it appeared at long last there was a possibility of removing this annoyingly persistent little war in Asia as a roadblock to progress an other matters of world-wide importance involving East and west.

The President’s speech at the end of March was, of course, not the end of the bombing much less the war, and a further history of the role of the limited air strikes could and should be undertaken. But the decision to cut back the bombing, the decision that turned American policy toward a peaceful settlement of the war, is a logical and fitting place to terminate this particular inquiry into the policy process that surrounded their war. Henceforth, the decisions about the bombing would be made primarily in the Pacific by the field commanders since now vitally sensitive targets requiring continuing Washington level political review were within the reduced attack zone. A very significant chapter in the history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war had come to a close.

As those who struggled with the policy decisions about the bombing came to learn, any dispassionate and objective appraisal of it is almost impossible. As McGeorge Bundy noted in September 1967 after the Stennis hearings, both its proponents and its opponents have been guilty of excesses in their advocacy and criticism.. As Bundy put it, “My own summary belief is that both the advocates and the opponents of the bombing continue to exaggerate its importance. To be sure, the bombing had not been conducted to its fullest potential, but on the other hand it had been much heavier and had gone on much longer than many if not most of its advocates had expected at the outset. ~fuether more might have been accomplished by different bombing policy decisions, at the start or along the way — in particular the fast full squeeze favored by the JCS — would necessarily remain an open question. What can be said in the end is that its partial suspension in part did produce what most had least expected — a breakthrough in the deadlock over negotiations. And that in the longer view of history may turn out to be its most significant contribution.

—/end post 2 of 3
Download these two specific volumes:
[Part IV. C. 7. a.]
Evolution of the War. Air War in the North: 1965 – 1968. Volume I (41 MB)

[Part IV. C. 7. b.]
Evolution of the War. Air War in the North: 1965 – 1968. Volume II (38.8 MB)

You can freely download the entire 48 volume set of the Pentagon Papers from the National Archives in Adobe Acrobat format.