The second of three posts relating to the extensive reports of the total failure of Operation Rolling Thunder as detailed in the Pentagon Papers.
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None of the increased ‘far activity over North Vietnam which these decisions authorized, however, would be able to prevent the enemy’s massive offensive the following January. The fact that the President had acceded to the wishes of the military and the political pressures from Congress on this vital issue at this point when all the evidence available to McNamara suggested the continuing ineffectiveness of the bombing must have been an important issue not determining factor in the Secretary’s decision in November to retire. For the moment, however, the escalation continued.
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In early December Defense spokesmen announced that the U.S. bombing in North and South Vietnam together had just topped the total of 1,544,463 tons dropped by U.S. forces in the entire European Theater during World War II. Of the 1,630,500 tons dropped, some 864,000 tons were dropped on NVN, already more than the 635,000 tons dropped during the Korean War or the 503,000 tons dropped in the Pacific Theater during World War II.
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While this public identification of the inconsistency of the positions taken by various members of the Administration, was embarrassing, a more serious problem was the massive anti-war demonstration organized in Washington on October 21. The leaders of the “New Left” assembled some 50,000 anti-war protestors in the Capitol on this October Saturday and staged a massive march on the Pentagon. While the “politics of confrontation” may be distasteful to the majority of Americans, the sight of thousands of peaceful demonstrators being con- fronted by troops in battle gear cannot have been reassuring to the country as a whole nor to the President in particular. And as if to add insult to injury, an impudent and dovish Senator McCarthy announced in November that he would be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President. He stated his intention of running in all the primaries and of taking the Vietnam war to the American people in a direct challenge to an incumbent President and the leader of his own party.
To counter these assaults on his war policy from the left, the President dramatically called home Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland (the latter to discuss troop levels and requests as well) in November and sent them out to publicly defend the conduct of the war and the progress that had been achieved. Bunker spoke to the Overseas Press Club in New York on November 17 and stressed the progress that the South Vietnamese were making in their efforts to achieve democratic self- government and to assume a larger burden of the war. General Westmoreland addressed the National Press Club in Washington on November 21 and out- lined his OIVD four-phase plan for the defeat of the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese sponsors. He too dwelled on the progress achieved to date and the increasing effectiveness of the South Vietnamese forces. Neither discussed the air war in the North in any serious way, however, and that was the issue that was clearly troubling the American public the most.
