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On June 11, however, the Kep airfield was struck for the first time with ten MIGs reportedly destroyed or damaged. Prior to that, on June 2, an unfortunate case of bad aiming had resulted in a Soviet ship, the Turkestan, being struck by cannon fire from a U.S. plane trying to silence a North Vietnamese AAA battery. The Soviets lodged a vigorous protest, with the U.S., but we initially denied the allegation only to acknowledge the accident later (on June 20 to be exact just three days before the Glassboro meeting and presumably to improve its atmosphere).
In Washington, in addition to the time consuming Middle East crisis, Administration officials were still far from consensus on the question of whether to add another major increment to U.S. ground forces in South Vietnam and to call up the reserves to reconstitute depleted forces at home and elsewhere. Indeed, as we shall see, it appears that the troop question went unresolved longer than the air strategy problem. The issues must have been discussed in a general review of the Vietnam question at a meeting at State on June 8 in Katzenbach’s office, but no record of the discussion was preserved. A two-page outline of positions entitled “Disagreements” and preserved in McNaughton’s files does, however, give a very good idea of where the principle Presidential advisers stood on the major issues at that point.
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V. THE LONG ROAD TO DE-ESCALATION – – AUGUST-DECEMBER 1967
After the decision on ROLLING THUNDER 57, the debate on the air war against North Vietnam, particularly the public debate, entered a last long phase of increasing acrimony on both sides. As he had been throughout the war, President Johnson was once again caught in the crossfire of his critics of the right and the left. The open-season on Presidential war policy began in August with the high intensity Senate Preparedness Subcommittee hearings where Senator Stennis and his colleagues fired the first shots. In September, the embattled President tried again for peace, capping his secret efforts with a new public offer to Hanoi in a speech in San Antonio. The attempt was unavailing and, under pressure from the military and the hawkish elements of public and Congressional opinion, the President authorized a selected intensification of the air war. The doves were not long in responding. In October they staged a massive demonstration and march on the Pentagon to oppose the war, there confronting specially alerted troops in battle gear. A month later, Senator McCarthy announced himself as a peace candidate for the Presidency to oppose Lyndon Johnson within his own party. By Christmas, however, the issue had subsided a bit. Ambassador Bunker and General Westmoreland had both returned home and spoken in public to defend the Administration’s conduct of the war, and reports from the field showed a cautious optimism. The stage was thus set for the dramatic Viet Cong Tet offensive in January of the new year, an assault that would have a traumatic impact on official Washington and set in motion a re-evaluation of the whole American policy.A. Senator Stennis Forces an Escalation
1.The Addendum to ROLLING THUNDER
Sometime after his return from Vietnam in late July, Secretary McNamara was informed by Senator Stennis that the Preparedness Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee intended to conduct extensive hearings in August into the conduct of the air war against North Vietnam. In addition to their intention to call the Secretary, they also indicated that they would hear from all the top military leaders involved in the ROLLING THUNDER program including USCINCPAC, Admiral Sharp. The subcommittee had unquestionably set out to defeat Mr. McNamara. Its members, Senators Stennis, Symington, Jackson, Cannon, Byrd, Smith, Thurmond, and Miller, were known for their hard-line views and military sympathies. They were defenders of airpower and had often aligned themselves, with the professional military experts against what they considered unskilled civilian amateurs. They viewed the restraints on bombing as irrational, the shackling of a major instrument, which could help win victory. With Vietnam blow up into a major war, with more than half a million U.S. troops and a cost of more than $2 billion a month, and with no clear end in sight, their patience with a restrained bombing program was beginning to wear thin. But more ,{as involved than a disagreement over the conduct of the war. Some passionately held convictions had been belittled, and some members of the subcommittee were on the warpath. As the subcommittee subsequently, wrote in the introduction to its report, explaining the reasons for the inquiry:Earlier this year many statements appeared in the press, which were calculated to belittle the effectiveness of the air campaign over North Vietnam. Many of these statements alleged, or at least implied, that all military targets of significance had been destroyed, that the air campaign had been conducted as effectively as possible, and that continuation of the air campaign was pointless and useless–possibly even prolonging the war itself.
At the same time reports were being circulated that serious consideration was being given in high places to a cessation of the air campaign over North Vietnam, or a substantial curtailment of it. Many of these reports were attributed to unnamed high Government officials.
In view of the importance of the air campaign, on June 28, 1967, the subcommittee announced it would conduct an extensive inquiry into the conduct and effectiveness of the bombing campaign over North Vietnam.
In July the President had decided against both an escalatory and a de-escalatory option in favor of continuing the prevailing level and intensity of bombing. However, the prospect of having his bombing policy submitted to the harsh scrutiny of the Stennis committee, taking testimony from such unhappy military men as Admiral Sharp, must have forced a recalculation on the President. It is surely no coincidence that on August 9, the very day the Stennis hearings opened, an addendum to ROLLING THUNDER 57 was issued authorizing an additional sixteen fixed targets and an expansion of armed reconnaissance. Significantly, six of the targets were within the sacred 10-mile Hanoi inner circle. They included the thermal power plant, 3 rail yards, and 2 bridges. Nine targets were located on the northeast rail line in the China buffer zone, the closest one 8 miles from the border, and consisted of 4 bridges and 5 rail yards/sidings; the tenth was a naval base, also within the China buffer zone. Armed reconnaissance was authorized along 8 road, rail, and waterway segments between the 10-mile and a 4-mile circle around Haiphong, and attacks were permitted against railroad rolling stock within the China buffer zone up to within 8 miles of the border. But the power of Congress was not to be denied. Where the military alone had tried unsuccessfully for so long to erode the Hanoi/Haiphong sanctuaries, the pressure implicit in the impending hearings, where military men would be asked to speak their minds to a friendly audience, was enough to succeed — at least for the moment.
2. The Stennis Hearings
Meanwhile in Washington, the Stennis hearings opened on August 9 with Admiral U,S, Grant Sharp, USCINCPAC, as the first witness. In the following two weeks the subcommittee heard testimony from the entire senior echelon of U,S, military leaders involved in the air war, including the Joint Chiefs, CINCPAC, CINCPACFLT, CINCPACAF, and the commander and former deputy commander of the 7th Air Force in Saigon. The final witness on August 25 was Secretary McNamara who found himself pitted against the military men who had preceded him by the hostile members of the subcommittee as he sought to deflate the claims for U.S. air power. The hearings, released by the subcommittee only days after the testimony was completed, and given extensive treatment by the media, exposed to public view, the serious divergence of views between McNamara and the country’s professional military leaders. The subcommittee’s summary report, which sided with the military and sharply criticized McNamara’s reasoning, forced the Administration into an awkward position. Ultimately, the President felt compelled to overrule McNamara’s logic in his own version of the matter. Once again the President was caught unhappily in the middle satisfying neither his critics of the right nor the left.The subcommittee heard first from the military leaders involved in the air war. It was told that the air war in the North was an important and indispensable part of the U.S. strategy for fighting the war in the South. It was told that the bombing had inflicted extensive destruction and disruption on NVN, holding down the infiltration of men and supplies, restricting the level of forces that could be sustained in the South and reducing the ability of those forces to mount major sustained combat operations, thus resulting in fewer U.S. causalities. It was told that; without the bombing, NVN could have doubled its forces in the South, requiring as many as 800,000 additional U.S. troops at a cost of $75 billion more just to hold our mill. It was told that without the bombing NVN could have freed 500,000 people who were at work maintaining and repairing the LOCs in the North for additional support of the insurgency in the South. It was told that a cessation of the bombing now would be “a disaster,” resulting in increased U.S. losses and an indefinite extension of the war.
The subcommittee was also told that the bombing had been much less effective than it might have been — and could still be — if civilian leaders heeded military advice and lifted the overly restrictive controls which had been imposed on the campaign. The slow tempo of the bombing; its concentration for so long well south of the vital Hanoi/Haiphong areas, leaving the important targets untouched; the existence of sanctuaries; the failure to close or neutralize the port of Haiphong— these and other limitations prevented the bombing from achieving greater results. The “doctrine of gradualism” and the long delays in approving targets of real significance, moreover, gave NVN time to build up formidable air defenses, contributing to U.S. aircraft and pilot losses, and enabled NVN to prepare for the anticipated destruction of its facilities (such as POL) by building up reserve stocks and dispersing them.
When Secretary McNamara appeared before the subcommittee on August 25, he took issue with most of these views. He defended the bombing campaign as one which was carefully tailored to our limited purposes in Southeast Asia, and which was therefore aimed at selected targets of strictly military significance, primarily the routes of infiltration. As he restated the objectives which the bombing was intended to serve:
Our primary objective was to reduce the flow and/or to increase the cost of the continued infiltration of men and supplies from North to South Vietnam.
It was also anticipated that these air operations would raise the morale of the South Vietnamese people who, at the time the bombing started, were under severe military pressure.
Finally, we hoped to make clear to the North Vietnamese leadership that so long as they continued their aggression against the South they would have to pay a price in the North.
The bombing of North Vietnam has always been considered a supplement to and not a substitute for an effective counter- insurgency land and air campaign in South Vietnam. These were our objectives when our bombing program was initiated in February 1965. They remain our objectives today.
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The Secretary argued that those who criticized the limited nature of the bombing campaign actually sought to reorient it toward different — and unrealizable objectives:
Those who criticize our present bombing policy do so, in my opinion, because they believe that air attack against the North can be utilized to achieve quite different objectives. These critics appear to argue that our airpower can win the war in the South either by breaking the will of the North or by cutting off the war-supporting supplies needed in the south. In essence, this approach would seek to use the air attack against the North not as a supplement to, but as a substitute for the arduous ground war that we and our allies are waging in the South.
First, as to breaking the will of the North, neither the nature of NVN’s economy nor the psychology of its people or its leaders suggested that this could be accomplished by a more intensive bombing campaign. For one thing, it was difficult to apply pressure against the regime through bombing the economy:
…the economy of North Vietnam is agrarian and simple. Its people are accustomed to few of the modern comforts and conveniences that most of us in the Western World take for granted. They are not dependent on the continued functioning of great cities for their welfare. They can be fed at something approaching the standard to which they are accustomed without reliance on truck or rail transportation or on food processing facilities. Our air attack has rendered inoperative about 85 percent of the country’s electric generating capacity, but it is important to note that the Pepco plant in Alexandria, Va., generates five times the power produced by all of North Vietnam’s power plants before the bombing. It appears that sufficient electricity for war-related activities and for essential services can be provided by the some 2,000 diesel-driven generating sets which are in Operation.
Second, the people were inured to’ hardship and by all the evidence supported the government:
…the people of North Vietnam are accustomed to discipline and are no strangers to deprivation and death. Available in formation indicates that, despite some war weariness, they remain willing to endure hardship and they continue to respond to the Political direction of the Hanoi regime. There is little reason to believe that any level of conventional air or naval action short of sustained and systematic bombing of the population centers will deprive the North Vietnamese of their willingness to continue to support their government’s efforts.
Third, NVN’s leaders were hard to crack, at least sl long as their cause in the South was hopeful:
There is nothing in the past reaction of the North Vietnamese leaders that would provide any confidence that they can be bombed to the negotiating table. Their regard for the comfort and even the lives of the people they control does not seem to be sufficiently high to lead them to bargain for settlement in order to stop a heightened level of attack.
The collapse of the conflict on the ground in the South, rather than the scale of air attacking the north appears to be the determining factor in North Vietnam’s willingness to continue.