Volume IV C6b of the Pentagon Papers must have been written just before the 1967 New Year. Ironic that I read this volume during the Christmas holiday and into the first week of 2012.
American sentiments to look back and reflect every December are just as striking in this volume. This is the first volume that acknowledges a growing domestic anti-war sentiment throughout 1966.
Johnson’s troop commitments generated an interesting quote from future President Gerald Ford on page three of this volume: “This event generated a storm of criticism especially from Congressman Gerald Ford who attacked the Administration for expanding operations into the Delta without advising Congress.” Ironic he would serve Nixon as VP (beginning in 1971) and had to confront Nixon’s secret war in Cambodia dating back to 1969.
It must have been considered “strong enough” to influence policies in early 1967. Volume IV C-6-b opens with the examination of key news correspondents, examining the impact of journalists reporting against the war:
Pentagon Papers: Part IV. C6b: Evolution of the War.
Extracted pages 1-22
1. Hedged Public Optimism Meets the New Year
Harrison Salisbury’s dispatches from North Vietnam were generating an explosive debate about the bombing. Not only had he questioned the “surgical” precision claimed for the bombing of military targets in populated areas, but he questioned the basic purpose of the strategy itself. In his view, civilian casualties were being inflicted deliberately to break the morale of the populace, a course both immoral and doomed to failure. The counter-attack mounted by bombing advocates (and apologists) combined with the predictable quick denunciations and denials from official sources helped generate a significant public reaction. The Pentagon reaction to the Salisbury articles touched off a new round of editorial comment about the credibility gap. Polls at the start of the year reflected the public’s growing cynicism about public statements. One Harris poll indicated that the public of January 1967 was just as likely to blame the United States for truce violations (despite public announcements to the contrary) as the enemy. Two years earlier this had not been so. Salisbury happened to be in North Vietnam when Hanoi was first bombed — whether by accident or design is uncertain. Consequently, his dispatches carried added sting — he was reporting on the less appealing aspects of a major escalation in the bombing campaign which would have attracted headlines on its own merits. His “in depth” of such an important benchmarks added markedly to its public impact. So great was the cry that President Johnson felt impelled to express “deep regret” over civilian casualties on both sides.To Walter Lippman, the New Year meant “there is hope ONLY in a negotiated compromise” (emphasis added), but to others optimism was the keynote. Ambassador Lodge, in his New Year’s statement, predicted that “allied forces will make sensational military gains in 1967” and “the war would end in an eventual fadeout one the allied pacification effort made enough progress to convince Hanoi that the jig was up.” The New York Daily News informed 15 million New Yorkers that the “U.S. Expects to Crush Main Red Force in ’67.”
Even the The Washington Starquoted North Vietnam’s Premier Phan Van Dong as being convinced that American public opinion “would eventually force the US to leave South Vietnam. He confirmed the often expressed fears of US officials who prophesied great danger of a wider and bloodier war if North Vietnam misread the peace marches and opposition to the war, interpreting it as lack of US determination.”
One of the interesting sections in this Volume is Section 4 “The Domestic Debate Continues: Polarization at Home.” Both members of Congress and citizens at home were protesting the war in Vietnam. This was noted in February 1966, yet the war would continue and more Americans would die for another 10 years. Another hot issue was inconsistent reporting from the military with reporters:
Pentagon Papers: Part IV. C6b: Evolution of the War.
Extracted pages 90-100
In early February the Pentagon acknowledged that it had lost 1800 aircraft in Vietnam as opposed to the 622 “combat planes” which it had quoted earlier. R. W. Appel wrote in the New York Times questioning COMUSMACV infiltration figures.The public and the press alike were becoming increasingly wary of the statistics coming out of Washington. Even the Chicago Tribune in early March surmised that either the figures coming out of MACV were wrong or those coming out of the Pentagon were misleading. The paper cited a recent joint press conference held by McNamara and Rusk in which they announced that communist military forces in Vietnam had suffered tremendous casualties in the past four months, quantitatively an increase of 40-50%, thus reducing their effectiveness significantly, but in the next sentence announcing that serious communist military activity in Vietnam had “increased substantially.”
By mid-March editorial commentary was focusing on the theme that generally there would be more and wider war. American casualties announced on 10 March were higher than those for any other week of the war: 232 KIA, 1381 WIA, 4 MIA for a total of 1617. Four days later the U. S. conducted the heaviest attacks of the 1967 air war on North Vietnam (128 missions flown by approximately 450 aircraft). Not only was there a feeling that the war would be longer and more intense, bur the public was becoming increasingly aware of its costs. In mid-March the House Appropriations Committee approved a $12 billion supplemental appropriations bill and a week later the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $20.8 billion military procurement program. The ease of which the appropriations bills were being passed was not truly indicative of the mood of Congress which was becoming increasingly divided about the war. The Stennis Subcommittee (Preparedness) was carrying the military’s fight for more troops. In late March Stennis charged that “American commanders in Vietnam are not getting all the troops they want and the bombing of the north is overly restricted.” The Pentagon reply to this was that “there had been no reduction in any program of troop deployments previously approved by the Department of Defense.” Senator Symington was publicly urging wider air raids of North Vietnam to include attack of the MIG airfields. By late March, Stennis’ charges were coming in drum-fire fashion focusing on charges that future troop deployments to Vietnam would fall below approved levels; that urgent military appeals for the bombing of more meaningful targets in North Vietnam were being arbitrarily denied and that the Pentagon was responsible for a gross shortage of ships in Vietnam. Prior to General Westmoreland’s return to the U.S. in late April, General Abrams had been named as his Deputy Commander and it appears that indeed, despite Westmoreland’s promises of victory, it would be a long war. For early that week the infiltration/casualty figures for the first quarter of 1967 were released, and they indicated that despite huge Red losses of nearly 25,000 men in the first 12 weeks of that year, nearly 4,000 more than that amount had infiltrated during the same period and were now active in enemy units in the South.
The waring signs were ringing again. Yet the lack of honesty in the military and the White House contributed to a protest movement that required another two years to become simply unavoidable for Johnson. But it was all at such a terrible cost.