Gunny
Gold Member
We'll start this off with onedomino's post from the Best/Worst Presidents thread:
Had Johnson not escalated US involvement into what amounted to a civil war, and refused to support one despotic regime after another in the name of "demcracy" simply because they opposed what was a labelled a "commie" gov't, the end result would have been the same with WAY less loss of life and damage to property.
The failure in Vietnam was s result of US failed foreign policy in general, and not the result of just Johnson's actions in Vietnam.
It was Johnsons massive failure in SE Asia that vaulted him into second place on my list. Like Bush 43, he did not trust his generals, and disregarded their advice.
Johnson's generals were a part of the problem. They were WWII and Korea, static line battleground leaders who tried to win a clandestine, guerilla war by conventional means.
To compound matters, they reported inflated numbers to Johnson and his "think tank" in order to justify their presence and methods. Regardless his failed tactics and/or strategy, Johnson and McNamara operated under the premise of these false numbers for a couple of years; which, might have altered their strategy.
Far more damaging than his tactical blunders was the failure of his will to win. By 1968, US soldiers were dying at a rate of 1000 per month while being under the command of a President that did not take the steps advised by his generals that were necessary to win. Johnsons stated policy was the containment of the communists, not their defeat.
Which steps were advised by which generals that would have altered the outcome?
Johnson did not want to lose the war, but he never took the steps necessary to win; such as a ground assault of North Viet Nam, or intradiction of supplies from China and Russia. A truly deplorable situation.
At the conclusion of TET 68, when Walter declared the Vietnam War "unwinnable," the NVA had been handed a resounding defeat and the NLF annihilated so that it no longer existed as a force.
Had Johnson invaded N Vietnam, or interdicted Russian/Chinese supplies, he risked drawing one or both of those nations into the conflict.
We never went into Vietnam to "win a war." We went into Vietnam to aid the South in becoming able to defend itself. The South Vietnamese were EVERY BIT as guilty if not moreso than Johnson in their failure to do so.
Nixon continued Johnsons failed policy of containment, and while his bombing of the North got the enemy to pretend to negotiate peace, his end game included the abandonment of the SE Asian battlefield by US ground troops.
You need to read Giap's book. Nixon had bombed N Vietnam into the Stone Age. N Vietnam negotiated peace because it had no choice.
Nixon's end game included turning over S Vietnam to S Vietnam because it was THEIR country, and rightfully, the S Vietnamese should have been the ones fighting for it.
Johnson's "failed policy" was introducing US ground troops into the war to begin with. Nixon pulled them out. That's hardly continuing a failed policy.
Instead of a policy designed to win, Nixon substituted the process of Vietnamization, which led directly to outright defeat.
If turning the Vietnam War over to the Vietnamese led to thier defeat, it's because they did not have the will to support their own freedom. S Vietnam's government was corrupt, and its people did not support it. The S Vietnamese military had been trained and equipped by the US for most of a decade.
Their loss was on them, not Nixon.
That defeat, accelerated by the US Congress when it rejected Fords request for continued funding, led to many thousands of deaths in North on South retribution, and cleared the way for sociopaths like Pol Pot to grab power in Cambodia at the point of a gun. He, of course, committed one of the greatest genocides in world history.
Not "accelerated by" ... "because of." Congress refused to honor the US's obligation by treaty with S Vietnam. That decision however, did not empower Pol Pot. The regional geopolitical situation itself did; which, would have existed with or without the US.
Had Johnson jettisoned his failed policy of containment and showed the will necessary to defeat the communists in SE Asia, then perhaps many millions of lives would have been spared the fate that resulted from Nixons abandonment of the battlefield.
Had Johnson not escalated US involvement into what amounted to a civil war, and refused to support one despotic regime after another in the name of "demcracy" simply because they opposed what was a labelled a "commie" gov't, the end result would have been the same with WAY less loss of life and damage to property.
The failure in Vietnam was s result of US failed foreign policy in general, and not the result of just Johnson's actions in Vietnam.