Kennan's prescription of "simmering down" involved letting negotiations begin, "quite privately and without elbow-jogging on our part, by our friends and others who have an interest in the termination of the conflict. "We must be prepared, depending on such advice as we receive from them, to place limited restraints at some point on our military efforts, and to do so quietly and without published time limits or ultimatums."
'Disbalance'
Kennan's bottom line:
"The most disturbing aspect of our involvement in Vietnam is its relationship to our interests and responsibilities in other areas of world affairs. Whatever justification this involvement might have had if Vietnam had been the only important problem, or even the outstanding problem, we faced in the world today, this not being the case, its present dimensions can only be said to represent a grievous disbalance of American policy."
His article was no academic exercise. Washington was abuzz with talk of further escalation in Vietnam. (To offer some current context, Gen. Stanley McChrystal was 11 years old; Vietnam was not in the history books, apparently, until well after he left West Point in 1976.)
A companion "Outlook" front-page piece by the Washington Post's Chalmers Roberts opened with, "One of history's undated moments for great decisions is at hand. President Johnson must decide where to lead the nation in the war in Vietnam."
Roberts reported the prevailing thinking that, given Hanoi's obduracy, "the United States will have no alternative but to pour in more and more manpower, to widen the bombing in the North and to intensify the military struggle in the South." Chalmers continued:
"Thus, as an increasingly bloody year draws to a close, as mounting casualty lists appear" the President faces momentous decisions. What should he do?"
Noting that there was "confusion over the aims of this war," Roberts asked:
"What should he [President Johnson] tell his fellow Americans? How can he prevent the loss of the consensus he so far has had on the war? How can he restrain the increasingly vocal war hawks? " Is the United States simply to slide into the next phase of the war?"Roberts added that, "Looking back, it is evident that both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson upped the ante bit by bit without really telling the American public where it [the war] was heading.
"That process continues today as Mr. Johnson merely says " that the United States "will supply whatever men are needed to help the people of South Vietnam resist aggression."
Parallels, Anyone?
Does anyone see any parallels to Washington's parlor games -- and its more serious discussions -- today regarding upcoming decisions on Afghanistan?
Johnson was not about to be the first U.S. President to lose a war -- but, succumbing to the Greek tragic flaw of hubris, he became exactly that. The result: Not only were two to three million Vietnamese and 58,000 American troops killed, but also his Great Society bit the dust.
Fortunately for seniors like me, Johnson was able to sign Medicare into law (on July 30, 1965) before the bottom fell out. Most of the other promising reforms his administration had in mind became unsung casualties of that ill-conceived war.
