followed: in March 1965 US marines were sent
to defend the US airbases; before long they came
to be used not only in defence but in wider-
ranging combat missions.
A consensus was reached by Johnson’s advis-
ers. The Vietcong could be defeated, and the
North Vietnamese would be forced to negotiate
once they realised they could not win. It was
assumed that the pattern seen during the Korean
War could be repeated and that the Vietcong
without North Vietnamese backing amounted to
no real threat. Robert McNamara’s ‘military
option’ was approved by everyone, not least by
the congressional leaders consulted. But approval
was not quite universal: one man warned that, by
increasing the numbers of US combat troops and
the frequency of bombing raids, the US still
would not achieve its aim of stabilising a non-
communist South Vietnam. The under secretary
of state George Ball advised the president against
military escalation. Johnson too was sceptical at
first, asking if the North Vietnamese would not
be able to match any American escalation. But in
the end he was persuaded that America’s stand-
ing throughout the world would suffer disas-
trously if the US ‘abdicated leadership’ and
showed irresolution. Communists would only
continue their aggression. One general spoke of
the need for 500,000 men and a conflict that
would last five years. The president hoped that a
combination of increasing military pressure on the
ground and punishment from the air, provided it
was coupled with peace offers, would force the
North Vietnamese to call off the conflict and
accept the existing division of Vietnam. The
South would be saved for the free world. But
President Johnson’s gut instincts made him
uneasy and hesitant.
The momentous decision to plan for a major
war was taken in the White House in July 1965,
after extensive discussion by the president and his
closest advisers. There was little recognition that
the South Vietnamese were fighting among them-
selves and that the North Vietnamese were also
Vietnamese. Worst of all, by painting such a cat-
astrophic scenario it seemed justifiable to avert it
by virtually any means. From some 175,000
combat troops, American involvement by the end
of 1967 had risen to 525,000. The North
Vietnamese and Vietcong matched and outpaced
the US build-up. The impact of this on Vietnam
is described elsewhere, but victory over the com-
munists proved as elusive as ever. General William
Westmoreland, commanding US forces in South
Vietnam, then called for further large reinforce-
ments. But how much more would American
public opinion take, with American casualties
mounting daily? Throughout 1967 the assess-
ment made by the military and intelligence ser-
vices on the ground war was optimistic: American
troops and their South Vietnamese allies were
grinding down the enemy. This was the reassur-
ing message given to the American people – with
steadfast determination the war would be won.
Then followed a rude awakening. During the
Vietnamese Tet holidays, on 31 January 1968,
the Vietcong mounted a huge offensive, pene-
trating several towns in an attempt to destroy the
morale of the South Vietnamese and Americans,
who believed that their power was confined to
the countryside. In the end the communists
were bloodily repulsed, but the terrible scenes
of fighting shown on American television screens
convinced most Americans that US soldiers
should be brought home. The ability of the
communists to penetrate and even to hold their
positions in a number of South Vietnamese towns
hitherto believed to be firmly in South Viet-
namese and American hands succeeded in under-
mining American morale in their longest and
most unsuccessful war. The president’s assurances
that the Tet offensive was the most disastrous
Vietcong defeat of the war were perfectly true,
but they carried little conviction.
Nothing was coming right. The dropping of
1.2 million tons of bombs a year had not broken
the determination nor destroyed the fighting
capability of the North Vietnamese. All diplo-
matic efforts to bring them to the conference
table through a carrot-and-stick approach of alter-
nately halting and resuming the bombing had also
so far proved fruitless. The year 1967 was sup-
posed to have brought victory. But early in 1968,
after the Tet offensive, Washington was forced to
the awful conclusion that the US could no longer
win the war. Robert McNamara, one of the chief