On March 8, 1965, 3,500 Marines from the\u00a09th Marine Expeditionary Brigade\u00a0arrived in Da Nang, South Vietnam. Their mission was to protect a U.S. air base from attacks by the self-proclaimed National Liberation Front (NLF), the guerrilla force seeking to overthrow the South Vietnamese government that was better known to Americans by the pejorative name Viet Cong. Six days earlier, the United States had begun Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing campaign against North Vietnam that would last for three years. Some U.S. officials opposed sending the Marines to Da Nang, predicting that President Lyndon B. Johnson would soon be pressed to send even more troops into a war that could not be easily won. Despite his own deep misgivings about the ability of the United States to win a\u00a0conflict he called \u201cthe worst mess I ever saw in my life,\u201d Johnson committed another 120,000 troops to South Vietnam over the next 5 months and more than a half million over the next three years. The war, however, remained unwinnable. SHAFR historians ranked the deployment of U.S. combat troops to Vietnam as the second-worst U.S. foreign policy decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On March 8, 1965, 3,500 Marines from the\u00a09th Marine Expeditionary Brigade\u00a0arrived in Da Nang, South Vietnam. Their mission was to protect a U.S. air base from attacks by the self-proclaimed National Liberation Front (NLF), the guerrilla force seeking to overthrow the South Vietnamese government that was better known to Americans by the pejorative name Viet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2238,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-worst-decisions"],"acf":{"add_section":[{"quote_section":"imagecontent","add_section_title":"The Domino Theory","add_section_content":"A Communist-led insurgency led in 1954 to the end of French rule over Indochina and temporarily divided Vietnam into a Communist North and a non-Communist South. Fearing that if South Vietnam went communist the rest of Southeast Asia would follow\u2014a belief known as the \u201cdomino theory\u201d\u2014the Eisenhower administration pumped economic and military aid into South Vietnam to position it as a counterweight to North Vietnam. That support included sending seven hundred U.S. military advisers.\r\n\r\nIn 1959, North Vietnam launched an insurgency in South Vietnam fought by the NLF. By the time President John F. Kennedy took office two years later, the insurgency had grown, exposing the South Vietnamese government\u2019s weak popular support. Although Kennedy had argued years earlier that \u201cno amount of American military assistance in Indochina\u201d could defeat an insurgency that \u201chas the support and covert appeal of the people,\u201d he continued President Dwight D. Eisenhower\u2019s commitment to South Vietnam and for the same reason. By the time of Kennedy\u2019s assassination in November 1963, the U.S. presence in Vietnam had grown to sixteen thousand military advisors.","add_image":3333,"image_position":"right","background":true,"quote_content":"","quote_footer":"","video_title":"","video_link":null,"youtube_link":""},{"quote_section":"imagecontent","add_section_title":"The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution","add_section_content":"South Vietnam was foundering when Johnson took office. The Kennedy administration had backed a coup against its deeply unpopular president, Ngo Dinh Diem. He was murdered in the coup, which was launched three weeks before Kennedy\u2019s death. Although Johnson opposed the coup, he kept Kennedy\u2019s national security team, most notably Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Johnson also doubled down on Kennedy\u2019s anti-insurgency efforts.\r\n\r\nVietnam posed a political problem for Johnson. He was running for president in 1964 against Republican Barry Goldwater, who blamed him for failing to stop the insurgency in Vietnam. In August, Johnson responded to what he said were unprovoked attacks against two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam by ordering airstrikes against North Vietnam. He also convinced Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized him \u201cto take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States\u201d not just in Vietnam but across Southeast Asia. Much of what the Johnson administration told members of Congress about the Gulf of Tonkin incident was untrue. Pledging to keep U.S. troops out of war in Vietnam, Johnson won the 1964 presidential election in a landslide.","add_image":"","image_position":"null","background":false,"quote_content":"","quote_footer":"","video_title":"","video_link":null,"youtube_link":""},{"quote_section":"quote","add_section_title":"Escalation","add_section_content":"The pace of U.S. escalation ramped up on August 2, 1964, when two U.S. destroyers radioed that North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin had fired upon them. Then, on August 4, there were reports of a second attack. Despite questions about the viability of the second attack, Johnson was quick to claim both events as unprovoked acts of aggression against the U.S. He asked Congress for a joint resolution granting him the power to use \u201call necessary measures\u201d to respond accordingly.\r\n\r\nThe Gulf of Tonkin Resolution handed Johnson and his advisors a blank check to wage war in Vietnam how they saw fit. Over the next two years, the administration used that check to drastically speed up the timetable of U.S. escalation and extend the perimeters of the American commitment in South Vietnam. On February 13, 1965, Johnson approved Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy\u2019s policy recommendations for sustained air attacks on North Vietnam, otherwise known as Operation Rolling Thunder. From its official implementation on March 2, 1965, to its conclusion in November of 1968, Operation Rolling Thunder encapsulated the American military effort in Vietnam and its destructive environmental, infrastructural, and physiological impacts.","add_image":1256,"image_position":"right","background":true,"quote_content":"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.","quote_footer":"President Lyndon B. Johnson, October 21, 1964","video_title":"","video_link":null,"youtube_link":""},{"quote_section":"imagecontent","add_section_title":"Operation Rolling Thunder","add_section_content":"Johnson said nothing about Vietnam in his inaugural address. He focused instead on remaking domestic policy by enacting Great Society programs like Medicare and passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. But Vietnam remained a pressing issue. In early February 1965, NLF attacks killed thirty-one Americans. Johnson consulted with Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman; both former presidents urged him to hit back hard. Others that Johnson spoke to, including Vice President Hubert Humphrey, argued against deepening U.S. involvement in Vietnam.\r\n\r\nWedded to the belief \u201cthat when you give, the dictators feed on raw meat,\u201d Johnson chose to escalate. Unwilling to invade North Vietnam because he feared triggering a war with China, Johnson quietly approved Operation Rolling Thunder, which sought to use a gradually intensifying bombing campaign against North Vietnam to boost South Vietnam\u2019s morale while coercing Hanoi into ending its support for the NLF. Johnson also agreed to send 3,500 Marines to Da Nang to protect the U.S. airbase from attack. He chose escalation even though he told McNamara privately, \u201cI don\u2019t see any way of winning.\u201d","add_image":3335,"image_position":"right","background":true,"quote_content":"The performance of commanders and crews in this engagement is in the highest tradition of the United States Navy. But repeated acts of violence against the Armed Forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense, but with positive reply.","quote_footer":"President Johnson, August 4, 1964","video_title":"","video_link":null,"youtube_link":""},{"quote_section":"quote","add_section_title":"","add_section_content":"","add_image":3324,"image_position":"bottom","background":false,"quote_content":"I guess we\u2019ve got no choice, but it scares the death out of me. I think everybody\u2019s going to think, \u2018we\u2019re landing the Marines, we\u2019re off to battle.\u2019","quote_footer":"President Lyndon B. Johnson, March 6, 1965","video_title":"","video_link":null,"youtube_link":""},{"quote_section":"imagecontent","add_section_title":"","add_section_content":"","add_image":3324,"image_position":"bottom","background":false,"quote_content":"I guess we\u2019ve got no choice, but it scares the death out of me. I think everybody\u2019s going to think, \u2018we\u2019re landing the Marines, we\u2019re off to battle.\u2019","quote_footer":"President Lyndon B. Johnson, March 6, 1965","video_title":"","video_link":null,"youtube_link":""},{"quote_section":"imagecontent","add_section_title":"Some Carrots, More Sticks","add_section_content":"In April 1965, Johnson offered North Vietnam carrots to go along with the stick of airstrikes. In a nationally broadcast speech at Johns Hopkins University, he offered to hold \u201cunconditional discussions\u201d with Hanoi and to invest $1 billion in Southeast Asia. A month later, he paused Operation Rolling Thunder for five days and privately offered to scale back U.S. attacks if North Vietnam eased its pressure on South Vietnam. Believing that battlefield trends were working in its favor and correctly suspecting that Johnson was looking to silence critics who said he was rushing into war rather than seeking serious negotiations, Hanoi dismissed both offers.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, Johnson felt growing pressure to use more sticks. Maxwell Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Johnson in February that once U.S. combat troops arrived, \u201cit will be very difficult to hold the line\u201d on requests for reinforcements. Events proved Taylor right. In early June, General William Westmoreland, the head of U.S. military forces in South Vietnam, told McNamara that he needed 150,000 more troops. Johnson had reached a turning point.","add_image":"","image_position":"null","background":false,"quote_content":"","quote_footer":"","video_title":"Excerpts From President Lyndon B. Johnson\u2019s \u201cPeace Without Conquest\u201d Speech at Johns Hopkins University, April 7, 1965","video_link":"","youtube_link":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vh_kHVYnUto"},{"quote_section":"videolink","add_section_title":"\u201cYou Either Get Out or Get In\u201d","add_section_content":"Johnson complained privately about the demands that U.S. military leaders were making, saying at one point that they are \u201cawfully irresponsible\u201d and \u201cready to put a million men in right quick.\u201d Some advisors urged Johnson to cut his losses. Undersecretary of State George Ball was the most vocal. He warned in early July that committing more troops to Vietnam meant \u201calmost certainly a protracted war involving an open-ended commitment of U.S. forces, mounting U.S. casualties, no assurance of a satisfactory solution, and a serious danger of escalation at the end of the road.\u201d\r\n\r\nMost of Johnson\u2019s advisors argued the opposite. General Earle Wheeler, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said \u201cno one ever won a battle sitting on his ass.\u201d McNamara visited Saigon in early July and returned to say that committing more troops would \u201cstave off defeat in the short run and offer a good chance of producing a favorable settlement in the longer run.\u201d Johnson understood the stakes. As he told Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, \u201cit\u2019s shaping up like this\u2026 you either get out or you get in.\u201d\r\n\r\nPresident Lyndon B. Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on July 2, 1965<\/strong>\r\n\r\n