Apocalypse Then: American Intellectuals and the Vietnam War, 1954-1975

Chapter 4: Skepticism and Dissent: From Rolling Thunder to Tet, February 1965–January 1968

Skepticism and Dissent From Rolling Thunder to Tet, February 1965–January 1968 On February 7, 1965, Viet Cong guerrillas staged a series of attacks on American military installations in South Vietnam, most notably the airfield in Pleiku, just outside Saigon. Eight Americans were killed, and over a hundred injured. Within hours, President Johnson convened top security advisers in Washington, and authorized “Operation Flaming Dart” as a military reprisal. The plan called for immediate American bombing of North Vietnamese military installations above the seventeenth parallel. Three weeks later, on February 24, “Operation Rolling Thunder,” the sustained American bombing of North Vietnam, began. By the year’s end, successive escalations of American troops in Vietnam had reached a total of 200,000 men.1 The number continued to grow, until it reached a climax of 540,000 in 1968.2 Rolling Thunder consummated a major military and diplomatic shift in American policy, mapped out over time by top Washington strategists since the passing of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution . Its implementation represented a significant turning point in the American role in the conflict. What had once been covert was now public policy, and the military conflict in the field would now be an American war. At home, Rolling Thunder created a similar turning point in the political and intellectual climate. Within days, many of the nation’s leading universities became the sites of Vietnam teach-ins, and the fledgling political protest movement of the New Left achieved national recognition. Intellectuals feverishly expressed their points of view on the matter of Vietnam, and a spontaneous atmosphere of national crisis prevailed in centers of learning and publishing. The snowballing Vietnam hysteria captured the immediate attention of all. When the initial excitement 4 117 passed, it became evident that a new American intellectual climate had emerged. February 1965 to December 1967 proved to be a critical period of transition in American intellectual life. Rolling Thunder detonated “the war at home” and unleashed the forces that would dramatically transform intellectual life in 1968. During these three years, the Vietnam War became the central concern for intellectuals, and it changed from a policy issue to a moral issue for many. The prevailing liberal majority was increasingly at odds with a “liberal” government. The ranks of dissenting liberals swelled while the numbers of supporters dwindled. Those who did dissent did so more angrily; many broke ranks entirely and entered personal radical phases. Liberal disaffection became evident both in the tone of many intellectual journals which turned left and in the public acts of the dissenters. The antiwar movement contained both moderate and radical elements, and, beginning with the spring 1965 teach-ins, continued to grow. Its strength became obvious at the massive Pentagon demonstration of October 1967. The New Left became a powerful force in intellectual and political matters, and made its presence felt on most of the nation’s college and university campuses. Political protest became more radical as nonviolent tactics were joined by more aggressive draft-resistance activities. Meanwhile, William Buckley’s National Review began to thrive as a conservative outpost, and Irving Kristol launched a new journal , the Public Interest, which would serve as the seedbed of a new intellectual movement which only later received the label “neoconservatism.” Newfound radical strength came from defection from liberal ranks and the maturation of a new generation. Radicals viewed events in Vietnam as a natural outgrowth of American politics, economy, and society, all of which they hoped to change structurally. Dissenting liberals who had initially viewed Vietnam as a misguided policy now listened to what the radicals had to say, and began to wonder whether Vietnam was, in fact, symptomatic of a larger political illness. If the war was not an aberration , what did this mean for the liberal tradition? It became clear as time went on that most intellectuals had publicly called for an end to the war. But the war went on. Frustrated by their powerlessness, what to do next became another divisive question. What would happen when guns and butter became guns or butter? The civil rights movement had laid bare America’s domestic wounds. Would or could they be healed? Would the Great Society fall victim to the anticommunist crusade? 118 | Skepticism and Dissent Liberal journals had two responses to the bombing of North Vietnam —protest or uncertainty. Initially, the New Republic did not view the events of February...