In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

18 2 Vietnam and the Great Society The Two-Front War If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home.—Lyndon Baines Johnson The black press frequently dealt with the competing demands of the Southeast Asian war and the Great Society as both clamored for the government ’s money and attention. Lyndon Johnson pushed hard for an ambitious program of reforms designed to redress the centuries-old grievances of African Americans, even as he led the United States into an escalating war in Vietnam. The theme of competing priorities grew out of the president’s own inner struggle with the most intractable dilemma facing his administration . Johnson told Doris Kearns, his former aide and biographer, that early in 1965, he felt trapped between the inherently incompatible goals of lavishing resources on his Great Society and pursuing an expensive, and politically risky, war in Southeast Asia. He feared that all his cherished plans “to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless . . . to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor” would be swept aside by the war.“But if I left that war and let the communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as Vietnam and the Great Society 19 an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.”1 Johnson’s quandary mixed an emotional personal component with hardnosed geopolitical calculation. He seemed to feel an almost adolescent fear of being “seen as a coward,” as he told Kearns, a need to face up to the playground bully so he would not be seen as chicken. Johnson felt a strong need to be as tough as his political opposition in Congress, and hawks generally, inside and outside his administration. This made him particularly susceptible to the advice of hawks within his administration, as well as to the pressure from outside his circle of foreign policy advisers. Johnson, like his predecessors and successors, also exemplified—and pursued in the jungles of Vietnam—a commitment to two interlocking articles of American faith in the cold war era, up to and including the Vietnam War: that expansionist communism would topple weak allies if the United States failed to help them and that central to the success of U.S. interests abroad was maintaining credibility. The latter required bolstering the confidence of allies that the United States was a strong, reliable friend and demonstrating to potential foes that America would be a formidable opponent of any threat to U.S. interests in the world. Except for adhering to these principles, nothing else was really at stake for the United States in South Vietnam. It was unimportant economically to the United States. It was insignificant militarily. Its sole importance was that it became the testing ground of America’s resolve and hence of its credibility as the bulwark against the expansionist designs of communism in Southeast Asia. Johnson’s commitment to this worldview made it impossible for him to abandon Vietnam to save the Great Society, even if weakening the cause of reform was the price for persevering in SoutheastAsia.Nor could Johnson abandon the Great Society, despite the pressures of his commitment to Vietnam, because of his deep faith in his program of domestic reconstruction. Johnson’s desire to launch the Great Society became as fervent as his fear of losing to the communists was deep seated. On the evening of Kennedy’s murder , Johnson and several aides gathered at The Elms, LBJ’s private Washington residence, to sort numbly through the day’s events and to talk about future plans. One of Johnson’s intimates, Jack Valenti, remembered that during the meeting LBJ laid out elements of what was to become the Great Society. Two days after the assassination, Johnson was emphatic about Vietnam as he spoke to aides at a White House meeting: “I am not going to be the President who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.”2 Then, three days later, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress and told the assembled legislators and a national television audience of his resolve 20 Chronicles of a Two-Front War to bring to fruition Kennedy’s social vision: “And now the ideas...

Share