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13 Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Bitch of a War” An Antiwar Essay James M. Smallwood MORE THAN 500,000 Texans served in the military during the 1960s and 1970s. Approximately 25,000 of them saw action in the Vietnam War. Of that number, 3,415 did not leave Vietnam alive. The United States collec­ tively lost 58,159 men. About 30,000 of those died while Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) was at the helm, with a similar number dying during Richard Nixon’s term. In addition, both North and South Vietnam lost from 3 to 5 million people each. Cambodian and Laotian dead numbered between 1.5 and 2 million, depending on the sources cited.1 All of these people died during what President Johnson came to call “this bitch of a war.” A Texan presided over the massive escalation of that conflict, which failed to bring positive results for the United States or its allies. What was the historical context and background of the war? What was the state of the war when Johnson came to power and was forced to deal with past blunders made by others? Why did he escalate the fighting? Did he (and others) ever see that US involvement in Vietnam was folly, a mistake straight out? And did Americans learn any lessons from Vietnam, a guerrilla war to beat all guerrilla wars? To the last question, the answer is “no.” The failure to learn led to the disastrous US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, new guerrilla wars that America is finding difficult to win. Those conflicts may go the way of Vietnam, especially since the modern US Army is so thin that it hired mer­ cenaries to perform duties associated with the conduct of the wars, including security. Although the Vietnam War (1945–75) has been called “Mr. Johnson’s War,” the United States became involved in the Southeast Asian country decades before Johnson became president. A part of French Indochina, Vietnam was a land of people who had 270 James M. Smallwood been victimized for centuries by stronger powers—one of which was the Mongol horde, another was imperial China—finally becoming independent of China only to fall to the French in 1859. The majority of Vietnamese chafed under European imperialistic rule, as the French suppressed Buddhism and replaced it with Catholicism, which became the major tolerated religion in the land; as French became the official language; and as a minority of the people became collaborators. Generally, authorities ruled for the benefit of the mother country while the majority of Vietnamese, once again, suffered from the high­handedness of foreigners.2 By the beginning of the twentieth century, a developing nationalist movement grew stronger, especially after the young communist Ho Chi Mihn (1890–1969) took a leadership role. Ho made several failed attempts for Vietnamese independence: during the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I, directing a nationalist movement from 1941 that targeted the Vichy French and the Japanese occupiers of his country with US help, and finally defeating a French garrison of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, forcing France to sue for peace and abandon all imperialistic authority in the region.3 The French withdrawal created a power vacuum that the Republican admin­ istration of Dwight D. Eisenhower rushed to fill. Talking of the “Domino Effect,” Republicans argued that if Vietnam “fell” to communists, then all Indochina would “fall,” threatening even Indonesia and India.4 Thus, the containment policy which seemed to work in Europe was extended to Southeast Asia. The Eisenhower administration propped up the already corrupt government in South Vietnam and committed about 900 armed “advisors” to train a pro­American army. Basically, South Vietnam became a client state. Subsequently, the United States refused to allow free elections in 1956 because, as Eisenhower later admit­ ted, Ho would have likely received about 80 percent of the vote, for the Vietnamese who had not collaborated with their enemies considered him the George Washington of their country, the consensus praising him as a national hero.5 Eisenhower’s decision led to the birth of a new revolutionary movement in South Vietnam, an insurgency led by the Vietcong. In response, Emperor Bao Dai’s prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, inaugurated a repressive campaign that resulted in the murders of approximately 12,000 suspects and in the torture of about 40,000 others.6 That campaign only resulted in the Vietcong gaining new recruits because they were obviously fighting for national reunification and...

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