Johnson Increases U.S. Involvement

Much of the nation supported Lyndon Johnson’s determination to contain communism in Vietnam. In the years following 1965, President Johnson began sending large numbers of American troops to fight alongside the South Vietnamese.

Strong Support for Containment

Lyndon B. Johnson celebrates his victory in the 1964 presidential election.

Even after Congress had approved the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, President Johnson opposed sending U.S. ground troops to Vietnam. Johnson’s victory in the 1964 presidential election was due in part to charges that his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, was an anti-Communist who might push the United States into war with the Soviet Union. In contrast to Goldwater’s heated, warlike language, Johnson’s speeches were more moderate, yet he spoke determinedly about containing communism. He declared he was “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.”

However, in March 1965 that is precisely what the president did. Working closely with his foreign-policy advisers, particularly Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, President Johnson began dispatching tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to fight in Vietnam. Some Americans viewed Johnson’s decision as contradictory to his position during the presidential campaign. However, most were of the opinion that the president was protecting national security by following an established and popular policy of confronting communism anywhere in the world. Congress, as well as the American public, strongly supported Johnson's strategy. A 1965 poll showed that 61 percent of Americans supported the U.S. policy in Vietnam, while only 24 percent opposed.

There were dissenters within the Johnson administration, too. In October 1964 Undersecretary of State George Ball had argued against escalation, warning that “once on the tiger’s back, we cannot be sure of picking the place to dismount.” However, the president’s closest advisers strongly urged escalation, believing the defeat of communism in Vietnam to be of vital importance to the future of America and the world. Dean Rusk stressed this view in a 1965 memo to President Johnson.

“The integrity of the U.S. commitment is the principal pillar of peace throughout the world. If that commitment becomes unreliable, the communist world would draw conclusions that would lead to our ruin and almost certainly to a catastrophic war. So long as the South Vietnamese are prepared to fight for themselves, we cannot abandon them without disaster to peace and to our interests throughout the world.”

—Dean Rusk

quoted in In Retrospect

The Troop Buildup Accelerates

By the end of 1965, the U.S. government had sent more than 180,000 Americans to Vietnam. The American commander in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, continued to request more troops. Westmoreland, a West Point graduate who had served in World War II and Korea, was less than impressed with the fighting ability of the South Vietnamese Army, or the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). The ARVN “cannot stand up to this pressure without substantial U.S. combat support on the ground,” the general reported. “The only possible response is the aggressive deployment of U.S. troops.” 

BIOGRAPHY

William Westmoreland

(1914–2005)

General Westmoreland retired from the military in 1972, but even in retirement, he could not escape the Vietnam War.

In 1982 CBS-TV aired a documentary entitled The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. The report, viewed by millions, asserted that Westmoreland and the Pentagon had deceived the U.S. government about the enemy’s size and strength during 1967 and 1968 to make it appear that U.S. forces were winning the war.

Westmoreland, claiming he was the victim of “distorted, false, and specious information . . . derived by sinister deception,” filed a $120 million libel suit against CBS. The suit was eventually settled, with both parties issuing statements pledging mutual respect. CBS, however, stood by its story.

Throughout the early years of the war, the Johnson administration complied with Westmoreland’s requests for additional forces; by 1967 the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam had climbed to about 500,000.