"The troops that General Westmoreland needs and requests, as we feel it necessary, will be supplied. Is that not true, General Westmoreland?"
"Yes, sir.”
"General Wheeler?"
"Yes, sir."
"Secretary McNamara?"
"Yes, sir."
The New York Times did not report the respectful intonations which must certainly have accompanied the "Yes, sirs" in this historic meeting. But according to all observers, the conversation ended months of disagreement between the White House and the U.S. military conmmand in Vietnan.
Instead of the 100,000 to 200,000 troop reinforcements which the generals have sought, there would only be about 30,000 in the near future. The reserves would not be called up. Draft levels would not be significantly increased.
The significant thing about this "agreement," however, was not the implication that Washington has no need of additional troops to gain its objectives in Vietnan.
All the evidence produced in the course of debate prior to Johnson's decision points to exactly the opposite conclusion.
At best, U.S. military forces are deadlocked in Vietnam. More likely, they are beginning to lose ground to the revolutionary National Liberation Front.
What the White House agreement really points up is the powerful domestic pressure on Johnson to slow down the escalation of the war, and if possible, to bring it to an end.
There can be little doubt that the U.S. commanders in Vietnam do want reinforcements and have been asking for more troops for a considerable period of time.
U.S. News and World Report, a magazine which closely reflects the military viewpoint, editorialized on the war in the July 17 issue:
"Gen. William C. Westmoreland assured Mr. McNamara on July 7 that the war ‘is not a stalemate' -- but the physical evidence argued against hin.
"The initiative now is more on the Communist side. The U.S. effort has become largely a ‘holding action.'"
"One discouraging report from U.S. commanders on the scene: During the past few months, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong have not only been able to absorb the impact of the massive U.S. buildup in 1966, but have increased their manpower and firepower capabilities."
"Says a senior U.S. officer: ‘The situation is not as bad as in 1964-65 when we were moving from an advisory role to an active military role with troops in Vietnam. But the situation is by no means as favorable today as it was in 1966."
U.S. News and World Report has its own ominous reasons for stressing this assessment. Further in the article one reads:
"'North Vietnam is ripe for an Inchon-type landing,' [according to one military source]. It was at Inchon in Korea that Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed troops behind enemy lines, changing the pattern of the war.
"A U.S. invasion of North Vietnam would be one solution to the problem of infiltration."
Nevertheless, the impression that Washington is confronted with a military stalemate is by no means limited to pro- Pentagon sources. The liberal Washington Post carried an even more pessimistic appraisal, June 4.
Ward Just, a reporter who had recently returned from an 18-month tour of duty in Vietnam, declared:
"This war is not being won, and by any reasonable estimate, it is not going to be won in the foreseeable future. It may be unwinnable."
"The middle class [Vietnamese] see the country being torn apart by a war machine fitted not to counter insurgency but for what Gen. William C. Westmoreland correctly calls a war of attrition. To Vietnamese, it seems a case of killing a man in an auto accident to save him from cancer. "Among Americans, what is missing is a sense of purpose and a sense of priorities. No one can agree on what the situation in Vietnam is, except that it is surely unsatisfactory.
"No one can say with any certainty that the Allies are a quarter or a half or three-quarters down the road. No one can say whether it is the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end, or indeed, whether units of time have relevance in Vietnan."
The gloomy outlook about U.S. prospects in Vietnam comes, moreover, at a time when Washington has assumed the main burden of combat.
The July 18 New York Times states: "Since the first of May, 2,427 Americans have been killed, compared with 2,010 South Vietnamese. Since June 4, when the Saigon government began announcing figures on those wounded in action, 5,838 Americans have been wounded as compared with 2,231 South Vietnamese."
Besides taking over the job of frontline fighting, the U.S. military also has to play an increasing role in the occupation of territory already seized from the guerrillas. This was supposed to be taken care of by the Saigon army. But Ky's regime is not inspiring sufficient combativeness among its own troops.
The July 17 Wall Street Journal carried an article on its editorial page entitled: "Wanted: South Vietnam Army Heroes." The author, Fredrick Taylor, reports:
",..as the U.S. troop commitment continues to mount, Americans will get the impression that the South Vietnamese army is doing little to defend its own country."
Taylor feels, however, this is somewhat of an exaggeration. "Only about 80 percent of the entire South Vietnamese army is ineffective. "!!! .
The hard realities of Washington's military situation in Vietnam, coupled with the Johnson administration's stubborn pretense that all is going well, is causing a new wave of criticism in the ranks of Democratic and Republican party politicians.
Perhaps the sharpest attack on Johnson's policies in the recent course of the war came from New Jersey Republican Senator Clifford Case, July 10.
"The attention of the public," Case declared, "and of the critics has been diverted from the serious inadequacies and
shortfalls in the administration's operations in Vietnan.
"These inadequacies and shortfalls are the direct responsibility of President Johnson. Unless they are corrected there is grave danger that the whole effort in South Vietnam will collapse."
"Overall, progress in the revolutionary development program [pacification] is scarcely noticeable.
"A highly respected American who had been working in the program and its predecessors for years....ventured, with great hesitancy, that at the present rate of progress it might perhaps be done in 10 years."
Case also lambasted the Saigon regime for its failure to carry out Washington's assignment. He added:
"There are many reasons for this failure: weakness of motivation, inadequate and wrongly directed training, too
few good leaders at every level of conmmand, a tradition of corruption."
Case's speech is indicative of the fast-developing moderate Republican stand "slightly to the left of Johnson." On July 10, eight Republicans in the House of Representatives issued a statement calling for gradual de-escalation of the bombing of North Vietnan.
George Romney, a potential Republican presidential candidate for 1968, called for a "rein" on bombings, July 11.
But the Democrats are by no means willing to give the Republicans a monopoly on phony peace propaganda in the pre-election period. The day after Case's senate speech, Democratic majority leader Mike Mansfield rose in the senate to give his version of attacking the Johnson administration.
"The fact is," Mansfield claimed, "that reports of progress are strewn, like burned out tanks, all along the road which has led this nation ever more deeply into Vietnan....
"It has been present, this promise of progress, as the casualties in our forces in dead and wounded have increased from less than 10 a year, to 10 a month, to 10 a week, to 10 a day, to 10 an hour of every hour of every day."
A measure of the depth of dissatisfaction with Johnson's handling of the war is the fact that the Wall Street Journal editorially praised Mansfield's speech.
"The longer the war goes on," the Journal declared July 14, "and the wider it gets, the greater the danger that it may work against, rather than for, U.S. interests.
"The nation may be depleting its human and material resources out of all proportion to any conceivable gain, while the real enemy, Red China, sits on the sidelines. The U.S. may be weakening, instead of strengthening, itself against the day when perhaps greater efforts may be demanded of it."
However, the Wall Street Journal also made explicit the stand that is shared by the other criticisms:
"No more than anyone else do we
see how the U.S., by now so deeply in-
volved, can abandon the battle or other-
wise end the war in the face of continu-
ing Communist intransigence. Nor do we
rule out the possibility, remote though
it seems, that some military breakthrough
in America's favor might be in the making:
that would indeed be progress."
What really concerns these poli-
ticians at this juncture is the impending
1968 election. The Vietnam war is bitter-
ly unpopular in America today and it is
growing more so week by week.
July 13, Democratic Senator Young
declared: "My mail from Ohio citizens
now shows that the rank and file of Amer-
ican men and women now are beginning to
realize we are engaged in the wrong war
in the wrong place, and that this is the
most unpopular war our nation has engaged
in at any time during the past 191 years.
It has become a great American tragedy."
The politicians want a little
leeway. Like Johnson, they have every
intention of prosecuting the U.S. aggres-
sion in Vietnan.
But they would like to disasso-
ciate themselves, at least in rhetoric,
from the Johnson line during the pre-
election period.
The same motivation lies behind
Johnson's temporary truce with the gener-
als. The White House knows just as well
as the Pentagon what the real score is
on the Vietnam battlefield.
Unlike the Pentagon, Johnson has
to get re-elected in 1968. That is why
he is reluctant to send more troops
right now -- and it is the only reason.
But Johnson's has done this before.
He campaigned for peace in 1964, and
undertook the first major war-escalation
three months later. He talked peace in
1966 for the benefit of his Democratic
party colleagues in the off-year elec-
tion. And he followed this by nearly
doubling the level of troops.
Other things being equal, that
is what Lyndon Johnson will do next
year.
"The truth is we Americans are involved in an ugly land, jungle and swamp war 10,000 miles distant in an area of no importance whatever to the defense of the United States. It is the most unpopular war our nation ever fought and it is becoming more unpopular day by day. From the letters I receive...I know that citizens who considered my views 100 percent wrong 18 months ago no longer are criti- | cal." -—- Senator Stephen Young, July 13, 1967.