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The Vietnam War left its fingerprints all over America's pop culture landscape, creating a seismic shift and dramatically changing the movies we paid to see, the songs we listened to, the TV shows we watched, the clothes we wore.

Simply put, Vietnam changed how we lived.

READ: Lost in Vietnam: Families reflect on the war; its heroes

The war may have ended 40 years ago, but its impact on pop culture is still being felt today as the emergence of hip-hop music can, in part, be traced to the counter-culture generation's rage against authority and societal norms.

The war - and the anti-war movement - led to a pop culture revolution, resulting in vibrant and unbridled new forms of entertainment and a trippy fashion sense that forever altered how Baby Boomers viewed the world - and their place in it.

Here are some of the most memorable films, music, TV shows and fashion that came out of an unpopular war.

LISTEN: The protest songs of the Vietnam War

MOVIES

So many to choose from, but those at the top of the list are "The Deer Hunter," "Coming Home," "Platoon" and "Good Morning, Vietnam." Some honorable mentions are "The Green Berets," "Full Metal Jacket" and "Born on the Fourth of July." Ask 10 people to rank their favorite Vietnam War films, chances are, you'll get 10 different lists from the masterpieces ("Apocalypse Now") to the over-the-top, but commercially successful ("First Blood").

MUSIC

The war spawned a new segment for the music industry - the protest song. Elvis, Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles all sang them. As the war divided the country, so did the music. Woodstock, that mind-blowing, three-day music festival that drew 400,000 people to a 600-acre dairy farm in upstate New York in 1969, served as a psychedelic platform for the counter-culture generation as such anti-war artists as Janis Joplin, Joan Baez and Country Joe made history. The songs from that era are legendary, ranging from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Ohio" to Special Forces soldier Barry Sadler's "Ballad of the Green Berets" to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?'

TELEVISION

Vietnam was the first war to be televised, bringing the horror into living rooms across the country for everyone to see. As for fictional TV, there are little-known movies ranging from "The Forgotten Man" about a Vietnam POW who returns home changed and discovers his wife remarried, to 1969's "The Ballad of Andy Crocker," the first made-for-TV movie to deal with the trauma of a returning Vietnam war vet. Two of the more well-known series to tackle the war were ABC's "China Beach" and CBS' "Tour of Duty." "M*A*S*H" might have been set during the Korean War, but it began airing on CBS in 1972 while the Vietnam War was still raging. And who can forget the "Star Trek" episodes that served as an allegory for America's involvement in Vietnam, and Archie and Meathead duking it out over dodging the draft in Norman Lear's groundbreaking sitcom, "All in the Family," a comedy that daringly held up a mirror up to a divided nation?

FASHION

As the conservative movement of the 1950s wilted, the Age of the Hippie emerged. Tie dyes, Afros, bell bottoms, long hair, sandals and love beads became all the rage. Women dressed more daring than ever before, not afraid to show more skin. With the change in clothes came a more willingness to dabble in drugs and sex, calculated behaviors to separate the young and rebellious generation from the rest of a more "uptight" America.

PHOTOS: See the 76 Palm Beach County men who gave their lives during the Vietnam conflict

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Vietnam: The war that seismically changed America's pop culture

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The Vietnam War left its fingerprints all over America's pop culture landscape, creating a seismic shift and dramatically changing the movies we paid to see, the songs we listened to, the TV shows we watched, the clothes we wore. Simply put, Vietnam changed how we lived.

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Phu Loi airfield was a Japanese air base during WW2. Phu Loi Air Field was actually built using POW labor, during WWII. The Japanese had Allied POWS cut out the jungle and level that area, for their fighter planes to use. After WW2 the French took over the airfield and used it in their fight against the Viet Minh.

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HO CHI MINH CITY - This bustling city of 8 million that is still called Saigon by many is going all out to celebrate Thursday's 40th anniversary of its fall - the day North Vietnam's Communist army captured South Vietnam's capital.

Propaganda posters and billboards marking Liberation Day blanket a downtown brimming with construction cranes and new high-rise buildings. City landmarks such as the old French colonial city hall and post office have gotten fresh coats of paint. A massive military parade is in the works and a shiny new statue of the North's iconic leader, Ho Chi Minh, waits to be unveiled on a renovated central square.

Yet even as the now-united country trumpets the North's victory over American invaders during a devastating conflict that left more than 3 million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000 American troops dead, bitter rifts over the civil war remain deep and unresolved.

For journalist and author Huy Duc, the first step towards reconciliation is to acknowledge the very different perspectives on why the war was fought. That has yet to take place.

"Vietnamese people from both sides have to agree on what happened," he said. "People who were sent from the North believed that they fought against the invading Americans and were liberating the South. And many people from the South ... believe it was a civil war, that the South was invaded by the North."

Architect Nguyen Huu Thai, 75, had a front-row seat for the last moments of the war. A student leader in Saigon in the 1960s, he later secretly worked for the North as a member of the National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, that fought U.S. troops in South Vietnam.

"The reconciliation clock stopped in 1975," said Thai . "Even 40 years later, I still search for real reconciliation."

At noon on April 30, 1975, Thai was at Independence Palace, home to the South Vietnamese president, as the first North Vietnamese tank came crashing through the front gate - an image memorialized on banners all over the city. He helped a soldier find his way to the roof of the building to hang the NLF flag.

A U.S. military helicopter lifts off from the U.S. Embassy in Saigon during the evacuation of authorized personnel and civilians on April 29, 1975. (Photo: AP file photo)

"When we raised the flag, I thought: 'This is not only 30 years of fighting ending, but 117 years,'" he said, counting back to the arrival of French colonial troops in 1858. "Tears were running down my face. It was so emotional, so important."

Afterwards, Thai helped organize the radio broadcast in which South Vietnamese President Duong Van Minh announced his surrender over the airwaves. As the day came to a close, he recalled it being the quietest night he had ever experienced: "All of my life, there were no peaceful times," he said. "Until the night of the 30th. It was such a strange thing for me. In the sky, no more planes, no more flares. On the street, no more military cars racing around."

The tranquil early moments after the end of the war did not last long, however, as the new regime quickly began a period of harsh crackdowns and waves of desperate Vietnamese fled the country. "The winners still had the mentality of war," said Thai.

D.M. Thanh, a lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army, faced the morning of April 30 with dread. "The bright side was that the war had ended, and there wouldn't be any more fighting," he said. "On the other hand, I was very worried. I didn't know what my future would be."

Thanh, like thousands of other South Vietnamese officers, was sent to a re-education camp, where he spent 12 years subject to backbreaking labor, extreme deprivation and Marxist indoctrination. His wife was pregnant with their son when he was sent away and Thanh only saw them twice during his confinement. After he was released, he took over a flower shop his parents owned and has lived quietly since.

Thanh said he doesn't talk about the past with his son, but the memories haunt him. "I forgive, but I can never forget," Thanh said, his eyes welling up.

Vietnam's lack of reconciliation is a theme Duc addresses in his book, The Winning Side, a far more frank and open look at the final days of the war and its aftermath than is found in official Vietnamese literature. The book has not been published in tightly censored Vietnam, but it has been widely read around the country online and in bootleg editions.

"After the war, the winning side did nothing to reconcile the people," Duc said. "They dug the divisions deeper and deeper, even inside the families of the losers of the war. So reconciliation has now become more difficult than on the day of April 30."

One reason the divisions persist is that the ruling Communist Party keeps tight control over the news media so there is no free discussion of the country's past. A recent report by the Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Vietnam the sixth most censored country in the world, worse than China, Iran and Cuba.

Many born after the fall of Saigon pay little attention to the anniversary or the lasting political wounds. They are more focused on enjoying the country's new found prosperity.
A GROWING ECONOMY
The Communists may have won the war, but the capitalists have won this cosmopolitan city that buzzes with entrepreneurial energy. Alongside the hammer-and-sickle flags are Chanel and Cartier boutiques. Young Vietnamese are as selfie- and Facebook-obsessed as peers around the world, and their focus is on how to take advantage of a growing economy.

"Ho Chi Minh City pays more attention to the economy than political issues," said Nguyen Tuan Thanh amid the whir of blenders and espresso machines in Caztus Coffee, a small café he owns. The 25-year-old, with tattooed arms and a Bluetooth receiver in his ear, was inspired by books written by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz to start a chain of cafés specializing in ice-blended drinks.

Nguyen Tuan Thanh prepares coffee at Caztus Coffee, a cafe he owns in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. (Photo: Thomas Maresca)

It would have been much more difficult to start his business - three shops so far - in the North, where personal connections and relationships still dominate the business landscape. "It's much easier to get things done here than Hanoi," he said.

Denise Thi, 30, founder and managing director of a 6-year-old digital marketing firm recently acquired by multinational giant Dentsu Aegis Network, said the anniversary should be a reason to look ahead, not at the past.

Denise Thi, managing director of Emerald Consulting, a digital marketing firm in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, says "In a way you feel so proud of your country for what we have achieved, for how we fought for liberty. But there's another way of celebrating. ... I mean, let's talk about the future, not the past anymore." (Photo: Thomas Maresca for USA TODAY)

"In a w ay y ou feel so pro ud of your country for what we have achieved, for how we fought for liberty," she said. "But there's another way of celebrating. ... I mean, let's talk about the future, not the past anymore."

Journalist Duc argues that the future won't be as bright if Vietnam fails to confront the past and address its long-lasting divisions.

"No matter how strong our economy is, the conflict among Vietnamese people on both sides is still very strong," he said. "So the thing we have to do is not only unify the different parts of the country, but also unify people's hearts."

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40 years later, Vietnam still deeply divided over war

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HO CHI MINH CITY - This bustling city of 8 million that is still called Saigon by many is going all out to celebrate Thursday's 40th anniversary of its fall - the day North Vietnam's Communist army captured South Vietnam's capital. Propaganda posters and billboards marking Liberation Day blanket a downtown brimming with construction cranes and new high-rise buildings.

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September 29, 1967: Speech on Vietnam | Miller Center

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President Johnson reiterates the view of the administration that the security of the United States and the entire free world is at stake in Southeast Asia, and that the U.S. will not abandon the commitments it has made in the region. Johnson quotes Southeast Asian leaders who agree that the U.S.

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An article in the New York Times asserts that the U.S. bombing campaign has neither destabilized North Vietnam's economy nor appreciably reduced the flow of its forces into South Vietnam.

These observations were strikingly similar to an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which concluded that "the idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, North Vietnam's industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgement."

The first air strikes against North Vietnam were flown in the fall of 1964, in retaliation for two attacks on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (although the second reported attack has never been verified). Additional strikes, carried out under the name Operation Flaming Dart, were ordered in February 1965 in response to Viet Cong attacks on a U.S. Army barracks at Pleiku and a nearby helicopter base, which resulted in the deaths of nine Americans. When the Viet Cong attacked other U.S. facilities in South Vietnam, President Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder in March 1965, an intensified air campaign against North Vietnam. He hoped that this campaign would relieve some of the pressure on South Vietnam, where the situation was rapidly deteriorating. Unfortunately, the bombing campaign did not have the desired results and Johnson had to commit U.S. ground troops to stabilize the situation.

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Newspaper reports on bombing over North Vietnam - Dec 09, 1965 - HISTORY.com

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An article in the New York Times asserts that the U.S. bombing campaign has neither destabilized North Vietnam's economy nor appreciably reduced the flow of its forces into South Vietnam. These observations were strikingly similar to an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, which concluded that "the idea that destroying, or threatening to destroy, North Vietnam's industry would pressure Hanoi into calling it quits seems, in retrospect, a colossal misjudgement."

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Vietnam '67

Lubbock, Tex. - By the beginning of 1967, there were 490,000 American troops in South Vietnam - along with some 850,000 from South Vietnam, South Korea and other allies - and America's civilian and military leaders were starting to think big. This, they believed, would be the year to crush both the southerners fighting as the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies, who had infiltrated the south.

Doing so, though, would require enormous multidivisional operations involving all branches of the military. Already by the end of 1966, they had begun planning for the "era of big battles," and specifically for operations designed to eradicate the enemy from around the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon. In the months to follow, those plans would involve hundreds of thousands of soldiers, lead to the deaths of thousands on both sides, and bring simmering doubts about the war effort to a boil.

In December 1966, intelligence reports indicated that large units of both Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops were garrisoned in an area about 12 miles northwest of Saigon known as the "Iron Triangle," bordered by the Saigon River on the southwest leg, the Thi Tinh River to the east and a line between the villages of Ben Suc and Ben Cat to the north. Gen. Jonathan O. Seaman, who commanded the 100,000-man II Field Force, described the Iron Triangle as a "dagger" aimed at the South Vietnamese capital. The very existence of the Republic of South Vietnam was at risk. But if the Iron Triangle could be destroyed by a major operation, the Americans and their allies could gain the offensive initiative and begin to drive the Communists out of the country.

That operation, Junction City, was set to begin in early January 1967. But there was significant concern among the military leadership that such a large effort required considerably more planning than could be done in a few weeks, and that a better option would be to first unleash a more regional operation - still large in scope, but aimed at specific, vulnerable Viet Cong regiments, as well as the headquarters of the Viet Cong's Military Region IV, which intelligence reports indicated were located within the Iron Triangle.

This relatively smaller, more focused operation, called Cedar Falls, began on Jan. 8. It followed a so-called hammer and anvil plan: American and South Vietnamese units would be inserted to the north as "hammers" that would drive the enemy into an "anvil" created by elements of the First and 25th Infantry Divisions.

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Bamboo huts in flames in Ben Suc, a Viet Cong-controlled village, in January 1967. Credit Bettmann, via Getty Images

At 8 a.m. on Jan. 8, 60 UH-1 "Huey" helicopters, flying in a V formation, approached Ben Suc, a Viet Cong-controlled village. It was to be the first target for the "hammer." Small-arms fire erupted against the invading infantry soldiers, but within a few hours, Ben Suc was under American control, and South Vietnamese troops were brought in to interrogate all men between the ages of 15 and 45. At the end of the first day, 106 had been screened; 28 were determined to be Viet Cong. Soldiers also discovered, beneath the village, a network of Viet Cong tunnels.

The bigger challenge, though, was what to do about the remaining villagers - because the American commanders had decided to raze Ben Suc, rather than let it return to enemy hands (an effort the journalist Jonathan Schell later described in his book " The Village of Ben Suc "). In the end, 582 men, 1,651 women and 3,754 children were relocated, along with 247 water buffalo, 225 cows and 60 tons of rice. When they were gone, the commanders ordered a large hole dug in the center of the village, and 10,000 pounds of explosives were detonated to destroy both the village and the tunnels beneath it.

In an instant, Ben Suc no longer existed. This sort of search-and-destroy mission, and the subsequent relocation of noncombatants, would become routine in 1967, as America and its South Vietnamese allies sought to control the hamlets and villages of South Vietnam.

Subsequent operations over the next 20 days resulted in a "body count" of 750 Viet Cong and 280 prisoners (out of 30,000 American and South Vietnamese soldiers in the operation, 72 Americans and 11 South Vietnamese were killed). But the most significant achievement, according to military sources, was the confirmation of the existence of a huge labyrinth of tunnels northwest of Saigon that would become the elusive target of allied forces for the next six years. In future operations, legs of this tunnel complex would even be discovered directly under the 25th Infantry Division's huge base camp at Cu Chi. These tunnels would also become the headquarters for the planning of the Tet offensive, which would be launched in January 1968, just 12 months later.

Still, these results, especially the body counts, weren't enough for Allied commanders, who expected that search-and-destroy missions like the one at Ben Suc would kill or capture enough enemy troops to blunt the Iron Triangle. Thus another huge operation had to follow almost immediately, this one carrying the original name of Operation Junction City.

If Operation Cedar Falls was a hammer and anvil, Operation Junction City was more of a "horseshoe." More than 25,000 friendly troops would engage the enemy forces by creating a huge inverted U-shape position in the area north of the Iron Triangle known as War Zone C, with the open end of the horseshoe facing south. The plan was to drive the enemy against the opposite legs of the horseshoe in such a way as to destroy the opposing forces through attrition - to destroy units, rather than just drive them from villages. Allied commanders believed that Cedar Falls had deteriorated into too many small-unit skirmishes with minimal enemy casualties, and they believed the use of larger American units would result in more.

On the first day of the operation, 845 men from the 173rd Airborne Brigade jumped from C-130 Hercules aircraft, which also dropped artillery and other military equipment. This was the first, and would remain the only, major parachute assault of the Vietnam War. It was designed to rapidly place soldiers in the center of the legs of the horseshoe and, from there, to search for the elusive Communist Central Office of South Vietnam, or Cosvn, the enemy's main headquarters, supposedly located near the Cambodian border.

The airborne assault was necessary, but it also made for great optics back home: Images of American paratroopers jumping into combat reminded people of World War II operations in Europe. President Lyndon B. Johnson hoped that seeing such pictures in major news stories would give Americans confidence that victory could soon be declared.

But Operation Junction City failed to find and destroy Cosvn - because such headquarters didn't exist, at least as a permanent garrison. The Viet Cong were operating from mobile facilities because of the constant threat of aerial bombardment, infantry maneuvers and logistical considerations. Such mobility enabled them to better coordinate their actions with North Vietnamese planners and to retreat across the border into Cambodia when necessary. After 82 days of combat, Junction City ended with 282 Americans killed and a reported 2,728 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese casualties.

Cedar Falls/Junction City had collectively resulted in approximately 3,500 of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese killed at an American cost of 350 lives. This 10 to 1 ratio would continue through most of the war, but the "era of big battles," for all its size and power, failed to change the war's dynamics.

By never allowing their large units to engage American large units, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units could remain organizationally intact and live to fight another day. The "era of big battles" was supposed to put the Americans on an offensive footing, but 70 percent of all contacts were initiated by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. The Communists were fighting the war on their own terms and chose when, where and how long to fight, which ultimately would result in victory.
"Vietnam '67" explores the meaning and consequences of the Vietnam War by examining its most pivotal period, from early 1967 to early 1968. To contact the editors, please send an email to vietnam67@nytimes.com.

Ron Milam is an associate professor of history at Texas Tech. The author of "Not a Gentleman's War: An Inside View of Junior Officers in the Vietnam War," he is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

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Opinion | 1967: The Era of Big Battles in Vietnam

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Vietnam '67 Lubbock, Tex. - By the beginning of 1967, there were 490,000 American troops in South Vietnam - along with some 850,000 from South Vietnam, South Korea and other allies - and America's civilian and military leaders were starting to think big.

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Half a century later, readers recall the pain and destruction on the battlefield and off.

To the Editor: I will never forget the horrors of Vietnam (" The War That Killed Trust," by Karl Marlantes, "Vietnam '67" series, Sunday Review, Jan. 8).

Say what you want about Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy and their domino theories; it was Lyndon B. Johnson's infamous Gulf of Tonkin speech in August 1964 that set the stage for lying about the war.

When I entered the University of Southern California two years later, I had to show several of my freshman classmates where the war zone was on a map. Vietnam fractured the American psyche. I ought to know. I "won" the first draft lottery on Dec. 1, 1969. Parents who had fought 25 years earlier in World War II couldn't understand why their baby-boomer children argued about Vietnam at the dinner table.

As a 21-year-old at the time, I remember watching fathers throw their sons out of the house because they refused to enlist. But I did not serve in Vietnam. That's because I had an accident a few years earlier that disqualified me.

Today, presidents and Congress must answer the question about the elusive end game before sending troops. No such questions were asked about Vietnam. Richard M. Nixon took credit for ending American involvement there, but it was Congress that pulled the plug on funding the war. Absent that, there is no telling when the killing in Vietnam would have ended.

My three children (36, 24 and 22) all know about Vietnam. I felt that it was my responsibility to pass on to them the lessons I learned nearly half a century ago. I hope that my contemporaries have done the same with their families.

DENNY FREIDENRICH

Laguna Beach, Calif.

To the Editor: Over a pay phone, my father told me never to talk to him about it again. I had told him that I was not going to Vietnam and that if drafted I was going to Canada. I was called a Communist and a traitor. After graduating from college in 1969 and moving to Canada that summer, I was never drafted. I became a Canadian citizen and have lived here ever since.

Karl Marlantes's article resonated deeply with my experience growing up in Illinois during the 1950s and '60s. The Vietnam War changed my life more than I ever expected, but I remain a wounded American at some level, too.

STEVE JOHNSON

Toronto

To the Editor: To this day, 50 years later, I can still see the verdant paddies and farmers planting their rice crop for the year. The green was so beautiful to behold. I still ask myself the same question I thought of back then: What are we doing here? These people just want to be left alone.

When will America apologize to the Vietnamese for the murder of their citizens? When will the military-industrial complex be held accountable for creating the weapons that helped destroy Laos and Vietnam? Creating a universal draft for the American military will help maintain high profits for the merchants of war.

HERMAN EDWARD SEISER

Bangkok

The writer served with the United States Marine Corps in South Vietnam from 1966 to 1968.

To the Editor: While I respect Karl Marlantes for his sense of patriotic duty, I disagree with his analysis of the origin of cynicism among the students of the Sixties generation.

Long before students became cynical about Vietnam, they watched as the police on the streets of cities in the South beat men, women and children while the federal government did nothing. If Mr. Marlantes wishes to address the negative effects of Vietnam, he needs to look to the antecedents in the cynical behavior of the political elites of both parties as they dragged their feet in responding to the civil rights struggles in this country.

FRANK MIATA

New York

To the Editor: I wish I shared Karl Marlantes's view that Vietnam was pivotal in breaking down racial barriers. During my 14 months in the war, I noticed a disturbing trend toward re-segregation, with black and white soldiers choosing to associate only with others of their own race whenever possible.

This was most evident by a rear barracks populated exclusively by black junior officers. I often wondered why the leadership of my unit tolerated this.

ART JAEGER

Linden, Va.

To the Editor: I am a 70-plus-year-old woman, and I believe that this article gets to the heart of the political division in the United States. These days, there seems to be no sense of patriotism or "country first," as there was when I was growing up.

Every man and woman must do his or her share for this country. Maybe then we will realize that we are all in this together, and maybe then the people who think "me first" and "political party before country" will realize that this kind of thinking has taken this country down a dangerous path. I am truly afraid that our country is losing its soul.

C. K. CASTILLO

St. Louis

To the Editor: I was in Vietnam in 1967, the same year as Karl Marlantes, performing in "Guys and Dolls" for the U.S.O. My experience was very different.

We spent a night on the U.S.S. Enterprise, staying awake to count the black stealth bombers. They were returning from secret sorties over Laos, contrary to stated United States policy. I never saw racial prejudice in the military, but I was shocked by our indifference to the killing of innocent Vietnamese.

From the cockpit of a chopper I saw people in black pajamas and conical straw hats working the rice paddies. The pilot said, "I'd like to plug some of them." When asked how he could tell friend from enemy, he said: "Who cares? They're not human."

I returned to Vietnam in 2013. Every Vietnamese I spoke to had moved past anger and resentment, expressing a desire to cooperate with us, a former enemy. But what have we Americans learned from the Vietnam War? Our country is more divided than ever.

SUZANNE COGAN

New York

To the Editor: Karl Marlantes is to be commended for his powerful reflection on the legacy of the Vietnam War. But in making the case for a military populated by scions of the elite as well as the working class, he does not mention an additional payoff to universal service: The power brokers who run this country would probably be a lot less inclined toward war, and more inclined toward diplomacy, if their own family members were at risk of death on the battlefield.

ANDREW SCHRANK

Providence, R.I.

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Half a century later, readers recall the pain and destruction on the battlefield and off. To the Editor: I will never forget the horrors of Vietnam (" The War That Killed Trust," by Karl Marlantes, "Vietnam '67" series, Sunday Review, Jan. 8). Say what you want about Presidents Dwight D.

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The appearance of Robert S. McNamara's book on Vietnam in the spring of 1995 touched off an explosion of recrimination reminiscent of the 1960s. McNamara's confession that the war was a great mistake that he, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and other civilian and military advisers should have avoided confirmed war opponents in the belief that Vietnam was a transparent error in judgment that need not have happened.

McNamara's supposition that John F. Kennedy would have checked the drift into an unwinnable struggle deepened the feeling that Vietnam was an unnecessary war that wiser statesmanship could have prevented.1 Since McNamara, according to his own account, came to understand this, but felt compelled to hide his disillusionment, critics have attacked his confession of error as self-serving, an attempt to make peace with himself, win forgiveness from those who suffered losses in the fighting, and, not incidentally, make a significant sum of money on an international best-seller.

The impulse to see Vietnam as a readily avoidable mistake is, I believe, a case of bending history to presentist assumptions. To be sure, dissenting voices at the time warned against the dangers of involvement in an Asian land war, predicting a stalemate that could cost the United States substantial losses in blood and treasure. But almost no one counseled simply letting Vietnam go; early opponents of expanded U.S. military action urged some kind of negotiated settlement that would protect South Vietnam from a Communist takeover.

Three of the most vigorous early opponents of an American war in Vietnam, Senators J. William Fulbright (D-AR) and Mike Mansfield (D-MT) and Undersecretary of State George Ball, did not reject initial American efforts to preserve Saigon's independence. Fulbright and Ball, for example, were warm supporters of Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution announcing American intentions to resist Communist aggression against South Vietnam, and Mansfield proposed a number of negotiating scenarios for keeping the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese from seizing control of the South.

Moreover, there is good reason to think that had he lived, John Kennedy, like Johnson, would have expanded upon the military efforts of his thousand days in the White House to save Saigon from communism. Noam Chomsky's Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture (1993) makes a convincing case that Kennedy had no intention of withdrawing American forces from South Vietnam without a greater test of the Communist drive for control. Chomsky quotes JFK's public declaration on 12 September 1963: "What helps to win the war, we support; what interferes with the war effort, we oppose. ... We have a very simple policy in that area [Vietnam]. ... We want the war to be won, the Communists to be contained, and the Americans to go home. ... But we are not there to see a war lost." Chomsky points out that had Kennedy intended to withdraw, it is hard to understand why he so consistently spoke publicly about holding the line in Vietnam. JFK was too astute a politician to have created a public expectation that he intended to abandon after reelection in 1964. 2

Retrospective arguments in behalf of an American withdrawal in early 1965, before Rolling Thunder, the sustained bombing campaign begun in March 1965, and the massive expansion of ground forces begun in July, are difficult to credit. The widespread and prevailing opinion in the administration, Congress, and the press and among the mass of Americans was that the United States simply could not walk away from Vietnam and sacrifice a pro-Western country to Communist aggression. In February 1965, for example, 79 percent of Americans believed that a U.S. withdrawal would mean a Communist takeover of all of Southeast Asia; 79 percent viewed it as "very important" to prevent that from happening; 64 percent favored continuing present efforts in Vietnam; 63 percent believed our presence in Vietnam "very important" to America's national security; 48 percent supported "sending a large number of American troops to help save Vietnam"; and 60 percent gave the president positive marks for his handling of Vietnam.3

In the winter of 1965-66, nearly 60 percent of the American people saw the Vietnam War as the country's most urgent problem. The number had more than doubled since the presidential campaign in 1964. Two out of three Americans considered it essential to take a stand in Vietnam, with only 20 percent favoring a pullout over an expanded role for U.S. forces. Seventy-five percent of a sample poll viewed the war as "part of our worldwide commitment to stop Communism."4

Almost everyone who thought about Vietnam remembered the run up to the Second World War and the appeasement of Hitler. There was genuine fear in 1965 that giving the Communists a free hand in Vietnam might be the prelude to bolder actions that would lead to a Soviet-American and/or Sino-American confrontation that could result in a nuclear war. Further, the "loss" of Vietnam could mean the start of a chain reaction in Southeast Asia that would put anti-Communist countries on the defensive around the globe. Finally, Johnson and his principal advisers could not ignore memories of Senator Joseph McCarthy's assault on Democrats and State Department officials for "losing" China. It was feared that the "loss" of Vietnam would produce a political reaction in the United States that could cripple the Johnson administration and accuse the Democratic party of failing to meet the Communist threat.5

My point here is not that Johnson and his advisers were wise to have escalated the U.S. stake in Vietnam but that in the context of 1964-65 it is difficult to imagine them doing anything else. This is not the same as saying they had to expand and sustain that involvement, which of course they did, between 1966 and 1968. Indeed, here is where I think JFK would have acted differently from LBJ. By 1966-67, when it became increasingly evident that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong would not easily succumb to American power, either in the near or even possibly long term, Kennedy would have cut U.S. losses and found a way to extricate us from the war. Unlike Johnson, who had no significant diplomatic achievements and no fund of political credibility as a foreign policy leader, Kennedy had the prestige of success in the Cuban missile crisis and the Soviet-American Test Ban treaty to bolster any big decision he made in foreign affairs. No one can say with certainty, of course, what Kennedy would have done, but, as his behavior in the Bay of Pigs and missile crises demonstrated, he was a cautious foreign policy leader who resisted compounding errors and taking risks that could lead to a wider war or divisions at home that could jeopardize the country's Cold War consensus.6

Lyndon Johnson's response to the war was another matter. Indeed, the central question that I see for historians considering LBJ and Vietnam is not why he escalated American involvement in the fighting in 1965 but why he failed to take the political precautions necessary to protect his administration from a stalemate or even failure in Vietnam.

Johnson knew, as his mentor Franklin D. Roosevelt had demonstrated in 1939-1945, that an effective policy abroad requiring significant sacrifices had to rest on a solid political consensus at home. "We are in bad shape in Vietnam," Johnson told New York Times editor Turner Catledge in December 1964.

Uncertainties in that area are far more than the certainties. Yet we can't afford to, and we will not, pull out. We must find some way to bring the job off even if we have to set it up so that a withdrawal would have a better face. ... Whether we spread military operations across North Vietnam is yet to be decided. We certainly haven't decided against it. We've got to do whatever it takes, either to get a good settlement there, or to furnish a good face behind which we can withdraw. Again, withdrawal is not in the picture, certainly not now.7

Judging from his comments to Catledge, Johnson was mindful of U.S. public opinion in deciding how to meet the difficulties in Vietnam. Moreover, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey cautioned him against losing sight of this essential ingredient of a successful policy toward the conflict in Southeast Asia. In February 1965, as LBJ was about to commit himself to Rolling Thunder, Bundy advised him to prepare the country for substantial sacrifices by publicly stating what an air campaign might mean. Bundy told Johnson that

at its very best the struggle in Vietnam will be long. It seems to us important that this fundamental fact be made clear ... to our own people and to the people of Vietnam. Too often in the past we have conveyed the impression that we expect an early solution. ... It is our own belief that the people of the United States have the necessary will to accept and to execute a policy that rests upon the reality that there is no short cut to success in Vietnam.

Johnson made it clear to Bundy, however, that there would be no "loud public signal of a change in policy," that White House aides would say little or nothing to the press, and that statements about Vietnam would be confined to general remarks by Rusk and UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.8

At the same time, Hubert Humphrey tried to persuade Johnson that policymaking toward Vietnam might include "the most fateful decisions of your Administration." Humphrey believed it essential that Johnson make the war "politically understandable" to the American public. "There has to be a cogent, convincing case if we are to enjoy sustained public support," he wrote LBJ on 15 February 1965. "In World Wars I and II we had this." Even in Korea, where "we could not sustain American political support for fighting Chinese," the public had a better understanding of what we were doing than in Vietnam. Humphrey predicted that if "we find ourselves leading from frustration to escalation and end up short of a war with China but embroiled deeper in fighting in Vietnam over the next few months, political opposition will steadily mount." Humphrey warned that this opposition would come from "Democratic liberals, independents, [and] labor" and would gain a hold "at the grassroots [level] across the country."9

It is a given of the Johnson presidency that LBJ refused to allow a debate in Congress, the press, and the country about what to do in Vietnam. Instead, he escalated the war without consulting those who would have to fight and support it with their lives, money, and convictions. Relying on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution as giving him autonomy to expand the war, he provoked what millions of Americans came to understand as the "credibility gap": Lyndon Johnson's failure to speak honestly to the people. "How do you know when Lyndon Johnson is telling the truth?" a joke was told around the country. "When he strokes his chin, pulls his ear lobe, he's telling the truth. When he begins to move his lips, you know he's lying."10

Johnson's impulse to shun a debate about Vietnam during the first seven months of 1965, when the initial major stepup occurred, has a plausible explanation. Johnson was fearful that encouraging public discussion of an expanded war would divert the Congress and the country from agreeing to the explosion of Great Society legislation-federal aid to elementary, secondary, and higher education, Medicare, Medicaid, Voting Rights, clean air and clean water bills, immigration reform, the creation of a Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities. Johnson believed that conservatives eager to kill off his programs of domestic reform would have been all too happy to seize upon the expanding war as an excuse to stall and ultimately kill the Great Society and war on poverty.

Yet at the same time, Johnson was defensive about not consulting the public and Congress and enraged by talk of the "credibility gap." Johnson "is particularly sensitive to charges that he is not talking enough to the American people about the complexities and risks of the Vietnam war," New York Times columnist James Reston wrote at the end of February. "He carries around in his pocket a series of private polls that purport to show that the vast majority of the people not only know what he is doing but approve what he is doing." Johnson understood perfectly that this could change. In politics, he liked to say, "overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad and vice versa." For the moment, however, he believed it sound policy to keep his counsel. If and when developments dictated otherwise, he would consider shifting ground. 11

But he never did. And not because he lacked opportunities after July 1965. To the contrary, in the winter of 1965-66 he had a further chance to invite a public debate about the expanding war in Southeast Asia. On 10 November, the Joint Chiefs asked for an additional 113,000 troops to shift from Phase I of the fighting, in which we had stopped "losing the war," to Phase II, in which we would "start winning it." They also recommended intensified bombing, highlighted first by strikes against petroleum, oil, and lubricant (POL) facilities and electric power installations and then military targets in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. In late November, Westmoreland increased his estimate of troop needs to 200,000, for a total of 410,000, 135,000 more than originally assumed in July. Although the president would not commit himself to Westmoreland's request then, neither would he turn it down. He preferred to delay decisions on troop strength, but clearly he had little room to maneuver unless he chose to cut U.S. losses and reduce rather than expand America's role in the war.12

The pressure for troop increases and more bombing could have been an occasion for a great debate on what to do about the fighting. But instead of openly confronting the hard choices the country now faced in Vietnam and encouraging a national discussion, Johnson obscured the harsh realities, planning, for example, to expand troop commitments month by month without acknowledging that decisions had been made for a doubling of forces by the end of the coming year. For the second time in six months he had a chance to rally a generally receptive public to fight a difficult limited conflict and make Vietnam America's war. Instead, he chose the path of indirection, which irrevocably made the struggle Lyndon Johnson's war and all that would mean for a president presiding over a potentially losing cause.

Johnson's manipulativeness extended to a bombing pause, which he launched on 27 December 1965. The day before, after a Christmas truce ended on the ground, Johnson considered whether to resume bombing as well. Rusk and State Department subordinates wanted renewed air strikes and a pause later, after the White House had made clear to Moscow that a major peace effort was under way. But Mac Bundy, McNamara, Jack Valenti, and Bill Moyers counseled otherwise. The latest polls showed 73 percent of Americans eager for a cease-fire, with 61 percent favorable to "all-out bombing" of the North if no negotiations followed a pause. Movers and Bundy warned that a resumption of bombing before the New Year would result in attacks on the pause as "half-hearted." General Maxwell Taylor also urged a longer halt as a way to show "the American public that we have left no door to peace untried." McNamara, who spent three hours talking to the president at his ranch on the evening of the 27th, apparently pressed the case for a longer pause. He and Taylor saw few, if any, negative military consequences resulting from an extended bombing halt.13

Johnson now agreed to begin a "peace offensive." He was skeptical that it would come to anything, but, as Rusk cabled Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon, it was a way to test and expose Communist propaganda and prepare the country for a larger war: "The prospect of large scale reinforcement in men and defense budget increases of some twenty billion for [the] next eighteen month period requires solid preparation of [the] American public. A crucial element will be clear demonstration that we have explored fully every alternative but that [the] aggressor has left us no choice." Johnson himself told Averell Harriman: "We don't have much confidence that much will come out of this but that is no reason not to try. ... I think with your friends Fulbright, Scotty Reston, Mansfield, Arthur Krock and the New York Times, all these people thinking there could be peace if we were only willing to have peace, we ought to give it the old college try." But there was to be no debate, just a demonstration of administration eagerness for peace and Hanoi's unwillingness to compromise. 14

Why would Johnson not allow a public argument that could have served both the war effort and the political advantage of his administration? An open discussion of the pros and cons of escalating U.S. involvement in the war would have shown Hanoi that there was substantially more resolve to defend South Vietnam than the Communists believed. In addition, a debate that underwrote an expanded war would have increased LBJ's freedom to escape from the conflict when the public lost hope of winning without substantial losses, the only way it really wanted to fight the war. Had a debate followed by escalation occurred, LBJ could have depicted the fighting as the public's choice. Moreover, once the country began to sour on the war, the president could have seized upon the mass mood to declare victory and leave, as Vermont's Republican Senator George Aiken had counseled in 1966. Johnson could have announced a policy of Vietnamization, as Richard M. Nixon later did, declaring that American forces had blunted Communist aggression and given the South Vietnamese the wherewithal to survive. Even if this proved to be a false assumption, as it did in 1975, the American public, weary of a struggle that cost more than it wanted to pay, would have been in no mood to attack a president and an administration following the public's lead.

But several things dissuaded Johnson from taking a more politically expedient course. First, it was not his personal political style to make policy by debate. Throughout his years as Senate majority leader, important business or negotiations leading to bipartisan passage of major bills was conducted behind the scenes in the inner sanctum of the Upper House rather than on its floor. Historian Paul Conkin has pointed out that as majority leader, Johnson "had little sympathy for those who wanted to air points of view, to use speeches as a vehicle of public education. Debate tended to sharpen differences or allow senators to posture for audiences back home. ... Success required a masking of issues, not sharpening them through debate."15

Johnson's political career had been largely the product of back room discussions and private manipulations. In 1935, he had won appointment as Texas director of the National Youth Administration through pressure on the White House by Texas friends and associates. His successful race for a House seat in 1937 partly rested on secret financial contributions that allowed him to outspend five better known rivals. During his almost twelve years in the House, he made his mark on his district and in the Congress more generally by building close private ties to the White House and congressional leaders. His Senate races in 1941, 1948, and 1954 were rife with skulduggery not only by his own campaign but also by those of his opponents, especially the 1948 primary contest against Governor Coke Stevenson. Johnson's eighty-seven-vote victory with tainted ballots gave him the unflattering nickname of "Landslide Lyndon." From Johnson's perspective, the most successful politicians were also the most manipulative, Texans like Alvin Wirtz, Maury Maverick, "Pappy" O'Daniel, Sam Rayburn, and John Nance Garner and national figures like Franklin Roosevelt, Huey Long, Thomas G. Corcoran, and the Kennedy clan. In brief, Johnson's impulse to expand the war in Vietnam without public discussions calculated to build long-term national support partly grew out of developments in twentieth-century American politics in which he played a significant role.16

Johnson's personality also lent itself to unilateral action rather than open, free-wheeling debate. Johnson was an imperious character who made his way in politics by dominating everyone around him. Stories about his grandiosity and overbearing nature are legion. "I understand you were born in a log cabin," the German Chancellor Ludwig Erhart is supposed to have said during a visit to LBJ's ranch. "No, no," Johnson replied. "You have me confused with Abe Lincoln. I was born in a manger." "Don't dig it too deep," Johnson told some associates discussing his grave site. "I only expect to be in there for three days."

Johnson's political success partly rested on his ability to dominate people by the sheer force of his personality. "Never seen his equal," Eisenhower aide Bryce Harlow said, "and I've rubbed up against the greatest people this country has produced for twenty years running." Johnson's presence in the Senate, Florida Senator George Smathers recalls, was like a "great overpowering thunderstorm that consumed you as it closed around you." Meeting Johnson reminded the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee of going to the zoo.

You really felt as if a St. Bernard had licked your face for an hour, had pawed you all over. ... He never just shook hands with you. One hand was shaking your hand; the other hand was always someplace else, exploring you, examining you. And of course he was a great actor, bar fucking none the greatest. He'd be feeling up Katharine Graham and bumping Meg Greenfield on the boobs. And at the same time he'd be trying to persuade you of something, sometimes something that he knew and I knew was not so, and there was just the trace of a little smile on his face. It was just a miraculous performance.17

The economist Gardner Ackley remembers a meeting in LBJ's office with Roger Blough, the chairman of U.S. Steel. Johnson wanted Blough to hold the line on steel prices. And so he

just started working him over and asking him questions and lecturing him. I have never seen a human being reduced to such a quivering lump of flesh. Roger was unable to speak at the end of that interview. LBJ just took him apart, spread him out on the rug; and when we left, Roger was just shaking his head. All that awesome power was really brought to bear! I'd just never seen anything like it. ... But it wasn't really what he said, it was the way he just leaned over and looked at him.18

Robert Strauss, the Texas Democratic party power broker, was an intimidating figure in his own right. Yet he recalls being no match for Johnson. "Lyndon Johnson just towered over me and intimidated me terribly," Strauss said.

He's the one person who had my number all his life. Even when he was a sick old man, out of office, whenever he called, perspiration broke out on the top of my head. He was the best I ever saw. Tragic, but the best I ever saw. I remember once asking him, "Why did you cast that vote, Mr. President?" "Bob," he said, "one thing you'll learn someday is that you have to be a demagogue on a lot of little things if you want to be around to have your way on the big things." I'll never forget him saying that. A lesson in primer politics from the Master.19

As president, Johnson became even more imperious. "I'm the only President you have," he told opponents of policies he favored. He was particularly insistent on asking support for foreign and defense policies he believed essential to national security. Indeed, he could not understand how Americans could take issue with him on Vietnam. With American boys fighting and dying to shield the country from Communist advances, he believed it unpatriotic, if not treasonous, to give comfort to the enemy by publicly opposing the war. Johnson could not accept the possibility that antiwar opponents were as loyal to the United States as war advocates. He could not believe that they were in fact acting in the larger interest of the country. To his thinking, they were under the influence of Communist diplomats in the United States.

In a meeting with state governors in March 1966, Johnson declared that "our country is constantly under threat every day-Comm[unists] working every day to divide us, to destroy us. Make no mistake about the Comm[unists]," he said. "Don't kid yourself [for] a moment. It is in the highest counsels of gov[ernment]-in our society. McCarthy's methods were wrong-but the threat is greater now than in his day."20

By May, the proliferation of student protests against the war, including marches, rallies, picketing, and sit-ins on university campuses, the decision of professors to deny information on students to the Selective Service without the student's permission, the tactic of civil rights leaders in trying "to drive a wedge between the poor and the rest of the country" by arguing that Vietnam meant taking money from the ghettoes, and a media LBJ saw as giving one-sided "nation-wide publicity" to war opponents confirmed Johnson's belief that sinister forces were behind the push to abandon Vietnam.21

Historian and White House intellectual Eric Goldman remembers that by the middle of 1966 "the domestic reformer of the Great Society days had become a war chief. ... The ebullient leader given to moments of testiness and rage was now, day after day, bitter, truculent, peevish-and suspicious of the fundamental good sense and integrity of anyone who did not endorse the Vietnam War. This Lyndon Johnson was not only depressing; at times he could be downright frightening." Goldman recalls an informal session at the White House with a cabinet member and three aides over potato chips and sodas. The mention of a liberal Senate war opponent brought a sneer to the president's face. These liberals were "crackpots," who had "just plain been taken in. ... It's the Russians who are behind the whole thing," he declared. The FBI and the CIA "kept him informed about what was 'really going on.' " He described the Russians as "in constant touch with anti-war senators. ... These senators ate lunch and went to parties at the Soviet embassy; children of their staff people dated Russians. 'The Russians think up things for the senators to say. I often know before they do what their speeches are going to say.' "22

J. Edgar Hoover was particularly active in feeding Johnson's suspicions. On 13 May 1966, Richard Russell participated in a two-and-a-half-hour discussion at the White House, which "mostly [focused on] Vietnam & CIA investigation. Talked to J E[dgar] H[oover] while I was there. [He] showed me visitors to S[oviet] Embassy & contacts."23

Since Johnson saw the war opposition as essentially un-American or the expression of what "gullible" intellectuals and journalists were hearing from Communist officials, he had every hope that the great majority of Americans would continue to back the war effort. In other words, there was no need to encourage a debate because most Americans were already convinced of the wisdom of combatting Communist expansion in Vietnam, and only the Left, with whom a majority of the country had little patience, was ready to abandon the war.

Johnson also believed that he could overcome the limited impact that dissenting antiwar sentiment was having on Americans by his manipulation of the media. "Reporters are puppets," Johnson believed.

They simply respond to the pull of the most powerful strings. ... Every story is always slanted to win the favor of someone who sits somewhere higher up. There is no such thing as an objective news story. There is always a private story behind the public story. And if you don't control the strings to that private story, you'll never get good coverage no matter how many great things you do for the masses of the people. There's only one sure way of getting favorable stories from reporters and that is to keep their daily bread-the information, the stories, the plans, and the details they need for their work-in your own hands, so that you can give it out when and to whom you want.24

Johnson set a precedent for bending the media to his purposes in the 1964 presidential campaign. The press and television, which were scared to death of the intemperate Barry Goldwater, had been highly responsive to White House pressure. In September 1964, for example, after Goldwater had attacked Johnson and Humphrey as "misfits" and Humphrey in particular as a draft dodger, Johnson aides Bill Moyers and Walter Jenkins spoke to Drew Pearson, Kay Graham, and Al Friendly at the Washington Post, William S. White and James Reston at the New York Times, and syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann about responding to the "degrading way the Republican campaign has opened." Most of them promised to take Goldwater to task for his irresponsible statements. The following week, Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, persuaded syndicated columnist Sylvia Porter to attack a Goldwater tax cut plan, while Lippmann agreed to consider doing a column and the Washington Post prepared "a stinging editorial."

The White House also convinced reporters covering Goldwater to supply detailed accounts of what the senator was saying off the record. In mid-September, when Cliff Carter at the Democratic National Committee gave Valenti one such report, he wrote: "The attached was written by a reporter travelling with Senator Goldwater. We're trying to make connections so that we can always have him thusly covered."25

More important to the White House than having reporters spy on Goldwater were editorial-page endorsements and anti-Goldwater, pro-Johnson material in the news columns of the papers. Leonard Marks, a Washington attorney who had represented the Johnsons' radio and TV stations and would become the director of the United States Information Agency in 1965, worked "to secure editorial endorsements from newspaper friends and clients." Once papers agreed to back Johnson, a member of the DNC was assigned to keep in touch with their editors and publishers and supply them with campaign materials. The White House also closely followed "how Mr. Johnson's speeches, utterances or releases were carried across the country. ... We had reporters in about fifty major cities that would call in during the night and report what placement in the paper Mr. Johnson's speech got," a campaign aide recalls. Johnson himself, who closely followed these efforts, met with the Washington bureau chiefs of leading papers in an effort to improve his image while helping to knock down Goldwater. The objective was to "convey a picture of a President calm, concerned, busy at his Presidential business, but eager to win a decisive mandate in November."26

Johnson saw the press as essential in helping him defeat Goldwater, but he wanted a more systematic and reliable mechanism for using it and other means to win the election. To answer Johnson's concern, the White House organized a sixteen-man committee presided over by aides Myer Feldman and Fred Dutton and including people from a number of government agencies and Clark Clifford's Washington law firm. The committee met twice daily, preparing statements on major issues on which Goldwater had made himself vulnerable for distribution to people who could "get them into the papers in the right places at the best time." They assigned one staffer to feed negative information to LBJ supporters, who would get it in the local press prior to or during Goldwater visits. They prepared rebuttals of Goldwater-Miller statements and assigned committee members to get them published. They fed hostile questions to reporters traveling with Goldwater; they wrote letters to popular columnists like Ann Landers; they made lists of columnists they knew and lobbied them regularly for articles critical of Goldwater; and they pressured mass magazines like Look, the Saturday Evening Post, and Parade to attack Goldwater's views on nuclear weapons. 27

Against this backdrop, Johnson had every confidence that he could bring the media along on Vietnam. In August 1965, for example, when CBS broadcast a report by Morley Safer with film of a U.S. Marine using a Zippo lighter to burn a thatched hut in the village of Cam Ne, while an old peasant woman pleaded for her home, Johnson woke up CBS President Frank Stanton to complain that the network had "shat on the American flag." Johnson wanted to know why CBS would use a story by Safer, a Canadian with "a suspicious background." He also asked: "How could CBS employ a Communist like Safer, how could they be so unpatriotic as to put on enemy film like this?"

CBS executives ordered correspondent Murray Fromson back to Washington to explain the story to the White House. In a conversation with Bill Moyers, Fromson explained that Safer's nationality was irrelevant to a story that poignantly showed Vietnamese peasants fleeing huts burned by U.S. troops. Moyers, whom Fromson describes as unconvinced by his explanation, devoted himself to repairing American prestige. "I have been working the past few days on steps we can take to improve coverage of the Vietnam war-steps in Saigon and Washington," he wrote Johnson. "We will never eliminate altogether the irresponsible and prejudiced coverage of men like Peter Arnett [a New Zealander] and Morris [ sic] Safer, men who are not Americans and do not have the basic American interest at heart, but we will try to tighten things up." "Good!" Johnson scribbled on Moyers's note. 28

In general, the media supported Johnson's decision to fight in Vietnam. Like most Americans at this time, they believed it in the national interest to prevent a Communist takeover in the South. But this was not enough for Johnson. He wanted to control the flow and content of the news and bend the media to his designs. Johnson refused to be passive toward media criticism. He and his principal press aides believed that "poisonous and sour" reporting seriously undermined the war effort. Johnson suspected that "subversives" had "infiltrated the press corps." "The Viet Cong atrocities never get publicized," he complained. "Nothing is being written or published to make you hate the Viet Cong; all that is being written is to hate us." The White House also saw attacks on the president's war policies as encouraging the Communists to think that America would not stay the course in Vietnam.29

The media's antagonism enraged Johnson. "We treat those [critical] columnists as whores," he told the historian William E. Leuchtenburg in September 1965. "Anytime an editor wants to screw 'em, they'll get down on the floor and do it for three dollars. That's the price of [naming to Leuchtenburg two of the best-known Washington correspondents]. We don't pay any attention to it."30

But, of course, he did, taking pains to ensure as far as possible that news out of the White House was only what he wanted it to be. Managing the news by invoking national security, planting questions at press conferences, encouraging publishers to print prowar columns, and making life as difficult as possible for unfriendly reporters became standard operating procedures.31

Johnson assumed that a reasonably rapid end to the war would also make a debate unnecessary. To be sure, by the end of 1966, a number of people, including McNamara, were warning against a stalemate that could last for years. In mid-October, after returning from a trip to Vietnam, McNamara told the president that he saw "no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon." Despite some improvement in the military situation, the Communists were not about to crack. They had "adopted a strategy of keeping us busy and waiting us out (a strategy of attriting our national will)." Pacification was "a bad disappointment." So was the air campaign, which had neither "significantly affected infiltration [n]or cracked the morale of Hanoi."32

Yet at the same time, there were optimistic reports that the tide was turning and that Hanoi and the Viet Cong would not be able to hold out much longer, especially if the administration managed to mute opposing sentiment in the United States, which Johnson believed was encouraging the Communists to continue fighting.

Military and civilian advisers disputed much of what McNamara said. They believed the war was going reasonably well. "By early 1967 most of my advisers and I felt confident that the tide of war was moving strongly in favor of the South Vietnamese and their allies and against the Communists," Johnson later said in his memoirs.33

And most of his advisers, who, like him, felt compelled to see the bright side, to believe that somehow or other American power had to prevail over so weak an enemy, gave him words of constant encouragement about the likely results in Vietnam. " You are still dead right on all the big issues & you still know more about how to make them come out right than any man in America," Mac Bundy told him in November. "For the first time since 1961 the U.S. military in Saigon and Washington estimate a net decline in VC/NVN forces in South Viet Nam," National Security Adviser Walt W. Rostow wrote him two days later. 34

Rostow and Robert Komer, LBJ's pacification chief in Vietnam, sent him a series of papers in December laying out strategic guidelines for 1967. They brimmed with optimism. Despite lots of problems and "the immensity of the task," Komer was "convinced that if we can jack up our management in Washington and especially Saigon, and press the GVN a lot harder than we have, we'll be able to see daylight by the end of 1967."35

No one beat the drum louder for positive developments in Vietnam than Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. "In the 'military' war, our capacity to defeat the big Communist units and destroy redoubts is so well demonstrated that I would expect a very different military situation indeed here by next year," he cabled the president in December 1966. As for the political situation, "one need not be an expert to see the difference between ... today and that which existed in November 1963. ... Vietnam is moving towards constitutional democracy." In a meeting with LBJ at his ranch eight days later, Lodge stated that many worries of a year ago in Vietnam had disappeared: "They no longer feared that the Viet Cong could cut the country in half," or "that regionalism backed by the Buddhists might tear the country apart. They no longer feared a Communist coup from within." As for future military developments, "The Ambassador 'expects brilliant results in 1967.' " Pentagon claims that comparative military casualties in Vietnam had increased from 2.2 to 1 in 1965 to 3.3 to 1 in 1966 made Lodge's estimate seem compelling.36

Johnson's character, experience, and outlook on what to expect in Vietnam made him the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place. By 1968, the great mandate of the 1964 election had been lost in the flames of Vietnam. And along with it, the national consensus for Cold War policies abroad and liberal social reforms at home. By some mysterious law of unintended consequences, the war in Southeast Asia inflicted the first defeat in a foreign war on the United States, destroyed the momentum for the Great Society and war on poverty, and destroyed Johnson's hopes of historical standing as a great president. Along with Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon, LBJ will hold a place as one of those tragic twentieth-century presidents who fell short of what his talents and wishes might have allowed him to achieve.

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Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam: The Making of a Tragedy * | Diplomatic History | Oxford Academic

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The appearance of Robert S. McNamara's book on Vietnam in the spring of 1995 touched off an explosion of recrimination reminiscent of the 1960s. McNamara's confession that the war was a great mistake that he, President Lyndon B.

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Career Training USA Articles · InterExchange

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TOUCH this image to discover its story. Image tagging powered by ThingLink

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A heart-rending visit for vets at Vietnam Memorial Wall

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The Army's 359th Transportation Company saw heavy combat in Vietnam, where 14 of the unit's soldiers were killed, including Spec. 4 Larry G. Dahl, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. A visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., on May 11, 2016, evoked many memories for several veterans in attendance.

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HUGHES OH-6A CAYUSE HELICOPTER SALES FILM  VIETNAM WAR   24764

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This sales film for the LOH helicopter was made by Hughes Aircraft - a tough helicopter for a tough war. The OH-6 Cayuse (nicknamed "Loach", after the requirement acronym LOH-Light Observation Helicopter) is a single-engine light helicopter with a four-bladed main rotor used for personnel transport, escort and attack missions, and observation.

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The Band - I Shall Be Released (Vietnam War footage)

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"You have left too much of yourself in this land for it not to be yours.

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Creedence Clearwater Revival: Run Through The Jungle

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Ballad of the Green Berets - [HD] - - - SSGT Barry SADLER

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Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son (Official Lyric Video)

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The first one is a man that has a scar from the war.

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Related Posts:Stay Tunes For Similar Posts

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https://sites.google.com/a/srsd.org/geisendaffer-history-binder/50s

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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/02/03/demobilized-usa-why-there-no-massive-antiwar-movement

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https://sites.google.com/site/vietnamwar1959/vietnam-protests

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https://sites.google.com/site/vietnamwar1959/vietnam-protests

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https://historyimages.blogspot.com/2012/06/some-rarely-seen-images-of-vietnam-war.html

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https://freedomforvietnam.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/to-all-the-soldiers-who-gave-their-lives-in-the-vietnam-war/

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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/the-drugs-that-built-a-super-soldier/477183/

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https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/12/photos-from-the-vietnam-war-lost-and-found/100871/

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Baby San – GI reference to village children (male and female)

Ba muoi lam (“baa-mooee-lahm): Vietnamese for the number 35. Means the same as “butterfly;” a playboy.

Barbecue:  Armored Cav units requesting Napalm on a locuation

Base Camp Commando:  Soldiers assigned to the main base camp

Beaucoup: from the French. In Vietnam it can mean many, much, big, huge, very, etc.

Betel nut (“beetle nut”): the leaves or root of the betel palm, which are mildly narcotic and are chewed by many Vietnamese, especially aged women, to relieve the pain of diseased gums. The cumulative effect of years of betel nut chewing is to totally blacken the teeth.

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Blog post

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Errors or Inaccuracy Continue reading

December 4, 2016 · 4:21 pm

Print by Joe Kline
498th Air Ambulance Platoon

Vietnam medevac missions
by Williams S. Phillips

In April of 1962, the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) arrived in Vietnam with five UH-1 "Huey" helicopters. They took the call sign Dustoff. Over time the number of medevac detachments grew in Vietnam until the entire country had coverage and Dustoff became the universal call sign for all medevac missions.

A Dustoff crew consisted of four people: two pilots, a medic and a crew chief. Usually, one pilot would fly the helicopter while the other acted as the aircraft commander. The commander would navigate, monitor all of the radio transmissions, talk to the unit requesting the medevac and would take over flying if the pilot were injured. The medic kept the helicopter stocked with the necessary medical supplies and the crew chief would maintain the helicopter in top working condition. They would both load the patients onto the helicopter and the medic would administer any necessary medical treatment on the way to the hospital, often with the help of the crew chief. The medic and crew chief would stay with a particular helicopter while the pilots were interchangeable between helicopters. These crews saved many lives and were universally respected by all of the soldiers in the war.

Evac Hospital 93rd, Long Bình, 1966
List of Medical Units in Vietnam
December 30, 2015 · 11:02 pm

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 75,000 times in 2015. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Errors or Inaccuracy Continue reading December 4, 2016 · 4:21 pm Print by Joe Kline 498th Air Ambulance Platoon Vietnam medevac missions by Williams S. Phillips In April of 1962, the 57th Medical Detachment (Helicopter Ambulance) arrived in Vietnam with five UH-1 "Huey" helicopters. They took the call sign Dustoff.

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The war lasted throughout the whole year. The problem is you did not know who you could and could not trust, always having to look after yourself and others.

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historybyburgin - Political Cartoon Vietnam