Iraq and Vietnam: What Bush could learn from LBJ
Wars and men
Two wars, two presidents, two eerily similar predicaments. What George W. Bush might learn from Lyndon Johnson.
By Robert Dallek | January 14, 2007
LAST WEEK, SENATOR Ted Kennedy described President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq as reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War. Kennedy isn't the only one drawing such comparisons. Bush's speech on Wednesday night has reminded numerous commentators of Johnson's increasingly desperate effort to find a winning formula for bringing the troops home.
There are obvious differences between Johnson's war and Bush's, but the similarities between the two presidents' wartime predicaments represent a strange convergence of two men with vastly different backgrounds and political philosophies.
More than a generation seems to separate them. Though both came from Texas, for Johnson, a relatively impoverished small-town childhood combined with the experience of the Great Depression and World War II -- and the model of Franklin Roosevelt in the White House -- shaped his conviction that for every public problem there was a government solution. This was more than rhetoric, as his passage of Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare, and Federal Aid to Education laws demonstrates.
By contrast, Bush could hardly imagine a life of deprivation. Reared in comfort, educated at Yale and Harvard, insulated from service in Vietnam by family connections, Bush viewed public life as an extension of private enterprise, and saw the perpetuation of Ronald Reagan's zeal for tax-cutting as the only sensible means to a prosperous and better society. Compassionate conservatism, as Bush's response to the Katrina disaster shows, was more posturing than substance.
Yet foreign affairs have a way of making soul mates out of the most dissimilar of leaders. Ironically, Bush and Johnson have come to share unenviable wartime experiences.
American casualties in Vietnam, and the failure to achieve a decisive result, turned Johnson's 1964 landslide victory over Barry Goldwater into a wholesale national rejection. Bush's war, a conflict now lasting longer than it took the United States to fight and win World War II, has become a disaster on a similar scale -- if not in lost American lives, certainly in the toll it's taking on America's international standing and Bush's popularity.
The president's 80 percent approval ratings after 9/11, and the "political capital" of his electoral win in 2004, have disappeared in the mounting bloodshed and anarchy in Iraq. He currently suffers from a political eclipse -- even in his own party -- that almost certainly deprives him of the wherewithal to accomplish anything significant at home or abroad in the last two years of his presidency.
Bush has shown no patience with suggestions that he is trapped in another Vietnam. But however resistant he is to Vietnam parallels, they are numerous and chilling -- and might hold lessons, however unwelcome, about ending a war you can't win.
For three years beginning in March 1965, Johnson expanded US involvement in Vietnam, first with a bombing campaign and then with a half-million ground forces. During these months, Johnson went from one anguished moment to the next -- never letting on in public what White House tapes and documents now demonstrate, namely his horror at the loss of American lives and fear that he was locked in a failed war that was destroying his capacity to lead the country toward his cherished Great Society. In nationally televised speeches, Johnson hid his private doubts from public view, urging continued public backing for what he called an unwelcome but necessary conflict to assure both South Vietnam's autonomy and international peace.
It took until March 1968 for Johnson to fully accept that he could not continue the war. In August 1967, a front-page story by R.W. Apple Jr. in The New York Times described the war as deadlocked. That was followed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's private confession of failure in the fall of 1967, the Communist Tet Offensive at the beginning of 1968 -- which gave the lie to Johnson's predictions of victory -- and the confirmation by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite that we are "mired in stalemate." Finally, on March 31, 1968, in a televised address from the Oval Office, Johnson announced a unilateral reduction in the US bombing of North Vietnam, an offer to begin peace talks with Hanoi, and his decision not to run again for president.
As internal records now show, however, Johnson's public statements during this time were aimed as much at bolstering American resolve to fight as at reaching agreement with the Communists. And Richard Nixon spent four additional years between 1969 and 1973 in a fight-and-negotiate strategy before declaring that peace was at hand -- a fig leaf for US--South Vietnamese defeat in America's longest war.
We now know a great deal about the inner workings of Johnson's decision-making on Vietnam, and we will surely learn a lot more in the future about Bush's struggle to come to terms with his ill-conceived efforts in Iraq. In the meantime, however, it is not too difficult to imagine that much of what Johnson and then Nixon struggled with in trying to find an acceptable way out of Vietnam is repeating itself in Bush's White House. Johnson and then Nixon were infuriated by their inability to bend either their allies in South Vietnam or the Communists in the North to their will. Decades from now, when we learn more about Bush's deliberations on how to "win" in Iraq, we are likely to see evidence of the same kind of frustrations with Iraq's Shiite-led government and Sunni insurgents.
An equally disturbing, and more evident, parallel is the conviction shared by Johnson and Nixon that losing the war in Vietnam would be disastrous for America's national security. Johnson and Nixon feared that a defeat in Vietnam would wreak havoc on US strategic interests and destroy American credibility: allies would no longer trust our promises to defend them and enemies would see us as a paper tiger. If we failed to bring a small war to a satisfactory conclusion, it would likely increase the danger of a larger nuclear war. At a minimum, as Nixon and Henry Kissinger came to believe, there had to be something resembling "peace with honor."
Likewise, Bush and his most outspoken supporters of a troop "surge," or escalation, and a continued pursuit of "victory," forecast a more dangerous world should the United States fail in Iraq: Our friends in Saudi Arabia and Egypt will lose confidence in our resolve to support them, and Al Qaeda will turn Iraq into a terrorist base from which they will launch attacks not only against America's friends in the Middle East and Europe but also against the homeland. In short, the war in Iraq is nothing less than a defense of America's people and cities.
The dire predictions about defeat in Vietnam proved to be without foundation. The dominoes never fell. Allies did not lose faith in America's readiness to defend them. Nor did Soviet Russia or Communist China see the United States as unwilling to stand up to them in the arms race or to contain any reach for expanded power around the globe. At the end of the day, the defeat in Vietnam proved to be less consequential than feared at the time. To be sure, the war sapped national energy and opened a bitter divide in the country, but it was ultimately of small consequence in the larger Cold War, which the United States won by 1990.
As with Vietnam, fears about the consequences of a defeat in Iraq may well prove to be overdrawn, reminiscent of what Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty used to say during the '60s: If we don't stop them in Southeast Asia, we will have to fight them on the beaches of Santa Monica.
. . .
Last week Bush tried to rally the country with a speech promising new results in Iraq. Like Johnson's public appeals, Bush's rhetoric may mask hidden doubts about how to bring his failing war to a satisfactory conclusion. And yet, it seems just as likely that Bush's characteristic resistance to admitting error and his stubborn faith in the righteousness of his cause will sustain his conviction that, by contrast now with the great majority of Americans, his goals are wise and realizable in Iraq.
In the last year of his term, Johnson, understanding that there was no winning strategy, tried to negotiate an end to the conflict and salvage what he could of his place in history. With so much of Bush's historical standing now tied to Iraq, the president might want to consider the example of Johnson's final effort to solve his Vietnam problem, and start looking for a way out of, rather than deeper into, a war that has so undermined not only his own reputation but the good name of the United States.
Robert Dallek is the author of a two-volume life of Lyndon Johnson. His new book, "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power," will be published in the summer by HarperCollins.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Two wars, two presidents, two eerily similar predicaments. What George W. Bush might learn from Lyndon Johnson.
By Robert Dallek | January 14, 2007
LAST WEEK, SENATOR Ted Kennedy described President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq as reminiscent of Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War. Kennedy isn't the only one drawing such comparisons. Bush's speech on Wednesday night has reminded numerous commentators of Johnson's increasingly desperate effort to find a winning formula for bringing the troops home.
There are obvious differences between Johnson's war and Bush's, but the similarities between the two presidents' wartime predicaments represent a strange convergence of two men with vastly different backgrounds and political philosophies.
More than a generation seems to separate them. Though both came from Texas, for Johnson, a relatively impoverished small-town childhood combined with the experience of the Great Depression and World War II -- and the model of Franklin Roosevelt in the White House -- shaped his conviction that for every public problem there was a government solution. This was more than rhetoric, as his passage of Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare, and Federal Aid to Education laws demonstrates.
By contrast, Bush could hardly imagine a life of deprivation. Reared in comfort, educated at Yale and Harvard, insulated from service in Vietnam by family connections, Bush viewed public life as an extension of private enterprise, and saw the perpetuation of Ronald Reagan's zeal for tax-cutting as the only sensible means to a prosperous and better society. Compassionate conservatism, as Bush's response to the Katrina disaster shows, was more posturing than substance.
Yet foreign affairs have a way of making soul mates out of the most dissimilar of leaders. Ironically, Bush and Johnson have come to share unenviable wartime experiences.
American casualties in Vietnam, and the failure to achieve a decisive result, turned Johnson's 1964 landslide victory over Barry Goldwater into a wholesale national rejection. Bush's war, a conflict now lasting longer than it took the United States to fight and win World War II, has become a disaster on a similar scale -- if not in lost American lives, certainly in the toll it's taking on America's international standing and Bush's popularity.
The president's 80 percent approval ratings after 9/11, and the "political capital" of his electoral win in 2004, have disappeared in the mounting bloodshed and anarchy in Iraq. He currently suffers from a political eclipse -- even in his own party -- that almost certainly deprives him of the wherewithal to accomplish anything significant at home or abroad in the last two years of his presidency.
Bush has shown no patience with suggestions that he is trapped in another Vietnam. But however resistant he is to Vietnam parallels, they are numerous and chilling -- and might hold lessons, however unwelcome, about ending a war you can't win.
For three years beginning in March 1965, Johnson expanded US involvement in Vietnam, first with a bombing campaign and then with a half-million ground forces. During these months, Johnson went from one anguished moment to the next -- never letting on in public what White House tapes and documents now demonstrate, namely his horror at the loss of American lives and fear that he was locked in a failed war that was destroying his capacity to lead the country toward his cherished Great Society. In nationally televised speeches, Johnson hid his private doubts from public view, urging continued public backing for what he called an unwelcome but necessary conflict to assure both South Vietnam's autonomy and international peace.
It took until March 1968 for Johnson to fully accept that he could not continue the war. In August 1967, a front-page story by R.W. Apple Jr. in The New York Times described the war as deadlocked. That was followed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's private confession of failure in the fall of 1967, the Communist Tet Offensive at the beginning of 1968 -- which gave the lie to Johnson's predictions of victory -- and the confirmation by CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite that we are "mired in stalemate." Finally, on March 31, 1968, in a televised address from the Oval Office, Johnson announced a unilateral reduction in the US bombing of North Vietnam, an offer to begin peace talks with Hanoi, and his decision not to run again for president.
As internal records now show, however, Johnson's public statements during this time were aimed as much at bolstering American resolve to fight as at reaching agreement with the Communists. And Richard Nixon spent four additional years between 1969 and 1973 in a fight-and-negotiate strategy before declaring that peace was at hand -- a fig leaf for US--South Vietnamese defeat in America's longest war.
We now know a great deal about the inner workings of Johnson's decision-making on Vietnam, and we will surely learn a lot more in the future about Bush's struggle to come to terms with his ill-conceived efforts in Iraq. In the meantime, however, it is not too difficult to imagine that much of what Johnson and then Nixon struggled with in trying to find an acceptable way out of Vietnam is repeating itself in Bush's White House. Johnson and then Nixon were infuriated by their inability to bend either their allies in South Vietnam or the Communists in the North to their will. Decades from now, when we learn more about Bush's deliberations on how to "win" in Iraq, we are likely to see evidence of the same kind of frustrations with Iraq's Shiite-led government and Sunni insurgents.
An equally disturbing, and more evident, parallel is the conviction shared by Johnson and Nixon that losing the war in Vietnam would be disastrous for America's national security. Johnson and Nixon feared that a defeat in Vietnam would wreak havoc on US strategic interests and destroy American credibility: allies would no longer trust our promises to defend them and enemies would see us as a paper tiger. If we failed to bring a small war to a satisfactory conclusion, it would likely increase the danger of a larger nuclear war. At a minimum, as Nixon and Henry Kissinger came to believe, there had to be something resembling "peace with honor."
Likewise, Bush and his most outspoken supporters of a troop "surge," or escalation, and a continued pursuit of "victory," forecast a more dangerous world should the United States fail in Iraq: Our friends in Saudi Arabia and Egypt will lose confidence in our resolve to support them, and Al Qaeda will turn Iraq into a terrorist base from which they will launch attacks not only against America's friends in the Middle East and Europe but also against the homeland. In short, the war in Iraq is nothing less than a defense of America's people and cities.
The dire predictions about defeat in Vietnam proved to be without foundation. The dominoes never fell. Allies did not lose faith in America's readiness to defend them. Nor did Soviet Russia or Communist China see the United States as unwilling to stand up to them in the arms race or to contain any reach for expanded power around the globe. At the end of the day, the defeat in Vietnam proved to be less consequential than feared at the time. To be sure, the war sapped national energy and opened a bitter divide in the country, but it was ultimately of small consequence in the larger Cold War, which the United States won by 1990.
As with Vietnam, fears about the consequences of a defeat in Iraq may well prove to be overdrawn, reminiscent of what Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty used to say during the '60s: If we don't stop them in Southeast Asia, we will have to fight them on the beaches of Santa Monica.
. . .
Last week Bush tried to rally the country with a speech promising new results in Iraq. Like Johnson's public appeals, Bush's rhetoric may mask hidden doubts about how to bring his failing war to a satisfactory conclusion. And yet, it seems just as likely that Bush's characteristic resistance to admitting error and his stubborn faith in the righteousness of his cause will sustain his conviction that, by contrast now with the great majority of Americans, his goals are wise and realizable in Iraq.
In the last year of his term, Johnson, understanding that there was no winning strategy, tried to negotiate an end to the conflict and salvage what he could of his place in history. With so much of Bush's historical standing now tied to Iraq, the president might want to consider the example of Johnson's final effort to solve his Vietnam problem, and start looking for a way out of, rather than deeper into, a war that has so undermined not only his own reputation but the good name of the United States.
Robert Dallek is the author of a two-volume life of Lyndon Johnson. His new book, "Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power," will be published in the summer by HarperCollins.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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