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He had all sorts of degrees and was a ROTC cadet at Berkeley in the late 30's not sure why the dates bounce between 1940 and 1943.
Captain to Lt. Colonel in 3 years is a hell of a feat.
He had all sorts of degrees and was a ROTC cadet at Berkeley in the late 30's not sure why the dates bounce between 1940 and 1943.
Captain to Lt. Colonel in 3 years is a hell of a feat.
And if he was excessively concerned of Chinese intervention, that would have thrown a serious monkey-wrench into things.He was no more nor less concerned about public opinion than any other American President, I reckon. What he was really concerned about was not getting bogged in a war with China, so that he could focus on his domestic agenda. The tragedy is that this caused him to pursue the war in a half-assed manner, which got us bogged down and prevented him focusing on his domestic agenda. The fact that the quagmire was in NVN and not PRC is almost irrelevant.
Correct.If he was the voice of reason, he was using inapt reasoning.
I'm just surprised he didn't understand the concept of delegation, unless he was terrified that the people he'd delegate with the job would throw things so sideways that he'd have to baby-sit them (which honestly seems like the case).LBJ was passionate about addressing social ills. . . . He inherited a war from....well there are lots of fathers of this conflict, and did not want to go down in history as the first president in American history to lose a war.
That's why I found it so surprising that we needed RAND (that came up in a thread I created): McNamara's actions were operational analysis.McNamara was a former Lt. Colonel with the USAAF, serving from 1940 through 1946 where he conducted analysis of bombing efficiency under LeMay, among other things.
From what I remember, the President was completely aware of the fact that the battle probably didn't occur...The 1st attack in the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place well within what most nations considered its territorial waters, ie 12 nm. The 1st attack took place at about 8-9 nautical miles from the coast of North Vietnam. (North Vietnam claimed the same 12 nm limit as Vietnam had before the split. but since the US did not consider North Vietnam a sovereign nation it could not have any territorial waters rights.) The USS Maddox fired first when the NVN torpedo boats closed to with 10,000 yds. Subsequently, in the press releases and the information presented to Congress, it was stated that North Vietnam had previously claimed only a 5 nm limit, and that the NVN torpedo boats fired first. The movement of the USS Maddox was a part of numerous incursions/raids by the South into North Vietnam waters, and was intended to be a show of force and a chance to gather intel.
The President initiated military action after the 2nd part of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which did not occur. Note that it is quite possible that the President did not know that the 2nd attack was not real, as there is no evidence that he was ever told. However, McNamara, our intel community, and the Military knew that the 2nd attack did not occur. In his memoirs, McNamara acknowledged that he was aware of the falsity of the 2nd attack, but did not mention that he had informed the President of this.
And he was good at it.Stranger things have happened in wartime. Ike was a light colonel in 1939, four stars and five years later in charge of everything in ETO.
And if he was excessively concerned of Chinese intervention, that would have thrown a serious monkey-wrench into things.
You'd think that he would be better able to focus on his domestic agenda if he wasn't micromanaging things so much: After all that'll tie up valuable energy (that's why you delegate, because it's damned near impossible to do everything yourself). I'm surprised he didn't understand that.
had irrational or unusually irrational concerns about Vietnam spiraling out of control
I was reading a book called "Clashes: Air Combat over Vietnam 1965-1972" by Marshall L. Michel III. I was largely looking for a passage which described the use of F-4's in 1967 performing CAP's over the airfields to either catch MiG's taking off (they couldn't bomb the fields, but they could shoot the planes once airborne) -- and that was on page 88.
Regardless, I found another passage that's of interest here on page 90
....In March the northeast monsoon kept the weather bad and limited the number of strikes, but the strikes escalated when, on March 10, the Thai Nyugen steel works were bombed for the first time. In Washington another battle continued: Rolling Thunder was becoming ever more con-troversial and had resulted in a sharp division between the military and the secretary of defense, with the President in the middle. The military continued to press for an increase in the bombings and the relaxation of other restrictions, including the mining of Haiphong harbor; Secretary of Defense McNamara believed the bombing was achieving its objectives and still feared a confrontation with China or the Soviet Union.
The emboldened stuff is emphasized by me.
So Johnson was unusually concerned, and the SecDef was even MORE extreme in his worries. There's also the possibility that his abnormal worries were affected by McNamara.
Didn't know, but I'm sorry to hear that.Unfortunately, Mike may not respond at this point. He has had health issues and hasn't been on the forums for a year.
Dimlee , GrauGeist , Thumpalumpacus , T tyrodtom
I'm curious about two things
1. Why did Sullivan impose such restrictions on the training of the hatchet teams, and their use?
2. Why did Sullivan have so much say in the war?
Would a proposed covert operation of this nature reached the President? If so, would it have gone through Sullivan, or through the CIA/DoD/Military?Sullivan was the lead in a covert war, which even the North Vietnamese kept secret.
So the chain of command was literally LBJ, Sullivan and ministers in the Loatian government.
It seems like one coup after another.If you have not already run across it, check out the Wiki article on Laotian Coups here:
"1960 Laotian coups - Wikipedia"
In this case, the operations went straight from Sullivan to LBJ, with as few as possible in the loop due to the secrecy.Would a proposed covert operation of this nature reached the President? If so, would it have gone through Sullivan, or through the CIA/DoD/Military?
So LBJ only heard what Sullivan told him? I've often described power structures like this as a neck because the single source is much like the neck to the leader's head -- he can turn the head anyway he wants, becoming more powerful than the leader through the practice of removing/altering crucial details to suit his own purpose (ranging from self-preservation, implementing policies that wouldn't be acceptable without some terminological inexactitude, even causing harm to the leader).In this case, the operations went straight from Sullivan to LBJ, with as few as possible in the loop due to the secrecy.