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From: "Arnold Offner" <offnera@lafayette.edu>
List Editor: "H-Diplo [AK]" <h-diplo@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Editor's Subject: Johnson and the missile crisis [Offner]
Author's Subject: Johnson and the missile crisis [Offner]
Date Written: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 10:13:09 -0400
Date Posted: Fri, 01 Nov 2012 10:13:09 -0400

I too doubt that Johnson's toughness re Vietnam had anything to do with
admiring Kennedy's toughness regarding Cuba. There were many reasons (none
very good) that Johnson decided on intervening strongly in Vietnam; they
range from the old line (spoken by Johnson at NSC meetings in Feb. 1965)
that being firmer before WWI would have helped, as well as before WWII;
and fears about being attacked the way Truman was over "loss" of China and
the Korean War.

But two things stand out to me after reading transcripts of the meetings
that set the U.S. on military intervention: the extent to which McGeorge
Bundy, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara spoke so authoritatively (with so
little real knowledge) about the PRC as behind it all (even more than the
USSR) and as posing a  major threat to the U.S. in the Pacific, and
Johnson's own view that North Vietnam was a "piss ant" country and would
have to surrender to U.S. might. This despite the fact that he also told
Bundy that "Ol' Ho isn't going to surrender to a bunch of airplanes."
Simply put, Johnson was accustomed to bullying everyone, and he thought he
could do the same in Vietnam. He refused to listen seriously to George
Ball, Hubert Humphrey, Mike Mansfield and several others who pleaded not
to intervene and who saw exactly what would happen once the U.S. did.

Arnold Offner
Lafayette College (emeritus)

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