Re: "From 16,000 troops at the end of the Kennedy Administration, the U.S. commitment grew ... reached a peak of 537,000 in the last year (1968) of the Johnson Administration."
Thanks for the correction.
You are correct, the Kennedy administration increased the U.S. military advisory group in South Vietnam from just a few hundred to about 17,000.
<and begin a draw-down, just a few short weeks before his death.> "I don't believe you have ever documented that have you?"
Believe you are misquoting me there... here I explain to Scott:
Re: "Any record of this, or is it speculation?"
Yes, as I said, the word of cabinent members who were in on the discussions... Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, among others.)
Re; The "drawdown, just a few weeks before his death sounds like conspiracy theory stuff."
No draw-down ever happened. An internal decision had been made to stop the INCREASE... and then to gradually draw-down the forces. External events could have always interfered... even if one assumes that the Kennedy assassination had not been successful. Never-the-less, evidence indicates that Kennedy had reached a very different conclusion about how best to handle south East Asia then LBJ did when he ascended to the Presidency.
Re: "Don't believe any quotes attributed to Kennedy would back that up."
Nothing in PUBLIC (he wasn't very popular with the American people at the time... I'm SURE any policy change would have been delicately handled. Still we only had a FEW HUNDRED forces in South Vietnam at the time. [Thanks for the correction, Pro! Not a 'few hundred', some 16,000. Still... FAR less the 1/2 million, still not a *huge* force commitment.] It wasn't yet a run-away train), but the quotes from his advisors make it clear that the President had changed his mind... and that perhaps being 'jerked around' by the Bay of Pigs invasion (put in motion before he became President) is what caused the President to reaccess, and decide to 'go with his own judgement' instead of the momentum of previous policies....
Message 22303495
********Also excellent info sources:
United States in Vietnam 1945-1975
Comprehensive Timelines with Quotes and Analysis
Seeds of Conflict 1945-1960
America Commits 1961-1964
The Jungle War 1965-1968
The Bitter End 1969-1975
historyplace.com
"...January 20, 1961- John Fitzgerald Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th U.S. President ...Privately, outgoing President Eisenhower tells him "I think you're going to have to send troops..." to Southeast Asia.
The youthful Kennedy administration is inexperienced in matters regarding Southeast Asia. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, 44-year-old Robert McNamara, along with civilian planners recruited from the academic community, will play a crucial role in deciding White House strategy for Vietnam over the next several years. Under their leadership, the United States will wage a limited war to force a political settlement.
...May 1961 - President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret 'Special Advisors'.... Fall - Diem then requests more military aid from the Kennedy administration.
October 1961 - To get a first-hand look at the deteriorating military situation, top Kennedy aides, Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, visit Vietnam. ...advises Kennedy to expand the number of U.S. military advisors and to send 8000 combat soldiers.
Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommend instead a massive show of force by sending six divisions (200,000 men) to Vietnam. However, the President decides against sending any combat troops.
...October 24, 1961 - ...President Kennedy then sends additional military advisors along with American helicopter units to transport and direct South Vietnamese troops in battle, thus involving Americans in combat operations. ...The number of military advisors sent by Kennedy will eventually surpass 16,000.
...December 1961 - Viet Cong guerrillas now control much of the countryside in South Vietnam and frequently ambush South Vietnamese troops. The cost to America of maintaining South Vietnam's sagging 200,000 man army and managing the overall conflict in Vietnam rises to a million dollars per day.
...January 15, 1962 - During a press conference, President Kennedy is asked if any Americans in Vietnam are engaged in the fighting. "No," the President responds without further comment.
...February 27, 1962 - The presidential palace in Saigon is bombed by two renegade South Vietnamese pilots flying American-made World War II era fighter planes.
1963
January 3, 1963 - A Viet Cong victory in the Battle of Ap Bac makes front page news in America as 350 Viet Cong fighters defeat a large force of American-equipped South Vietnamese troops attempting to seize a radio transmitter. Three American helicopter crew members are killed.
The South Vietnamese Army is run by officers personally chosen by President Diem, not for their competence, but for their loyalty to him. Diem has instructed his officers to avoid causalities. Their primary mission, he has told them, is to protect him from any coups in Saigon.
May 1963 - Buddhists riot in South Vietnam after they are denied the right to display religious flags during their celebration of Buddha's birthday. In Hue, South Vietnamese police and army troops shoot at Buddhist demonstrators, resulting in the deaths of one woman and eight children.
Political pressure now mounts on the Kennedy administration to disassociate itself from Diem's repressive, family-run government. "You are responsible for the present trouble because you back Diem and his government of ignoramuses," a leading Buddhist tells U.S. officials in Saigon.
...November 2, 1963 - At 3 a.m., one of Diem's aides betrays his location to the generals. The hunt for Diem and Nhu now begins. At 6 a.m., Diem telephones the generals. Realizing the situation is hopeless, Diem and Nhu offer to surrender from inside a Catholic church. Diem and Nhu are then taken into custody by rebel officers and placed in the back of an armored personnel carrier. While traveling to Saigon, the vehicle stops and Diem and Nhu are assassinated.
At the White House, a meeting is interrupted with the news of Diem's death. According to witnesses, President Kennedy's face turns a ghostly shade of white and he immediately leaves the room. Later, the President records in his private diary, "I feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for it."
Saigon celebrates the downfall of Diem's regime. But the coup results in a power vacuum in which a series of military and civilian governments seize control of South Vietnam, a country that becomes totally dependent on the United States for its existence. Viet Cong use the unstable political situation to increase their hold over the rural population of South Vietnam to nearly 40 percent.
November 22, 1963 - President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the 36th U.S. President. He is the fourth President coping with Vietnam and will oversee massive escalation of the war while utilizing many of the same policy advisors who served Kennedy.....
...November 24, 1963 - President Johnson declares he will not "lose Vietnam" during a meeting with Ambassador Lodge in Washington.
By year's end, there are 16,300 American military advisors in South Vietnam which received $500 million in U.S. aid during 1963.
Wikipedia is very succinct:
en.wikipedia.org
Vietnam War --- 1957 to 1975
After France's attempted recolonization of Indochina was defeated in 1954 by the Viet Minh at the battle of Ði?n Biên Ph?, an agreement to temporarily partition the country in two with a de-militarized zone (DMZ) was reached at the Geneva Conference (1954). The Vietnam War ostensibly began as a civil war between feuding governments. Being Western-oriented and perceived as less popular than H? Chí Minh's northern government, the South Vietnam government fought largely to maintain its governing status within the partitioned entity, rather than to "unify the country" as was the goal of the North. Fighting began in 1957 and with U.S. and Soviet-Chinese involvement would steadily escalate and spill over into the neighboring Indochinese countries of Cambodia and Laos.
The Geneva partition was not a natural division of Vietnam and was not intended to create two separate countries. But the South government, with the support of the United States, blocked the Geneva scheduled elections for reunification. In the context of the Cold War, and with the recent Korean War as a precedent, the U.S. had feared that a reunified Vietnam would elect a Communist government under the popular H? Chí Minh, either freely or fraudulently.
Western allies portrayed the conflict as based in a principled opposition to communism —to deter the expansion of Soviet-based control throughout Southeast Asia, and to set the tone for any likely future superpower conflicts. The North Vietnamese government and its Southern dissident allies (NLF) viewed the war as a struggle to reunite the country and to repel a foreign aggressor —a virtual continuation of the earlier war for independence against the French.
After fifteen years of protracted fighting and massive civilian and military casualties, major direct U.S. involvement ended with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Fighting between Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) forces against the dominant combined People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and NLF forces would soon bring an end to the RVN and the war on April 30, 1975. With the Northern victory, the country was reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) with a communist-controlled government based in Hanoi....
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On the other-hand, it would appear from at least this one Robert Kennedy interview that --- although it is perhaps highly unlikely that Kennedy, had he lived, would have ever increased the US military and financial commitment to the extreme degree that LBJ did --- no actual firm decision was ever arrived at to end the US's military involvement prior to Kennedy's death:
mcadams.posc.mu.edu
However, National Security Action Memorandum 263 (approved by Kennedy), appears to show that Kennedy anticipated that conditions would improve enough (training of Vietnamese troops, more stable government in South Vietnam, etc.) so that a preliminary draw-down could begin with the removal of "1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963." But it was decided to not publicly announce this decision at that time:
mcadams.posc.mu.edu |
