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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (234829)	7/2/2007 2:02:23 AM
From: c.hinton	Respond to of 281500

nadine please read this Troop Request On the 9th of February Westmoreland wrote Wheeler "I would welcome reinforcements at any time they can be made available" to be able to "go on the offensive as soon as his attack is spent" Wheeler however told Johnson that the ARVN may not withstand further attacks. On the 12th of February Westmorland's requests became more urgent: "I must reinforce from other areas and accept a major risk, unless I can get reinforcements, which I desperately need." Westmoreland believed that he could not assist ARVN in defense of the cites and Khesanh as well. (Schmitz 105) These request caused confusion within the White house and on the 20th of Feb Lyndon Johnson sent Gen. Wheeler to Vietnam to determine Westmoreland's military requirements to respond to the Offensive. Wheeler's written report contained Westmoreland's request for 206,003 additional troops. According to Wheeler's report, that in spite of heavy loses North Vietnam and Viet Cong forces were "operating with relative freedom in the countryside" and that South Vietnamese forces were in a "defensive posture around towns and cities," Wheeler's report stated that the additional troops were needed to "counter the enemy offensive", to restore security in the cities, towns and countryside and to "regain the initiative through offensive operations". [edit]The Turning point According to the Pentagon Papers "A fork in the road had been reached. Now the alternatives stood out in stark reality. To accept and meet General Wheeler's request for troops would mean a total U.S. military commitment to SVN--an Americanization of the war, a callup of reserve forces, vastly increased expenditures. To deny the request for troops, or to attempt to again cut it to a size which could be sustained by the thinly stretched active forces, would just as surely signify that an upper limit to the U.S. military commitment in SVN had been reached." The Pentagon Papers Gravel Edition Volume 4 Chapter 2, "U.S. Ground Strategy and Force Deployments, To evaluate Westmoreland's request and its possible impact on domestic politics Johnson convened a task force on Vietnam. Johnson also called for a complete "A to K" reassessment. This reassessment included the CIAs assessment that: "They (the communists) certainly were not desperate or fearful of early collapse. A reconsideration of their capabilities to succeed in a long war may have been a contributing factor. And they probably regarded the balance of forces as sufficiently favorable to warrant a major and widespread offensive. The fact of Presidential elections in the US may have influenced their decision, and, of course, the tactical advantage of the Tet truce played a role in the immediate timing. In any case, it does not appear that they undertook the present offensive because they had concluded that protracted conflict was no longer feasible for them."U.S State Department Policy Reassessment and the "A to K" Review Clifford Task Force members Rostow, Wheeler, and Taylor argued that the Offensive was "a desperate attempt to seize cities and promote popular uprisings" and represented an opportunity to defeat the North Vietnamese on the United States terms. (Hoopes) Members Nitze, Warnke and Katzenbach on the other hand argued that neither side could win militarily, that North Vietnam could match any troop increase and it was time to seek a negotiated settlement. While this was being deliberated, the request was leaked to the press and published across three columns of the Sunday edition of The New York Times on March 10, 1968. The article, written by Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith, reveled that the request had started a debate within the administration. According to the article many high-level officials believed that the increase would be matched by the communists and would lead to a stalemate at a higher level of violence. The article also stated that officials were saying in private that "widespread and deep changes in attitudes, a sense that a watershed has been reached" Then-Lieutenant Colonel Dave Palmer later wrote in Summons of the Trumpet: "Looked upon erroneously but understandably by readers as a desperate move to avert defeat, news of the request for 206,000 men confirmed the suspicions of many that the result of the Tet Offensive had not been depicted accurately by the President or his spokesmen. If the Communists had suffered such a grievous setback, why would we need to increase our forces by 40 percent?"[18] Clark Clifford also pointed out the same dilemma. At a meeting with Johnson and McNamara he said "There is a very strange contradiction in what we are saying and doing. On one hand, we are saying that we have known of this build up. We now know the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched this type of effort in the cities. We have publicly told the American people that the communist offensive was: (a) not a victory, (b) produced no uprising among the Vietnamese in support of the enemy, and (c) cost the enemy between 2,000 and 5,000 of his combat troops. Now our reaction to all of that is to say that the situation is more dangerous today than it was before all of this. We are saying that we need more troops, that we need more ammunition and that we need to call up the reserves."