Johnson's War

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A is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed by Congress on 7 August 1964. It gave Johnson the power to take 'all necessary measures' to repel attacks on US forces and to prevent further aggression, without Congress having to declare war.

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Source A criticises the government's claims because Cronkite says that to believe the USA is 'closer to victory' is to believe 'the optimists who have been wrong in the past'. This is aimed at the government and military leaders: in November 1967 General Westmoreland had told Americans that the end of the war was coming into view, and the daily briefings in Saigon kept announcing high enemy body counts as proof of progress. Cronkite concludes instead that the war is 'mired in stalemate'. This reflects the shock of the Tet Offensive, which began on 30-31 January 1968, when the communists attacked more than 100 towns and cities, got inside the grounds of the US Embassy in Saigon and held Hue for almost a month. Although Tet was a military defeat for the communists, it showed that the enemy was far from beaten, exposing the credibility gap. The provenance makes the criticism even stronger: Cronkite was the most trusted newsreader in America, he had visited Vietnam himself during Tet, and he was speaking to millions of viewers. Johnson reportedly said that if he had lost Cronkite, he had lost middle America.

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Source B is useful for showing how President Johnson presented the Gulf of Tonkin incident to the American people. He describes 'renewed hostile actions' against US ships 'on the high seas', making North Vietnam look like the aggressor and the USA the innocent victim, and announces that he has ordered retaliation. The provenance explains why: this was a public television address given within hours of the reported attack, and Johnson wanted to win support for the air strikes and for the resolution he was about to send to Congress. It was also three months before the 1964 presidential election, so the phrase 'We still seek no wider war' was meant to make him look firm but not reckless compared with his opponent, Barry Goldwater. However, Source B is less useful for what actually happened, because it leaves out important context. The Maddox was on an intelligence-gathering patrol close to the coast, where US-backed South Vietnamese commandos had recently raided North Vietnamese targets, so North Vietnam saw the destroyers as part of an attack on it.

Source C is useful in a different way, because it shows the doubts that existed at the time. Captain Herrick, the commander on the spot, says that many of the reported contacts and torpedoes 'appear doubtful' and blames 'freak weather effects' and 'overeager sonarmen'. Its provenance makes it valuable: it was a private military message, written within hours by an eyewitness who had no reason to play down an attack on his own ships, and it was not intended for the public. It shows that the government had reason to doubt the second attack when Johnson spoke. However, it was written in confusion after a night action and does not prove there was no attack; Herrick's later messages still suggested that an ambush had probably taken place at the start of the action.

Together the sources are very useful because they contrast public certainty with private doubt. Within three days Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by 416 votes to 0 and 88 to 2, giving Johnson the power to take 'all necessary measures'. The doubts in Source C only became public in Senate hearings in 1968, and a National Security Agency study released in 2005 concluded that no attack happened on 4 August. So, used together, B and C show an historian not just what happened but how an uncertain incident was used to give the President wide powers to escalate the war.

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Operation Rolling Thunder was the sustained bombing of North Vietnam from 2 March 1965 to 1 November 1968. Its aims were to destroy North Vietnam's industry and transport, cut the flow of supplies to the Vietcong, raise South Vietnamese morale and force Hanoi to negotiate. Judged against these aims, I largely agree that it was a failure, although it did cause great damage and some argue it could have worked without Johnson's restrictions.

Rolling Thunder did achieve some things. More than 600,000 tons of bombs were dropped, destroying bridges, railways, power stations, factories and much of North Vietnam's fuel storage. North Vietnam had to divert hundreds of thousands of people to repairing roads and manning air defences, which may have slowed the movement of supplies. The bombing also gave a short boost to South Vietnamese morale in 1965, when the South seemed close to collapse. Some American commanders argued that the bombing only failed because it was too restricted: Johnson kept away from central Hanoi, the port of Haiphong and the Chinese border, and paused the bombing several times, for example for 37 days over Christmas 1965.

However, the bombing failed to achieve its main aims. North Vietnam was mainly an agricultural country with little industry, and it moved what it had into the countryside. Roads and bridges were repaired almost overnight, and men and supplies kept flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia; the number of North Vietnamese troops going south actually increased. The USSR and China replaced what was destroyed, sending surface-to-air missiles, MiG fighters, weapons and food, and Chinese troops helped with repairs and air defence. So the bombing did not stop the Vietcong being supplied.

The bombing also failed to break North Vietnam's will or force it to negotiate. Instead, it united the population against a foreign attacker and gave Hanoi a propaganda weapon, especially when US pilots were shot down and captured. Hanoi refused to talk while the bombing continued. The Tet Offensive of January 1968 proved that, after three years of bombing, the North and the Vietcong could still launch attacks on more than 100 towns and cities at once.

Rolling Thunder also had costly side effects for the USA. Hundreds of aircraft were lost, and tens of thousands of North Vietnamese civilians were killed, which brought international criticism and fuelled protest at home. By 1967 Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense who had planned the escalation, privately told Johnson that the bombing was not working. In the end, Johnson had to limit the bombing on 31 March 1968 and stop it completely on 1 November 1968 in order to get peace talks started - the opposite of the plan, which was to bomb Hanoi into negotiating.

In conclusion, Rolling Thunder was largely a failure. It did serious damage, and it is possible that heavier bombing might have achieved more, but the campaign failed in every one of its main aims: supplies kept flowing, morale in the North held, and Hanoi only agreed to talk once the bombing stopped. It also cost the USA aircraft, prisoners and public support, which makes it a failure not just militarily but politically.