To the members of the National Security Council, seated around the
coffin-shaped table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, the
President of the U.S. said with quiet anger: “I've gone far enough.
I've had enough of this.” And so, in response to a murderous series of
Communist attacks against U.S. military forces and installations in
South Viet Nam, President Lyndon Johnson gave the orders that on three
different days last week sent American and Vietnamese warplanes
smashing north of the 17th parallel at Red supply dumps, communications
systems and guerrilla staging areas. As the U.S. policy evolved during the week, it became increasingly
evident that future raids against North Viet Nam will not be carried
out on a strict tit-for-tat basis—a dubious strategy that has
deprived Washington and Saigon of the initiative. Thus the war in Viet
Nam has taken on a brand-new dimension—and can never again be quite
the same. To no one was this more welcome than the man directly responsible for
the U.S. military effort in Viet Nam: Army General William C.
Westmoreland, 50, commander of the 23,500 American servicemen in South
Viet Nam and senior U.S. military adviser to South Vietnamese forces.
“The war has quite obviously moved into another stage,” said
Westmoreland in visible relief. “Now the rules of war have changed, and
policymakers in Hanoi are confronted with the necessity of balancing
their resources against the damage they may suffer. They've got to take
a look down that long road and decide whether they really want what
lies ahead for them if they persist in past policies.” After Nothing, Something. It was a long time coming. For 15 months,
President Johnson had refused to change course, despite the steadily
deteriorating situation in South Viet Nam. To retreat, he said, would
be “strategically unwise and morally unthinkable.” To expand the war
might get the U.S. into a fight “with 700 million Chinese.” On the very
eve of the current crisis he reiterated to an associate his determination
to “go neither north nor south.” Last August, when Red torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf
of Tonkin, Johnson ordered air strikes against their home bases—but he
made it eminently clear that this was a one-shot reprisal and would not
be repeated, except under similar provocation. For months afterward, as
Hanoi steadily increased the rate of infiltration via jungle trails
threading into South Viet Nam until it reached the rate of at least
1,000 men a month, Johnson did nothing. Twice the Viet Cong struck
directly at U.S. personnel, and twice they got away with it. Two days
before the U.S. presidential election, guerrillas killed five
Americans, wounded 76, and destroyed six B57 bombers with a savage
mortar barrage against South Viet Nam's Bienhoa Airfield. Last
Christmas Eve, a plastic charge demolished Saigon's Brink Hotel, a big
officers' billet, killing two Americans and wounding 98 others. Both
times U.S. Ambassador Maxwell Taylor pleaded for a retaliatory strike
at the North. Both times he was turned down.
