The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [206]
The Administration at this stage began to study the chances of “winning.” Given a military task, the military had to believe they could accomplish it if they were to believe in themselves and quite naturally demanded more and more men for the purpose. Their statements were positive and the requisitions large. Facing escalation, McNamara asked General Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, what assurance the United States could have “of winning in South Vietnam if we do everything we can.” If “winning” meant suppressing all insurgency and eliminating Communists from South Vietnam, Wheeler said, it would take 750,000 to a million men and up to seven years. If “winning” meant demonstrating to the Viet-Cong that they could not win, a lesser force would be enough. What national interest warranted the investment of such forces, lesser or larger, did not enter the discussion; the Administration simply went forward because it did not know what else to do. When all options are unpromising, policymakers fall back on “working the levers” in preference to thinking.
Johnson’s idea was to fight and negotiate simultaneously. The difficulty was that the limited war aim of causing North Vietnam to leave South Vietnam alone was unachievable by limited war. The North had no intention of ever conceding a non-Communist South, and since such a concession could have been forced upon them only by military victory, and since such a victory was unattainable by the United States short of total war and invasion, which it was unwilling to undertake, the American war aim was therefore foreclosed. If this was recognized by some, it was not acted upon because no one was prepared to admit American failure. Activists could believe the bombing might succeed; doubters could vaguely hope some solution would turn up.
Unpleasantly for the President, Adlai Stevenson’s sudden death in London brought to light the circumstances of the rebuff to U Thant’s mediation. Eric Sevareid, reporting what Stevenson had told him just before his death, revealed for the first time that Hanoi had in fact agreed to the meeting proposed by U Thant, whereas Johnson had recently told a press conference that there had not been the “slightest indication” of interest on the other side. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch thereupon recalled that in the year prior to America’s entering active belligerency, Johnson or his White House spokesman had stated no less than seven times that the United States was seeking no wider war. The President’s personal credibility suffered accordingly.
On top of the Stevenson story, another failed peace overture became known. At the request of the United States, the Italian Foreign Minister, Amintore Fanfani, then a delegate to the UN, arranged for two Italian professors, one a former acquaintance of Ho Chi Minh, to go to Hanoi. While encountering “a strong desire to find a peaceful solution,” they also reported, as Fanfani wrote to Johnson, that Ho’s conditions included a cease-fire throughout North and South, in addition to the Four Points previously announced. He had, however, agreed to begin talks without requiring withdrawal of American forces. Since a cease-fire in place would have left North Vietnamese units inside the South, it was not acceptable to the United States, but Rusk conveyed the American rejection on the grounds of finding “no real willingness for unconditional negotiations” in Hanoi. The episode leaked to the press as such things do when someone wants them known.
Disconcerted at being exposed as uninterested in peace, the President