The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [211]
As an alternative to bombing, JASON recommended construction of an “anti-infiltration” barrier across Vietnam and Laos for a distance of about 160 miles. Fully presented in the study with detailed technical plans, it was to consist of minefields, walls, ditches and strong points strung with electronic barbed wire and flanked by defoliated strips on either side, at an estimated cost of $800 million. Whether it might have worked cannot be known. Ridiculed by Air Force commanders at CINCPAC who could not allow an alternative to their function, it was never tried.
Like every other “dissonant” advice, JASON bumped against a stone wall. Strategy remained unchanged because the Air Force, in concern for its own future role, could not admit that air power could be ineffective. CINCPAC continued to raise the punitive level of the bombing on a basis of calculated pain according to a calculated “stress theory” of human behavior: Hanoi should respond to “stress” by ceasing the actions that produced it. “We anticipated that they would respond like reasonable people,” an official of the Defense Department said afterward. By the end of 1966 the bombs dropped reached an annual rate of 500,000 tons, higher than the rate used against Japan in World War II. Instead of rationally, Hanoi reacted humanly in anger and defiance, as the British had done under the German blitz, as no doubt Americans would have done if bombed. Instead of bringing the enemy chastened to the negotiating table, the air offensive made them more adamant: they now insisted on cessation of bombing as a fixed precondition of negotiation.
Overtures continued through Chester Ronning of Canada and other intermediaries, because by now all parties would have welcomed an end to the war, each on its own terms, which remained irreconcilable. When Washington learned from visitors to Hanoi of finding readiness to talk if the bombing was stopped, the conclusion derived by the United States was that the bombing was hurting and should therefore be augmented to achieve the desired result. The result of course was a hardening of Hanoi’s intransigence.
JASON penetrated one significant spot in the stone wall. It confirmed doubts beginning to concern Secretary McNamara. His own Systems Analysis at the Department of Defense concluded that military benefits were not worth the economic cost. Though he gave no public indication, he seemed in private remarks to show a dawning recognition of futility. Believing, as he wrote to the President, that the prognosis for a “satisfactory solution” was not good, he declared in favor of the anti-infiltration barrier as a substitute for bombing and for further increase of ground forces. He failed to carry his point.
Elsewhere in government the sense of futility had spread, causing departures. Few resigned; most were eased out by skillful maneuvers of the President, who whatever his own misgivings did not welcome those of others, outspoken or even unspoken. Hilsman was eased out of the State Department in 1964, Forrestal from the White House staff in 1965, McGeorge Bundy from the NSC early in 1966, followed by the voluntary departures of George Ball and Bill Moyers in September and December 1966. Without exception, all went quietly, silent Laocoons who did not voice, much less shout, their warnings or disagreements at the time.
Silent departure of its members is an important property of government. To speak out even after leaving is to go into the wilderness; by exhibiting disloyalty to bar return within the circle. The same reasons account for reluctance to resign. The official can always convince himself that he can exercise more restraining influence inside, and he then remains acquiescent lest his connection with power be terminated. The effect of the American Presidency with its power of appointment in the Executive branch is overbearing. Advisers find it hard to say no to the President or to dispute policy because they know that their status, their invitation to the next White House meeting, depends on staying in line. If