Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [40]
Absent urgent and forceful action by Washington, Taylor foresaw the emergence in Saigon of a government likely to seek “accommodation with the National Liberation Front and Hanoi.” Diem, it turned out, had been an irreplaceable figure. “I doubt that anyone appreciated the magnitude of the centrifugal political forces which had been kept under control by his iron rule.”
Simply trying harder was unlikely to produce better results next week or next month. The advisory program—Taylor reported that there were now 23,700 U.S. military personnel in country—had “probably reached about the saturation point.” The order of the day was to try something different. “The game needs to be opened up,” Taylor advised, “and new opportunities offered for new breaks which hopefully may be in our favor.”
In Taylor’s view, opening up the game need not require the introduction of U.S. ground troops. Instead, the former army general and self-described skeptic regarding the efficacy of aerial bombardment pressed for a “program of graduated air attacks” directed against North Vietnam. Air power constituted “the most flexible weapon in our arsenal of military superiority,” he wrote. Its skillful application would “bring pressure on the will” of those who governed in Hanoi.
“As practical men,” Taylor continued, “they cannot wish to see the fruits of ten years of labor destroyed by slowly escalating air attacks (which they cannot prevent) without trying to find some accommodation which will exorcise the threat.” In the meantime, this affirmation of America’s commitment to South Vietnam was sure to “give the local morale a much needed shot in the arm,” boosting flagging spirits and putting to rest suspicions that the United States might be looking for ways to cut its losses. Taylor concluded: “[W]e should look for an occasion to begin air operations just as soon as we have satisfactorily compromised the current political situation in Saigon.”54
“Compromising” the political situation in Saigon implied establishing some semblance of a stable and effective South Vietnamese government. First, get the South on track politically, then hammer the North militarily: This was Taylor’s proposed sequence. Unfortunately for his plan, there was little to suggest that further American coaching, chiding, or conspiring was going to fix the political situation in Saigon. As Taylor himself acknowledged, “No amount of persuasion or communication is going to make [the South Vietnamese] other than what they are over the short term.”55 Nonetheless, bombing the North—styled as “reprisals” to convey the sense that the United States was responding defensively to Viet Cong attacks in the South—now emerged as the favored next step.
Johnson himself remained unconvinced. So the president’s national security adviser and defense secretary now weighed in, prodding their boss to act. The United States, they argued, could no longer afford to wait for South Vietnam to get its act together. “Bob [McNamara] and I,” wrote Bundy in a memo to the president on January 27, “are persuaded that there is no real hope of success in this area unless and until our own policy and priorities change.” The confidence of the South Vietnamese in their patron and protector was, Bundy insisted, waning. Seeing “the enormous power of the United States withheld,” they now doubted the depth of American seriousness.
By declaring that “we will not go further until there is a stable government” in Saigon, the administration had shackled itself to “a policy of first aid to squabbling politicos and passive reaction to events we do not try to control. . . . Bob and I believe that the worst course of action is to continue in this essentially passive role which can only lead to