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.A vigorous pacification program principally involving theSouth Vietnamese was crucial to persuading the enemy  to negotiate orwithdraw. Finally, we needed to make our negotiating efforts more credi­ble by promising to withdraw from Vietnam at the end of the fighting, qui­etly trying another bombing pause, and developing a realistic plan forincluding the Viet Cong in the negotiations and a postwar government.Military and civilian advisers disputed much of what McNamara rec­ommended.They saw a need for between 530,000 and 750,000 troops,more bombing of old and new targets, and an expanded pacification effortunder U.S.military control.Rostow urged the need  now to lean moreheavily on the North. He had reviewed all the bombing reports and con­cluded that Hanoi and Moscow and the Eastern European countries aswell were paying a significant military and economic cost for the air war.They didn t like it and  that increased burden may add to their interest ina negotiated settlement.Likewise, a CIA report challenged McNamara s conclusions aboutbombing and pacification, arguing that attacks on Haiphong and rail linesto China could have an impact on Hanoi and that pacification was doingbetter than the Defense Secretary believed and seemed likely to do evenbetter in the next two years.The President agreed to most of what McNamara recommended.OnNovember 11 he committed himself to stabilizing troop deployments toSouth Vietnam and bombing in the North.He endorsed McNamara s viewthat pacification was  critical to the success of our effort in South Vietnam,and he agreed to press the case for negotiations by appointing NicholasKatzenbach, who had become Under Secretary of State, Komer, Rostow,Vance, and a  good military man to a committee that was to  meet threetimes a week on Vietnam and all its dimensions.But Johnson found it difficult to stick to McNamara s formula.He wasespecially ambivalent about inhibiting the use of air power.The reportsfrom the Joint Chiefs and CIA saying that bombing was achieving morethan McNamara believed and that it was a U.S.trump card in forcingHanoi to the peace table made the President reluctant to veto more aggres­ Lyndon Johnson s War :: 269sive air action.On October 15, he had told McNamara and Wheeler thathe would hold to the limitations in place on bombing around Hanoi andHaiphong, but would agree to striking new targets.Johnson s willingness to broaden the air war reflected a larger convic­tion that there was some progress in the fighting and that 1967 could be adecisive year in compelling the Communists to begin peace talks. By early1967 most of my advisers and I felt confident that the tide of war was mov­ing strongly in favor of the South Vietnamese and their allies and againstthe Communists, he later wrote in his memoirs.In December 1966, how­ever, he was less certain than this.McNamara s assessment alone wasenough to make him harbor substantial doubts about what the coming yearwould bring.But given his determination to stay the course, he welcomedevery scintilla of good news and expression of optimism.And most of his advisers who, like him, felt compelled to see the brightside, to believe that somehow or other American power had to prevail overso weak an enemy, gave him words of constant encouragement about thelikely outcome in Vietnam. You are still dead right on all the big issues &you still know more about how to make them come out right than any manin America, Mac Bundy told him in November. For the first time since1961 the U.S.military in Saigon and Washington estimate a net decline inVC/NVN forces in South Viet Nam, Rostow wrote him two days later.Rostow and Komer sent him a series of papers in December laying outstrategic guidelines for 1967.They brimmed with optimism.Despite  theimmensity of the task, Komer was  convinced that if we can jack up ourmanagement in Washington and especially Saigon, and press the GVN alot harder than we have, we ll be able to see daylight by the end of 1967.Besides, Komer asked,  Do we have a better option? He knew his  recipedoes not guarantee success but.does anyone have a better one? John­son thought not.When Rostow told him that Komer s 1967 plan for Viet­nam made  a good start, the President replied:  I agree it s good.In the context of so much optimism, Johnson believed it essential tomaintain pressure on Hanoi.In November, he agreed to attacks on newtargets around Hanoi.Having largely committed himself to McNamara sstrategy of restraint, he felt compelled to give military chiefs, who werepressing for more aggressive action, the freedom to step up the air war.Secret talks in Saigon, Hanoi, and Warsaw, Poland, about negotiationsgave Johnson little reason to inhibit his military.On November 11, a cablefrom Warsaw indicated that Hanoi would not bend on its demands for anunconditional halt to American bombing, a withdrawal of allied forcesfrom South Vietnam, and a place for the National Liberation Front at the270 :: lyndon b.johnsonpeace table.Six days later, Rostow told the President:  It is certain that themen in Hanoi have not yet decided that their best option is to negotiate [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]