John T. McNaughton and Vietnam: The Early Years as ... - Viet-studies

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BENJAMIN T. HARRISON AND CHRISTOPHER L. MOSHER 499 George Ball is generally regarded as the lone dove in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. He was known to be a eurocentrist so that colleagues easily ignored his opposition. 14 But McNaughton’s views were not so easy to dismiss. Besides, Ball’s job in the state department was to develop strategies and policies. McNaughton’s job in the Pentagon was to formulate options and tactics for implementing policy. When Ball dissented, he made it clear that whatever policy was decided upon, he was ‘committed’. 15 By contrast, McNaughton saw himself in the role of an unbiased attorney defending a client. He would make his case to McNamara and, if his arguments were rejected, he would move on to fight another day. After all, it was clear that Johnson could not conceive of defeat in Vietnam. Moreover, the commitment that led to a major escalation of the Vietnam War had already been made by the time McNaughton became assistant secretary of defense in 1964. He had to select bombing targets even as he presented reasons for getting out of Vietnam. His colleague at Harvard, Roger Fisher, explained: McNaughton did more sustained thinking about the benefits of both escalation and withdrawal than any of the advocates of either position . . . He was an expert on dealing within the realm of the possible. If it seemed certain that an idea would not now be accepted, he would bide his time. 16 Alternatives were not easy to come by in a war that McNaughton had already said would require lobotomies for success. As he so shrewdly observed, the situation in Vietnam was a case of the United States giving illegitimate birth to South Vietnam. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing. 17 In his opinion, the United States had given birth to a country that had no legitimacy because its own people did not support it. John McNaughton was convinced that the lack of popular support for the government of South Vietnam was the main reason why the United States should not even be there in the first place. James C. Thomson, Jr., an aide to the Bundy brothers 18 at various times, talked to McNaughton about what was wrong with US involvement in Vietnam. The assistant secretary of defense sarcastically responded, ‘You don’t really think we should be there?’ When Thomson left government in 1966, McNaughton tried to persuade him to stay on as a staff member in the Pentagon. Thomson responded that would be hard for a ‘through and through deep-dyed peacenik’. McNaughton quickly replied, ‘Do they know that on the outside?’ Thomson answered that he did not think anyone outside the government knew of his dovishness. McNaughton was ecstatic, See David L. DiLeo, 14 1991). 15 George Ball, Vietnam and the Rethinking of Containment (Chapel Hill, NC, A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War, 1954–1975 (New York, 2000) [hereafter Langguth, Our Vietnam], p. 378. 16 ‘Letter to the Editor’, New Republic, 5 Sept. 1967, p. 44. 17 JTM Papers, Box 2, File V, #34, 5 Nov. 1964, LBJL. 18 McGeorge Bundy served as National Security Advisor. His brother, William P. Bundy, was McNaughton’s predecessor at the Pentagon before becoming assistant secretary of state.
500 JOHN T. MCNAUGHTON AND VIETNAM saying, ‘That’s all we want. What we need here is peaceniks.’ 19 His wit similarly shines through in so many of his memorandums found in his private papers. In perhaps the most revealing memo on why he opposed the war, he hand-drafted six reasons in June 1965. To begin with, McNaughton did not believe Vietnam was in the ‘sphere of influence’ of the United States. Furthermore, he insisted the enemy in Vietnam had no other option but to resort to arms because there was no available democratic process to obtain political power. He then noted that he admired the spirit and morale of the enemy in Vietnam and criticized the Saigon government as ‘slobs’. He was convinced that the weak and poor in Vietnam should prevail over the ‘elite’. And lastly, McNaughton concluded that Vietnam should be an independent, unified country with its destiny determined by the Vietnamese themselves. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing. 20 No one knew better than John McNaughton that the vast majority of Vietnamese would vote for Ho Chi Minh. Thus, South Vietnam was a congenital impossibility and he believed the only hope of successfully maintaining its existence would be to perform lobotomies on all Vietnamese. When McNaughton arrived at the Pentagon early in 1964, the war in Vietnam was in the process of becoming ‘Americanized’. Officially, the year began with the United States ‘assisting’ the South Vietnamese governments in their efforts against the ‘eighty per cent’ of Vietnamese who supported Ho Chi Minh. By the end of the year, the government of South Vietnam (GVN) would be going through the motions of ‘assisting’ the United States. McNaughton faced the daunting task of developing policy options to remedy the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, which was so bad that he believed the Saigon government might ‘go down the drain’. 21 He was ready to say good riddance to Vietnam. A working paper found in McNaughton’s files for 1964 asked the question: ‘What if the GVN collapses . . . ?’ A section addressed the issue of ‘answers’ with these possibilities: a. Seek to reestablish viable government . . . b. Establish figurehead. . . . c. If all of above fails, cut losses and negotiate settlement. 22 The assistant defense secretary was evidently thinking the unthinkable: the United States should ‘cut losses’ and get out of Vietnam. McNaughton confided his dark thoughts to individuals like presidential aide Michael Forrestal, who in 1964 was still opposed to the option of cutting losses just as was McNamara. He would say, ‘the trouble with you Forrestal is that you think we can turn this thing off, and that we can get out whenever we want. But I wonder. I think if it was easy to get off 19 Oral Interview by Paige Mulhollan, 22 July 1971, LJBL. 20 JTM Papers, Box 1, File IV, 1965, #59, June 1965, LBJL; although it is unsigned, his son has confirmed it is his father’s handwriting and it indeed matches his journal penmanship. 21 Memo found in JTM Papers, Box 2, File V, #32, File for 1964 memos, undated. 22 JTM Papers, Box 8 File III, unsigned and undated, #16 and 16a.
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