0 - The Black Vault

L
THE BDM CORPORATION
men would be needed, or when. Clifford was told uy the JCS that there was
no plan for victory because the tact;cal restrictions imposed by the
President precluded victory. The JCS also said that bombing alone would
not win the war; moreover,
how long the war wou~d last.53/
there was no consensus among the Chiefs as to
Clifford told an interviewer sears later,
"I coulan-t get hold of a plan to end the wdr;" there was no plan for
winning the war.
It was like quicksilver to me."54/
The Wise Men
a majority favored deescalation of tne war.
jolted the President when it became clear that
This rejection of rhe old
course of nteeting the DRV's escalations whenever they were perceived or
detected was Yunning into resistance from the US Senate's hawks, like
Richard Russell, John Ster'is and Henry Jackson.55/ The opposition in the
Senate establishment deeply affected Secretary Clifford as well as the
President.
President Johnson was crushed by what he viewed as defections
within his administration and the awesome costs that meeting General
Westmoreland's request would pose. He had decided in 1965 not to put the
US on a real wartime footing by mobi!4zing the reserves or instituting
heavy taxes and economic controls, It was readily apparent to him that it
was no longer possible to avoid those measures and still follow the course
of eccalation..
LBJ's "guns and butte," approach to the war and economy was
on the verge of becoming a shambles, and th.e Great Society's programs were
facing sharp congressional cuts.
His Secretary of the Treasury warned that
the costs associated with the 206,000 man request would cause deep cuts in
domestic prog ams, other defense expenditures, and possibly foreiin aid.
The JCS
remained adamant on the necessity of calling up the reserves to
support any troop commitment. Throughout the war, as one author pointed
out, "when the President began to search for tne elusive point at which the
costs of Vietnam would become unacceptable to the American people, he
always settled upon mobilization. "5F/
President Johnson decided at a meeting with his key advisers
on March 13 to deploy 30,000 more troops to RVN, but that deployment was
not carried out because an additional 13,500 men were needed as support
4-22