how did president johnson profit from the vietnam war

No, and he even lost his job because of the Vietnam War. WebWhat incident escalated the Vietnam War? challenges. For years I heard that he had family A series of meetings with civilian and military officials, including one in which LBJ heard a lone, dissenting view from Undersecretary of State George Ball, solidified Johnsons thinking about the necessity of escalating the conflict. All the while, the war in southern Vietnam continued to spiral out of control despite the dramatic increases in firepower and troops and military construction. Vietnam had gained its independence from France in nineteen fifty-four. While campaigning for President in 2000, George W. Bush made clear his position on nation building saying, I dont think our troops ought to be used for whats called nation building adding that, if elected, he would absolutely not engage in such open-ended commitments. President Johnson profited from the Vietnam War in many ways. Brushing aside the messy reality that the nation of South Vietnam had yet to be created, U.S. officials ordered a staggering volume of military projects be begun immediately. Rotunda was created for the publication of original digital scholarship along with It is a fraudulent war that is now perpetuated by political ideologues and war profiteers with much to lose. By late 1963, a coup de tat finally removed Diem and his influential family from power. During the war, two struggling defense suppliers, one American lives are in danger.18 With the concurrence of his national security advisers, Johnson immediately ordered four hundred U.S. Marines to the Dominican Republic, a deployment he announced in a brief, televised statement from the White House theater at 8:40 p.m. that evening. In deciding to go to war rather than withdraw from Vietnam, the Johnson administration had stepped onto a slippery slope where foreign policy crises meet Of that sum, $100 million was earmarked for the Defense Departments construction projects already begun. Balls arguments about the many challenges the United States faced in Vietnam were far outweighed by the many pressures Johnson believed were weighing on him to make that commitment. A staggering array of specialists and technicians, from civil police, public administration, public finance, military, counterespionage, propaganda, industry, agriculture, education and more immediately descended upon Saigon, the southern city made the capital of the whole project. The governments contract with the Vietnam Builders ended only in 1972 shortly before the Nixon administration itself quit the commitment to the long failed project. But the procedural issues of these months, as important as they were and would become, were constantly being overwhelmed by the more pressing concerns of progress in the counterinsurgency. The tapes included in this edition show vividly a president all too aware of shortcomings of the deeply flawed information that he was receiving, and by the time of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, several senior officialsand apparently the President himselfhad concluded that the attack of 4 August had not occurred. Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam -- allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts I need you more than he did, LBJ said to his national security team.6, That need was now more pressing because the counterinsurgency was deteriorating. That may now happen as early June, 2004. The contracts through which these deals are codified are those old familiar, certainly to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, cost-plus-award-fee types that were used to give away huge sums of money to the Vietnam Builders. WebThe impeachment of President Andrew Johnson was a result of political conflict and the rupture of ideologies in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Notably, Roger Hilsman, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs and one of the officials most enamored of deposing Diem, had lost his job in the State Department within the first five months of the Johnson administration. Worries about the credibility of the U.S. commitment to Americas friends around the world also led Johnson to support Saigon, even when some of those friends had questioned the wisdom of that commitment. Together, they Americanized a war the Vietnamese had been fighting for a generation. No interest on the part of the North Vietnamese was forthcoming. Two days later, on the night of 4 August, the Maddox and another destroyer that had joined it, the USS C. Turner Joy, reported a new round of attacks by North Vietnamese military forces. The company's contracts with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam helped fuel rumors of cronyism with the Johnson administration. These included Senator Robert Kennedy of New York and Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. One faction, which included Fortas, McGeorge Bundy, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, favored the more leftist Guzmn, while Mann and Secretary of State Dean Rusk favored Imbert. Then came Tet -- the Vietnamese lunar new year -- in January nineteen sixty-eight. No, and he even lost his job because of the Vietnam War. yes. These experts, along with the U.S. government and military installed Ngo Dinh Diem, removed all viable opponents, began a crackdown on dissidents killing tens of thousands and jailing as many or more, and began to physically transform southern Vietnam. In documenting those private uncertainties, the Dominican Crisis tapes share characteristics with the tapes of what became a much larger and more serious crisis where U.S. intervention was simultaneously and rapidly escalating: Vietnam. Articles with the HISTORY.com Editors byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan and Matt Mullen. The first phase began on 14 December with Operation Barrel Rollthe bombing of supply lines in Laos.13. Of all the episodes of the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam, the episodes of 2 and 4 August 1964 have proved among the most controversial and contentious. Washington was generally pleased with the turn of events and sought to bolster the Khanh regime. He was able to increase his power and influence both domestically and internationally. I just cant be the architect of surrender.24. Back then, the company's close ties to President Johnson became a liability. The potential for waste and profiteering under such a contract is substantial. (Cong. If anything, he encouraged his closest advisers to work even harder at helping South Vietnam prosecute the counterinsurgency. Both Diem and Nhu were killed in the coup that brought a military junta to power in early November 1963, ending Americas reliance on its miracle man in Vietnam.4, Kennedys own assassination three weeks later laid the problems of Vietnam squarely on Johnsons desk. Sometimes I take other people's judgments, and I get misled. In a sense, Johnson was able to avoid the label he so greatly feared would be pinned to his name. All Rights Reserved. And that, he said, would only make him continue the war. Today, we continue the story of America's thirty-sixth president, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge within two days of becoming president, I will not lose in Vietnam. That personal stake in the outcome of the war remained a theme throughout his presidency, perhaps best embodied by his remark to Senator Eugene McCarthy in February 1966: I know we oughtnt to be there, but I cant get out, Johnson maintained. Nothing would be left to chance; no rogue force would tip the expensive American apple cart. Protests and frustration over the war led him to refuse to run for a second full term in 1968. c. Early defeats led him to admit the war was a mistake and withdraw U.S. troops. Claiming unprovoked attacks by the North Vietnamese on American ships in international waters, the Johnson administration used the episodes to seek a congressional decree authorizing retaliation against North Vietnam. In 1966, Illinois Representative Donald H. Rumsfeld went perhaps further than most when he charged the administration with letting contracts which are illegal by statute. He urged investigation into the relationship between the private consortium working in Vietnam and the Johnson administration, in particular the infamous Presidents Club, to which Brown & Root, one of the principle Vietnam contractors, had given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. WebHe sought to end the conflict by strengthening the South Vietnamese military and reducing corruption within the South Vietnamese government. Enter a date in the format M/D (e.g., 1/1), President Johnson asks for more funding for Vietnam War, How the Vietnam War Empowered the Hippie Movement, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/johnson-asks-for-more-funding-for-vietnam-war, Gusher signals new era of U.S. oil industry, President Harding orders U.S. troops home from Germany. We strive for accuracy and fairness. Within weeks, the federal government began its bread line for business by handing out sweet deals to American corporations to rebuild Iraqs infrastructure. Within days of the Pleiku/Holloway attacks, as well as the subsequent assault on Qui Nhon (in which twenty-three Americans were killed and twenty-one were wounded), LBJ signed off on a program of sustained bombing of North Vietnam that, except for a handful of pauses, would last for the remainder of his presidency. But most Americans believed that Johnson would run again for president the next year. Charges of cronyism and corruption had dogged the government of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem for years, sparking public condemnation of his rule as well as successive efforts at toppling his regime. d. The war made him the most popular president in history when he finally left The Johnsons earned Johnsons election as president in his own right allowed the administration to move forward in crafting a more vigorous policy toward the Communist challenge in South Vietnam. Victory in the military conflict became the new administrations top priority. [38] Job opportunities and welfare reform This section needs additional citations for verification. Initially contracted for around $15 million prior to 1965, the lead corporation, MK, was shocked by the magnitude of orders for rapid construction. The administration hoped this would help get the North Vietnamese government to begin negotiations. Such expressions of doubt and uncertainty contrasted starkly with the confidence administration officials tried to impart on their public statements. Johnson opted not to respond militarily just hours before Americans would go to the polls. In Iraq, the time table seems dramatically sped up. The value of the dollar began to drop. The circumstances of Johnsons ascendance to the Oval Office left him little choice but to implement several unrealized Kennedy initiatives, particularly in the fields of economic policy and civil rights. By early nineteen sixty-four, America had about seventeen thousand troops in Vietnam. Current criticism over Halliburton's lucrative Iraq contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration. David Coleman, former Associate Professor and former Chair, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center, University of Virginia, Marc Selverstone, Associate Professor and Chair, Presidential Recordings Program, Miller Center, University of Virginia, I guess weve got no choice, but it scares the death out of me. The company's founders, Herman and George Brown, won the contract to build Mansfield Dam thanks to the efforts of Johnson, who was then a Texas congressman. allowed the administration to move forward in crafting a more vigorous policy toward the Communist challenge in South Vietnam. Having already decided to shift prosecution of the war into higher gear, the Johnson administration recognized that direct military action would require congressional approval, especially in an election year. Hoping to apply more pressure on the Communists, the administration began to implement a series of tactics it had adopted in principle within the first week of Johnsons presidency. The raids were the first in what would become a three-year program of sustained bombing targeting sites north of the seventeenth parallel; the troops were the first in what would become a three-year escalation of U.S. military personnel fighting a counterinsurgency below the seventeenth parallel. What is perhaps less well known is that the war in fact followed an equally enormous and failed nation building project. Even Morrison-Knudsen, now calling itself Washington Group International following a merger, has signed on for around $500,000,000 of the lucre. The troops arrived on 8 March, though Johnson endorsed the deployment prior to the first strikes themselves. Civilian rule in Saigon came to an end in mid-June as the Young Turksmilitary officials including Nguyen Van Thieu and Nguyen Cao Kyrose to prominence at the head of a new ruling war cabinet. Westmorelands request prompted Johnson to convene one of the more significant of these study groups that emerged during the war, and one that Johnson would return to at key points later in the conflict. Using its own defense measures and aided by aircraft from the nearby aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga, the Maddox resisted the attack and the North Vietnamese boats retreated. Study now. 2011-11-13 04:14:24. Position Paper on Southeast Asia, 2 December 1964, David Humphrey, Tuesday Lunch at the Johnson White House: A Preliminary Assessment,, Quoted in Randall B. From 'Builders'/ Texas A&M University Press, Part 1: Examining Halliburton's 'Sweetheart' Deal in Iraq, Part 2: Cheney's Role in Halliburton Contracts Debated, Center for Public Integrity: Kellogg, Brown & Root (Halliburton), 'Builders': A History of Brown & Root Founders Herman and George R. Brown, Rice University: Brown & Root / George R. Brown Collection, Photos Courtesy Texas A&M University Press. Kennedy was considering getting out of Viet-Nam Convinced that Bosch was using and encouraging Communist allies, particularly those aided and abetted by the Cuban Communist leader Fidel Castro, the reactionary military-backed junta sought to crack down on pro-Bosch groups, moves that only served to provoke the Dominican population to take their activism to the streets. In nineteen sixty-six, President Johnson renewed the bombing in North Vietnam. Perhaps the most important of those informal advisers was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Is the Eurofighter Typhoon the Best Fighter? The spate of endless coups and governmental shake-ups vexed Johnson, who wondered how the South Vietnamese would ever mount the necessary resolve to stanch the Communists in the countryside when they were so absorbed with their internal bickering in Saigon. In an effort to provide greater security for these installations, Johnson sanctioned the dispatch of two Marine battalions to Danang in early March. Rumsfeld argued on behalf of serious inquiry into the whole affair saying, under one contract, between the U.S. Government and this combine, [RMK-BRJ] it is officially estimated that obligations will reach at least $900 million by November 1967why this huge contract has not been and is not now being adequately audited is beyond me. The cycle of answering that resistance with greater levels of force is perpetual. I have nothing in the world I want except to do what I believe to be right. Although State Department officials had maintained in October 1963 that that statistical evidence pointed not to success but to mounting troubles against the Vietcong, Pentagon officialsboth civilian and militaryhad rejected those arguments. In an effort to achieve consensus about security requirements for those troops, key personnel undertook a review in Honolulu on 20 April. Johnsons tax proposal, approved by Congress in March 1967, backfired with an American public tiring of the controversial war. The situation is bad and getting worse, the congress is now criticizing and investigating the money deals, and the Bush administration wants desperately to distance itself from the whole mess in the run up to the presidential election. We met them because brave men were willing to risk their lives for their nation's security. Particularly critical was J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who, in the wake of the crisis, took the Johnson administration to task for a lack of candor with the American public. Perhaps the most significant contribution the tapes make to our understanding of the Dominican Crisis is to show with much greater clarity the role the President himself played and the extent to which it consumed his time in the late spring of 1965.22 Fearful of another Cuba, Johnson was personally and heavily involved in managing the crisis. But LBJ was equally committed to winning the fight against the Communist insurgency in Vietnama fight that Kennedy had joined during his thousand days in office. Suppliers in the US could hardly keep up either and backlogs of three to six months became commonplace. See answers (2) Best Answer. Those Tuesday Lunches would involve a changing array of attendees over the course of the next two years and, by 1967, would become an integral though unofficial part of the policymaking machinery.15. Johnson took Republicans in congress began to criticize Johnsons handling of the Vietnam situation, warning his policies threatened to over-heat the domestic economy and drive prices up. North and South Vietnamese Communists declined to meet Johnson on his terms, one of numerous instances over the following three years in which the parties failed to find even a modicum of common ground. STEVE EMBER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. These people said it was a civil war. over as Vice then won the 1964 election by presenting himself as In the fall, Richard Nixon won the presidency, defeating the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, by claiming he had a "secret plan" to end the conflict. In time, LBJ would make his key decisions in the presence and on the advice of very few advisers, a practice that Johnson hoped would protect him from the leaks he so greatly feared would undermine his carefully crafted strategy. In fact, it was those advisers who would play an increasingly important role in planning for Vietnam, relegating the interagency approachwhich never went awayto a level of secondary importance within the policymaking process. They told him that North Vietnamese troops and Viet Cong forces would soon stop fighting. March 1965 In March 1965, Johnson made the decisionwith solid support from the American publicto send U.S. combat forces into battle in Vietnam.By June, 82,000 combat troops were stationed in Vietnam, and military leaders were calling for 175,000 more by the end of 1965 to shore This was program #213. And as they do on so many other topics, the tapes reveal the uncertainty, flawed information, and doubts to which Johnson himself was frequently prone. By the mid-1960s, newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to suggest that the company's good luck was tied to its sizable contributions to Johnson's political campaign. From late April through June 1965, President Johnson spent more time dealing with the Dominican Crisis than any other issue.17 On the afternoon of 28 April 1965, while meeting with his senior national security advisers on the problem of Vietnam, Johnson was handed an urgent cable from the U.S. ambassador in Santo Domingo, W. Tapley Bennett Jr., warning that the conflict between rebels and the military-backed junta was about to get violent, especially now that the military had split into two factions, one of which was starting to arm the populace. JAMES M. CARTER is a PhD. The U.S. general election that loomed in November altered the administrations representation in Vietnam as Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge resigned his post that June to pursue the Republican nomination for president. Food prices have tripled since the fighting began a week ago. As one MK executive said early in 1965, all we knew was that they wanted a lotta roads, a lotta airfields, a lotta bridges, and a lotta ports, and that they probably would want it all finished by yesterday. (Fortune, Sept., 1966), These demands outstripped the capacity of any one of the corporations. The country was divided into North and South. Although the enemy also suffered heavy casualties, they did not show any signs of giving up. He discussed his proposal to end American bombing of North Vietnam. He also increased the number of American troops in South Vietnam. The bombing, however, was failing to move Hanoi or the Vietcong in any significant way. The Viet Congs surprise Tet Offensive in January 1968 convinced the majority of the public and many U.S. political and military leaders that the war could not be won. Opposition to the occupation grew at a steady pace. Meanwhile, the war dragged on. Until now, most of it has been in the Chinese section of Cho Lon and in the suburbs. Jones Construction). From 1964 into 1965, the experiment was vastly militarized. With more than a thousand Americans seeking refuge in one of the citys largest luxury hotels and the situation on the street deteriorating to the point of an evacuation becoming necessary, Bennetts cable said that he and his colleagues were unanimously of opinion that time has come to land the marines. It cost $276 billion and led to a crisis in trust in the government. From the array of figures angling for power, two leading candidates for forming a provisional government emerged: General Antonio Imbert Barreras was put forward by an influential wing of the military, while the more liberal Silvestre Antonio Guzmn Fernndez was championed by those more sympathetic to Bosch. That will be our story next week. Postwar planners and experts had been quickly flown into neighboring countries to await a modicum of safety before entering Baghdad to begin their work in stabilizing and rebuilding a ravaged country. Responsibility for building that necessary infrastructure was given over to the largest construction entity ever, the RMK-BRJ (Raymond International, Morrison-Knudsen, Brown & Root, and J.A. time the VC shot one down and they shot hundreds of them down. He frequently reached out to members of the business and journalistic communities, hoping to shape opinions as much as to receive them. The communists suffered heavier losses than the South Vietnamese or the Americans. They recommended that LBJ give Westmoreland what he needed, advice that General Eisenhower had also communicated to the White House back in June. McNamara thus recommended, and Johnson endorsed, a more vigorous program of U.S. military and economic support for South Vietnam.10. value of traditional peer-reviewed university press publishing with thoughtful They built roads connecting all parts of Vietnam to Saigon, which they promised would result in greater access for both government officials and peasants to sell their crops to a larger market. These exchanges reveal Johnsons acute sensitivity to press criticism of his Vietnam policy as he tried to reassure the electorate of his commitment to help the South Vietnamese defend themselves without conjuring up images of the United States assuming the brunt of that defense. Following weeks of intensive discussion, Johnson endorsed the third optionOption C in the administrations parlanceallowing the task force to flesh out its implementation. The most important was an immediate ceasefire. They wanted the war to end quickly. Passed nearly unanimously by Congress on 7 August and signed into law three days later, the Tonkin Gulf Resolutionor Southeast Asia Resolution, as it was officially knownwas a pivotal moment in the war and gave the Johnson administration a broad mandate to escalate U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The North refused. As real-time information flowed in to the Pentagon from the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy, the story became more and more confused, and as frustratingly incomplete and often contradictory reports flowed into Washington, several high-ranking military and civilian officials became suspicious of the 4 August incident, questioning whether the attack was real or imagined. A handful of Marines had it locked and kept them out. For six days in May, the United States halted bombing of North Vietnam. But the price of not having made them at all, not having seen them through, in my judgment would have been vastly greater.". Many more would be required to regain the initiative and then to mount the win phase of the conflict. This was particularly true of his conversations with broadcast and print journalists, with whom he spoke on a regular basis. American force levels peaked at around 542,000. Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is also in the pipeline, having signed lucrative federal contracts, reportedly worth $2.3 billion, to help in the rebuilding of Iraqs oil producing infrastructure. From 'Builders'/ Texas A&M University Press Twelve years of ruinous sanctions had reduced Iraq to a traditional state in terms of its agricultural, communications, transportation, public health and educational infrastructure. Do Eric benet and Lisa bonet have a child together? Johnson realized support for his administration had disintegrated and decided not to run for re-election in 1968. Some Americans became angry. But the raiders were everywhere else.. basically quit. But the man that misled me was Lyndon Johnson, nobody else. In Vietnam, this process took years to unfold. [Gunfire]. 2) This otherwise nightmare situation for the people of Iraq actually aided the American military by reducing all kinds of unseemly obstacles to invasion, conquest and occupation that was to follow. Today, Brown & Root is called Kellogg, Brown & Root -- a Halliburton subsidiary better known as KBR. Troops arriving near Da Nang in 1965. Im Steve Ember, inviting you to join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. What is the enemy doing? By years end, a total of 19,560 troops had died in more than a decade of hostilities. All signs were now pointing to a situation that was more dire than the one Kennedy had confronted.7, Or so it seemed. specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history and Johnson rejected a legislative strategy that would have entailed open-ended discussion, preferring to obtain the funds under the authority Congress granted him via the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of August 1964a move, he knew, that would further ratify that authority should he need to act even more boldly in the future.

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