Negotiating with southerners and living in shadow of JFK Johnson believed that if he permitted South Vietnam to fall through a conventional North Vietnamese invasion, the whole containment edifice so carefully constructed since World War II to stop the spread of communism (and the influence of the Soviet Union) would crumble. American intelligence and Foreign Service operatives on the ground began requesting new assignments. The CIA predicted that if Washington and its allies did not act, South Vietnam would fall within the year. In April 1964 US intelligence reported that substantial numbers of regular North Vietnamese troops were infiltrating into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And in July he agreed to the dispatch of two combat divisions to Vietnam. It’s just the biggest damned mess that I saw…What the hell is Vietnam worth to me?…What is it worth to this country? …this is…a terrible thing that we’re getting ready to do…”īut in February 1965 Johnson approved Operation Rolling Thunder, the aerial assault on North Vietnam.
“I don’t think it’s worth fighting for and I don’t think that we can get out. Shortly after, he vented to adviser McGeorge Bundy in a now familiar monologue:
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