Lyndon B. Johnson became president upon John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963. The two men were a study in contrasts. Kennedy had been born into great wealth whereas Johnson was the son of a poor Texas tenant farmer. Kennedy was Harvard educated; Johnson had graduated from San Marcos College, an inexpensive teacher’s preparatory institution in Southwest Texas. Kennedy always managed to project an image of cool, intellectual sophistication; Johnson spoke in Texas twang and was fond of vulgar anecdotes.

Johnson and Kennedy had not been close partners in the White House. They had been bitter rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. Kennedy had only offered Johnson the vice presidential position in an effort to win the crucial state of Texas in the election and to remove Johnson from his powerful position of Senate Majority Leader. Johnson had stayed quietly in the background during the Kennedy presidency, overshadowed by cabinet officials such as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and the president’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Johnson was aware of his weak political position upon becoming president: "I took the oath, I became President. But for millions of Americans I was still illegitimate, a naked man with no presidential covering, a pretender to the throne, an illegal usurper." Upon assuming the presidency, Johnson was driven by two emotions. The first was a lasting discomfort with being compared to his predecessor. Personally insecure, Johnson feared this comparison and believed that the media and many of Kennedy’s advisors, "the Harvard crowd," were out to sabotage his presidency. He especially resented Robert Kennedy, who he believed was unfairly challenging Johnson’s claim to be the custodian of his brother’s political legacy. The second guiding desire of Johnson was to expand the domestic social protections of the New Deal. As a young congressman, Johnson had idolized Franklin Roosevelt, and as president, he sought to expand upon the New Deal with his Great Society. Johnson cared little about foreign policy, preferring to concentrate on enacting revolutionary domestic legislation. Within the first two years of his presidency, Johnson was able to win passage of landmark social legislation, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.

Despite his preoccupation with domestic issues, Johnson was aware that Vietnam was crucial to his presidency. He later told biographer Doris Kearns:

Like others of his generation who had been young men in the 1930s, Johnson saw the need to stand firm against what he perceived as an example of worldwide communist expansion:

The president’s doubts about U.S. policy in Vietnam were also voiced privately to his most trusted advisors. On May 27, 1964, he agonized to national security advisor McGeorge Bundy:

Johnson’s concern with public opinion, however, prevented him from disengaging from Vietnam. The same day that he agonized to Bundy, he discussed Vietnam on the phone with Georgia Senator Richard Russell:

Johnson inherited a position in Vietnam that was already in disarray. In December 1963, the New York Times published a lengthy analysis of the situation in Vietnam written by David Halberstam who had recently completed a fifteen-month stint in South Vietnam. Halberstam reported that the communists were stepping up their attack on South Vietnam and now held the initiative, "militarily and psychologically, in most rural areas." Halberstam reported a conversation between a South Vietnamese officer and a Catholic priest who was flying the Vietcong flag from the roof of his small, rural church. "It is very simple captain," the priest said, "You and the Government come here once every three or four months and you have tea with me and then you leave. But the Vietcong are here every night…" The report stated that the situation in the Mekong Delta, where up to 70% of the South’s rural population lived, was "desperate" and went on to predict only two possible outcomes to the conflict: "One is a neutralist settlement. The other is use of United States combat troops to prop up the Government." Neither of these alternatives appeared promising: "observers say that a Communist take-over in the South would probably follow a neutralist settlement in about two years" and that "nothing would please the Communist world more than the sight of American troops fighting the Vietcong…. [Where] the Vietnamese rice paddies would swallow up the United States troops, that the population would turn on them and help the Vietcong and that the Americans would face a situation like the one that defeated the French in the 1945-54 Indochinese war."

At the same time as the New York Times report, Johnson sent Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to Saigon to provide an assessment of the situation. McNamara proclaimed the situation "very disturbing" and predicted: "Current trends, unless reversed in the next 2-3 months, will lead to neutralization at best and more likely to a Communist-controlled state." McNamara referred to the post-Diem government in Saigon as "the greatest source of concern." Described by McNamara as "indecisive and drifting," the government of General Minh was ousted in January 1964 by a non-violent coup by General Nguyen Khanh. Khanh was virtually unknown to the Americans but garnered immediate support when he proclaimed that his takeover had been done to thwart talk of a neutralist settlement. In a government full of schemers, Khanh had been judged so unreliable that the plotters of the anti-Diem coup had placed him in command of South Vietnam’s northernmost army corps to distance him as far as possible from Saigon after the coup. The U.S. was unaware of Khanh’s coup plans as he returned to Saigon on January 28, 1964 and displaced Minh without firing a shot. The feisty Khanh was welcomed by the U.S. as a tough replacement for the indolent (lazy) Minh who had preferred playing tennis to running the government.

As Khanh talked boldly of invading the North, the communists increased their pressure on the South. For the first time North Vietnamese troops, as well as supplies, began to make their way south through Laos and Cambodia to emerge in South Vietnam. This complex web of jungle paths, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, extended through the two neutral countries and then entered the South at various points all the way from the partition line to the Mekong Delta south of Saigon. These paths were virtually undetectable from the air and the CIA did not report infiltration from the North until late 1964. At this time the Vietcong stepped up its attacks in the South. In one attack on a Saigon movie theater, three Americans were killed and another forty wounded.

In March, Secretary of Defense McNamara visited Saigon in an effort to demonstrate support for Khanh. The two men toured the countryside as the U.S. tried to bolster a government that was virtually unknown to its own people. Upon his return to Washington, McNamara told Johnson that the situation in South Vietnam had "unquestionably been growing worse" since his last visit four months before. As the communists increased their pressure on the South, Khanh and some American military leaders began to call for direct bombing of North Vietnam to force Hanoi to cut its support to the Vietcong. General Curtis LeMay, who had headed the strategic bombing of Japan during 1944-1945, criticized the U.S.’s unwillingness to use similar tactics against North Vietnam: "We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile." Although direct bombing of the North was not immediately endorsed by the Johnson administration out of fear of antagonizing China and widening the war, the Pentagon did begin to plan targets for future U.S. bombing of the North. On March 1, advisor William Bundy recommended to Johnson a far-reaching plan of increasing the pressure on North Vietnam. Bundy’s proposal advocated blockading Haiphong harbor and bombing railways, roads, industrial complexes, and training camps. This memorandum also suggested that Johnson ask Congress for a resolution of support that would free the president to undertake military action without a congressional declaration of war. Such an action would not have been unprecedented as Congress had authorized President Eisenhower to deploy U.S. forces "as he deems necessary" to protect Taiwan and the islands of Quemoy and Matsu against a possible Communist Chinese attack in 1955. Although never invoked (put into effect), the 1955 resolution had passed almost unanimously.

In June 1964 the U.S. changed its two top officials in Saigon. General Maxwell Taylor replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador, and General William Westmoreland was named commander of the U.S. Military Advisory Group. A handsome combat hero of World War II and Korea, Westmoreland was described as "a corporate executive in uniform" who could be counted on to carry out the administration’s orders. Despite these changes, the situation still appeared bleak as Time reported in August:

In addition to changing personnel and continued military escalation, Johnson also embarked on a top secret peace overture to North Vietnam. Canadian diplomat J. Blair Seaborn was asked to carry a message to Hanoi in which the U.S. offered economic aid and diplomatic recognition if North Vietnam ended its assistance to the Vietcong. Massive American air and naval operations against the North were hinted at should Hanoi reject these overtures. Seaborn met with Premier Pham Van Dong in Hanoi on June 18 and was told that America must withdraw from Vietnam and permit the reunification of the country on a neutral basis similar to that of Laos. These conditions were clearly unacceptable to Washington, and the Canadian peace overture died. At the same time, the Johnson administration rejected further suggestions by French President Charles De Gaulle to achieve a neutralist settlement in South Vietnam. De Gaulle issued a statement in Paris in July that called for a settlement based upon the 1954 Geneva Agreement:

In the meantime preparations for bombing the North continued. The Pentagon prepared a detailed bombing proposal, identifying ninety-four potential bombing targets in the North. A resolution had been drafted for Congress authorizing the attack, but at this point Johnson backed away. Fearful of expanding the U.S. involvement in the midst of the 1964 presidential elections, plans to offer the resolution to Congress were abruptly canceled.

The situation in Vietnam was not nearly as important to Johnson as his efforts to win the presidential election and earn the presidency in his own right. As it became apparent that the Republicans were going to nominate conservative Senator Barry Goldwater, who had advocated greater use of military force in South Vietnam, Johnson was eager to appear to the American public as a calm leader who would not lead the United States into war. Despite the calls of his advisors in June of 1964, Johnson pulled away from asking for congressional approval to further expand U.S. involvement in the war in hopes that the issue would work to his advantage in the upcoming election. In his campaign against Goldwater, Johnson said, "We are not going to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves," and "we don’t want to get involved in a nation with 700 million people and get tied down in a land war in Asia." Johnson won the election in November by a record landslide as most Americans continued to ignore the issue of Vietnam. Within a year, however, the issue of Vietnam would take center stage as American combat troops were on their way to fight in Southeast Asia.

The path to direct U.S. combat involvement began with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by Congress in August 1964. The United States had long supported covert (secret) South Vietnamese military actions against the North. Soon after partition, South Vietnamese agents had been infiltrated into the North in an unsuccessful effort to destabilize Ho Chi Minh’s government. In the early 1960s, South Vietnamese officers were again recruited to serve as secret agents. In 1963, more than eighty groups were sent into the North. These missions were almost always failures, with most of the agents captured shortly after landing. Despite the failure of these efforts, early in 1964 the U.S. backed another clandestine (secret) program designed to mount commando raids on the North Vietnamese coast. A major goal of this operation was to gain intelligence information on newly installed Soviet antiaircraft missiles and radar stations surrounding North Vietnam’s main cities and the shoreline surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin. The U.S. destroyer Maddox was dispatched to the coast of North Vietnam to monitor North Vietnamese radio transmissions in response to the commando raids in what became known as the DeSoto patrols. Despite warnings by the U.S. director of naval intelligence that the North Vietnamese subscribed to a twelve-mile definition of territorial waters off their coast, the captain of the Maddox was authorized to sail within eight miles of the North Vietnamese coast and within four miles of its islands.

Early in the morning of July 31, two South Vietnamese commando boats attacked the island of Hon Me, seven miles off the coast of North Vietnam. At the same time, two other boats attacked Hon Ngu, an island three miles from the busy port of Vinh. The Maddox carefully monitored the North Vietnamese radar signals and radio transmissions that resulted from these attacks. North Vietnam protested these attacks to the International Control Commission that had been set up to monitor the borders of Indochina in the 1954 peace agreement. On the morning of August 2, North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked the Maddox as it cruised ten miles off the coast of the North. The Maddox opened fire on the three boats and radioed to the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga for help. All three of the North Vietnamese boats fired torpedoes at the Maddox, two of which missed and another failed to detonate. The gunners on the Maddox fired upon the attacking boats, sinking one. The other two boats were crippled by fire from the Maddox and strafing by three Crusader jets from the Ticonderoga. The entire skirmish lasted twenty minutes.

Reports of the incident reached President Johnson in Washington early in the morning of Sunday, August 2. Johnson initially told his staff to downplay the incident and sent a message to Soviet leader Khrushchev stating that the U.S. had no desire to expand the conflict, but at the same time he ordered the Maddox and a second destroyer, the C. Turner Joy, to return to the Gulf of Tonkin and "attack any force that attacks them." Johnson also sent a diplomatic note to North Vietnam warning "grave consequences would inevitably result from any further unprovoked offensive military action." While Johnson hoped that the incident would not lead to escalation, U.S. military leaders moved immediately to respond. U.S. combat troops were put on alert, and the commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet, Admiral Sharp, ordered the Maddox and C. Turner Joy to conduct daylight runs within eight miles of North Vietnam’s coast. Additional South Vietnamese commando raids were launched on August 3. When the captain of the Maddox intercepted North Vietnamese radio transmissions that connected the presence of his ship with these raids, he asked permission from Admiral Sharp to withdraw from the area. This request was denied by Sharp who radioed the captain that his request to terminate operations "does not in my view adequately demonstrate United States resolve to assert our legitimate rights in these international waters."

At eight o’clock in the evening the Maddox intercepted radio messages that implied a North Vietnamese attack was forthcoming. The captain, John J. Herrick, again requested air support from the Ticonderoga. In the midst of a storm, eight jets could find no trace of North Vietnamese ships. An hour later both destroyers began firing. Their sonar recorded a total of twenty-two enemy torpedoes launched against them, and both the Maddox and C. Turner Joy fired on what they believed to be enemy ships for three hours. Reports of the conflict reached Washington at 11 a.m. on August 4. Within an hour, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with Secretary McNamara and recommended targets for bombing North Vietnam in retaliation. These targets had been chosen from the list drawn up in May. That afternoon, Johnson authorized the reprisals and decided to forward the resolution giving approval for further military actions that had been shelved in June to Congress immediately. At 4:00 p.m., McNamara learned from Admiral Sharp that Captain Herrick had expressed almost immediate doubts as to whether a second North Vietnamese attack had actually occurred. None of the men on the Maddox could verify an actual citing of enemy crafts. Neither could the pilots from the Ticonderoga. In an immediate report to Sharp, Herrick commented that the sonar and radar images might have been due to "freak weather effects" and an "overeager" young sonar operator. McNamara ordered Sharp to confirm that an attack had actually happened before launching the fighter bomber planes from the carriers Constellation and Ticonderoga that were to carry out the retaliatory bombing raids. Although the officers of the Maddox could still not confirm the attack, Sharp telephoned McNamara and told him that he was satisfied that the attack had been genuine.

At 6:45 p.m. in Washington, Johnson met with congressional leaders and briefed them of the actions in the Gulf of Tonkin without mentioning the South Vietnamese commando attacks that accompanied the incidents. He told them that he had decided to order retaliatory bombings of the North and asked them to support the resolution that he was planning to immediately send to Congress authorizing further military action. At 10:43, the first bombers left the Ticonderoga bound for North Vietnam. At almost midnight, Johnson spoke to the American people on television: "…renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply... That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight." Sixty-four sorties (individual air missions) were flown against four North Vietnamese patrol boat bases and two oil storage depots. All targets were hit and "severely" damaged. Two U.S. planes were lost in the attack. One pilot, Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr., was captured, the first of almost six hundred American pilots captured during the war.

On August 5, Johnson sent what became known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to Congress:

Johnson convinced Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to guide the resolution through Congress. Fulbright, who later would become a strong critic of the war, later told how Johnson convinced him to support the measure: "He sold it as a means to prevent any widening of the war; that we were going to face this little country of, he said, seventeen million people with the great might of the United States; they would clearly be inclined to settle and to compromise and there wouldn’t be any war." In testimony before a secret session of the Senate and House foreign relations committees, McNamara denied that the U.S. had played any role in South Vietnamese commando attacks: "There was no connection between this patrol and any action by South Vietnam." Despite tough questioning in regard to the conditions that preceded the attack, the resolution passed unanimously in the House of Representatives (416-0) and 88-2 in the Senate. Democratic Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska were the only two members of Congress to cast dissenting votes.

The events in the Gulf of Tonkin that led to the congressional resolution have been debated ever since. Was there a second attack on the Maddox? Did the Johnson administration deliberately provoke the attacks in order to build support for a resolution that was already drafted and ready for presentation to Congress? Testifying Congress in 1968, McNamara insisted that he had seen four intercepted North Vietnamese radio transmissions that ordered an attack on the U.S. ships. Others have claimed that these orders applied only to the first attack or simply ordered the boats to prepare for defensive actions. Johnson himself was unsure. He later said privately to Under-Secretary of State George Ball, "Well those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish." Ball later maintained that the administration had desired to provoke an excuse to take the resolution to Congress. He told a radio interviewer in 1977, "The DeSoto patrol was primarily for provocation…. There was a feeling that, if the destroyer got into some trouble, that would provide the provocation we needed." On the same program, William Bundy (who had authored the resolution) disagreed with Ball and insisted that escalating the conflict during the summer of 1964 "didn’t fit into our plans at all."

The retaliatory bombing raids for the attacks in the Gulf of Tonkin lasted only a day. At the same time, Johnson temporarily suspended the DeSoto program and authorization for further South Vietnamese covert activities in the North. While Washington was backing away from conflict, General Khanh used the one-day bombing of North Vietnam as an excuse to consolidate his power. He declared a state of emergency and instituted a new constitution, promoting himself to the position of president by decree. Soon anti-Khanh protests erupted on the streets of Saigon. A month of political chaos ensued. Ambassador Taylor warned Washington that "It is far from clear that the Khanh Government can last until January 1, 1965." In the end, Khanh gave up his position as president but retained real power under the title of commander in chief of the armed forces. The new Prime Minister, Tran Van Huong, was a former teacher and mayor of Saigon. He lasted three months as the street fighting between religious and political factions continued. An exasperated Secretary of State Rusk warned the South Vietnamese that unless some form of political stability could be created, future U.S. aid was in jeopardy. "The United States has not provided massive assistance to South Vietnam … in order to subsidize continuing quarrels among South Vietnamese leaders."

On December 20,1964, a group of young officers led by General Nguyen Van Thieu and Air Vice Marshall Nguyen Cao Ky forced Huong’s top advisors to resign and set up an Armed Forces Council as the country’s real ruling authority, although the now powerless Huong remained as prime minister. Khanh once again returned to power under the guidance of the young officers. Ambassador Taylor erupted in rage at the new government, summoning Khanh, Thieu, and Ky to the U.S. embassy and warning them: "We cannot carry you forever if you do things like this." The South Vietnamese realized that this was an empty threat. As a South Vietnamese official later told journalist Stanley Karnow: "Our big advantage over the Americans is that they want to win the war more than we do." In January, Khanh used another round of Buddhist protests to force Huong totally out of office. Taylor made no effort to hide his dislike of Khanh, and it was widely known that the U.S. would not oppose his removal from power. A February coup attempt by General Lam Van Phat and Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao was put down by Ky who threatened to bomb Saigon if they did not surrender to him. Phat and Thao agreed to surrender to Ky if Khanh were removed from office. Ky was only too glad to comply with this request and used it as an excuse to seize power for himself. Three days later, Khanh was sent into exile, never to return to Saigon. Khanh’s final prime minister, Phan Huy Quat, remained in office until June when he was ousted by Ky. After almost innumerable changes of government, in June 1965, Ky emerged as prime minister with Thieu as his chief of state. Presidential advisor William Bundy referred to the new ruling combination in Saigon as "the bottom of the barrel, absolutely the bottom of the barrel." Ky and Thieu did, however, prove more durable than the U.S. expected. Ky ruled until 1967 when Thieu outmaneuvered him and became president in elections that were rife with challenges of irregularities and corruption.

Born in 1924 in Central Vietnam, Thieu was the son of a small landowner who had attended a French missionary school and served briefly as a village chief under the Vietminh in the late 1940s. In 1946, he switched sides and was commissioned an officer in the French colonial army. A convert to Catholicism, he rose quickly in the early Diem regime and was sent to the United States for additional military training. He was one of the main plotters in the coup that toppled Diem and was involved in numerous intrigues before winning the presidency in 1967. Thieu would remain as president until 1975.

After the retaliatory bombing for the Gulf of Tonkin incident, President Johnson initially resisted advice to continuing the bombing of the North. On August 29, he said:

Despite Johnson’s statements, his military advisors continued to press for additional bombing of the North. On August 18, Ambassador Taylor had advocated increasing the pressure on North Vietnam, ultimately culminating in "a carefully orchestrated bombing attack on NVN [North Vietnam] directed primarily at infiltration and other military targets" to force Hanoi to suspend its support of the Vietcong and negotiate a peace settlement. In order to carry out this plan, Taylor warned that a bombing campaign would require the landing of a Marine force at Da Nang for the defense of the airfield. Taylor also warned about "international political pressure to enter negotiations before NVN is really hurting from the pressure directed against it." While Taylor had urged delaying the bombing until January 1965 to allow the Khanh government to stabilize, other military advisors advocated immediate bombing, but political instability in the South convinced Johnson to delay. Bundy wrote on September 7, "The GVN [Government of South Vietnam] over the next 2-3 months will be too weak for us to take any major deliberate risks of escalation that would involve a major role for, or threat to, South Vietnam." In rejecting a bombing campaign, Johnson did approve a resumption of the DeSoto patrols, "well beyond the 12-mile limit" and reactivation of the South Vietnamese coastal raids.

Bombing continued to be, in the eyes of the military, the ultimate weapon to force North Vietnam to withdraw its support for the attack on the South, even though the Pentagon had strong evidence that such a policy would not succeed. A war game simulation conducted in September 1965 indicated that bombing a primitive, rural society "would not quickly cause cessation of the insurgency in South Vietnam and might have but minimal effect on the (low) living standard" of North Vietnam.

As the U.S. continued to debate a way to force the North to discontinue its support of the war in the South, the political situation in the South continued to crumble and the communists built up their strength. Sophisticated weaponry continued to flow to the North Vietnamese from China and the Soviet Union. Vietcong strength continued to grow, doubling to an estimated 170,000 men. In addition, forces of the regular North Vietnamese army were now steadily entering the South. On November 1, the Vietcong attacked the Bienhoa airbase where American B-57 jet bombers and pilots were stationed to train South Vietnamese pilots. Five Americans were killed and six B-57s were destroyed. Johnson delayed a response until after the election on November 3, and then asked his advisors to recommend a future course of action. Discussions within the administration throughout November produced no consensus. In December, the Vietcong launched coordinated attacks throughout South Vietnam, involving more than one thousand men. Late in the month, seven battalions of South Vietnam’s best troops were cut to pieces in a Vietcong ambush at Binh Gia. Nearly two hundred men were killed, including five American advisors. On Christmas Day, a bomb exploded at the Brinks Hotel in Saigon, killing two American officers and wounding 58 others. In January, Taylor warned Johnson, "We are presently on a losing track. To take no positive action now is to accept defeat in the fairly near future." Taylor believed that the U.S. either needed to bomb the North or commit U.S. combat troops to bolster the crumbling South Vietnamese forces. Taylor argued that ground forces would be ineffective, causing the South Vietnamese to fight even less and that the U.S. could not win "this guerrilla war." General Westmoreland reported that four North Vietnamese divisions had been sighted in the South and that the South Vietnamese Army was losing a battalion a week. In light of these dismal reports from Saigon, on January 27, McGeorge Bundy and McNamara told Johnson that "both of us are now pretty well convinced that our current policy can lead only to disastrous defeat" and outlined two policy alternatives. The first was to increase military pressure on the communists, the second to "deploy all our resources along a track of negotiation, aiming at salvaging what little can be preserved…"

On February 7, 1965, the Vietcong struck at the U.S. airforce base at Pleiku. The mortar attack killed eight U.S. servicemen and wounded a hundred others. Three days later, another attack on a U.S. base at Qui Nhon killed 23 additional Americans. These events gave the bombing advocates the upper hand. Within hours of the Pleiku attack, Johnson had authorized "Operation Flying Dart," as planes launched from the aircraft carrier Ranger attacked a North Vietnamese army camp sixty miles north of the seventeenth parallel. A follow up attack ensued three days later. On February 13, Johnson totally capitulated to the bombing advocates, approving operation Rolling Thunder, originally an eight-week program of "measured and limited air action" against communist targets. Unlike other bombings, Rolling Thunder would not be tied to "a particular outrage in the South." McGeorge Bundy had outlined this program in a memo on February 7. Bundy stressed that this "sustained reprisal policy" should begin at a low level and be increased only gradually and decreased if Vietcong attacks decreased. "The object," Bundy wrote, was "not to win an air war against Hanoi, but rather to influence the course of the struggle in the South…. We want to keep before Hanoi the carrot of our desisting as well as the stick of continued pressure. We also need to conduct the application of force so that there is always a prospect of worse to come." The program began on March 2 with a hundred plane raid on a North Vietnamese ammo dump.

Johnson hoped that sustained bombing would relieve the pressure on the South. He later told Doris Kearns:

The controlled bombing campaign proved to be ineffective. Instead of forcing the North into concessions, the CIA estimated that the bombing "hardened" Hanoi’s resolve. General Westmoreland also maintained that the bombing campaign had been a failure. "It just wasn’t working. Once the North Vietnamese realized what was taking place, they dissipated their targets, and instead, for instance, of having their petroleum concentrated in one place, they moved it in little packages around the country." Soon there was pressure to employ other tactics to prevent a southern collapse.

The beginning of the prolonged bombing campaign created another problem. A sustained effort would require land-based bombers, and the U.S. airforce base at Da Nang was vulnerable to Vietcong attack. On February 22, General Westmoreland asked Johnson for two marine battalions to protect the airbase. This introduction of U.S. ground troops into the equation would represent a dramatic change in the ground rules of the U.S. presence in Vietnam. Ambassador Taylor argued against the introduction of ground troops and warned that "it will be very hard to hold the line" once initial troop deployments began. Taylor wrote that "white-faced" soldiers were ill-suited to the "Asian forests and jungles" and asked how Americans would ever "distinguish between a Vietcong and a friendly Vietnamese farmer." Taylor’s reservations were ignored, and on March 8, 1965, the first U.S. 3,500 combat troops in Vietnam splashed ashore at Da Nang. Their arrival had been decided upon without consultation with the government in Saigon, which was later asked to "invite" them a week prior to their landing. The original mission of the marines was to simply protect the airbase; however, within a month Westmoreland requested that the troops be allowed to patrol the countryside, later saying "it made no sense at all to have them dig in and go strictly on the defensive." On June 13, Westmoreland noted that the Vietcong were destroying ARVN battalions faster than they could be replaced and that, "the only possible U.S. response is the aggressive employment of U.S. regular(s) together with Vietnamese General Reserve Forces…." He asked permission for U.S. troops to be "maneuvered freely, deployed and redeployed if necessary…" On June 27, U.S. troops launched their first "Search and Destroy" mission, seeking out communist forces in the countryside north of Saigon. Sent to defend the airbases, within two months U.S. forces were now actively engaged in combat on the ground.

The American people were not even explicitly notified of the deployment of combat troops until early June. Johnson believed that the war could be brought to an end within a year and rejected McNamara’s recommendation that he seek a more explicit mandate (approval) from Congress. He feared losing public support for his domestic programs if the country realized that it was at war. Polls showed that the vast majority of Americans paid little or no attention to Vietnam. On April 20, Johnson approved the deployment of an additional 40,000 troops to Vietnam in June, doubling the number of U.S. troops. The communists increased their attacks on South Vietnamese ground forces in May and June, destroying Saigon’s best mobile battalions. Now Westmoreland asked for even more troops. He told Johnson that the South Vietnamese forces would crumble without "substantial U.S. combat support on the ground" and requested an additional 180,000 men consisting of 34 U.S. battalions and 10 from South Korea. He bluntly told Johnson that the U.S. was "in for the long pull," maintaining that the additional troops would only be "a stopgap" measure, and predicted that as many as an additional 100,000 troops would be required in 1966. Advisor George Ball warned Johnson of the risks:

Despite this advice, Johnson complied with Westmoreland’s request. After a visit to Saigon in July, McNamara told Johnson that Westmoreland’s estimate of troop needs was actually low and that, by early 1966, perhaps as many as 200,000 additional troops would be needed. On July 28, Johnson told a television audience: "I have asked the commanding general, General Westmoreland, what more he needs to meet this mounting aggression. He has told me. And we will meet his needs. We cannot be defeated by force of arms. We will stand in Vietnam."

As the number of U.S. forces grew, so did casualties. In the last five months of 1965, 800 Americans died in Vietnam compared to 561 that had died in the previous five years. The rapid introduction of huge numbers of American forces also had a devastating effect on Vietnamese society. With the combat troops came an extensive array of support facilities. Over 75% of the servicemen sent to Vietnam were involved not in combat, but in support activities. As one soldier noted: "Where the American soldier goes, so goes the American culture, but perhaps never before to the degree that was the case in Vietnam. The wealth of our country and our technology permitted us to carry this to absurd lengths." A Las Vegas type atmosphere of clubs and restaurants surrounded American bases. As Premier Ky commented, "The American soldiers brought a living condition, compared to Vietnamese conditions, so high, so comfortable, that in many ways it corrupted." American soldiers’ monthly pay was equivalent to several years of income for the average Vietnamese. As a result, makeshift Vietnamese settlements surrounded American bases, offering every imaginable service to the GI’s. The GI only had to walk outside his base camp to get his shoes shined, rifle cleaned, or visit a brothel (house of prostitution). In 1966, one in four GIs contracted a venereal disease. Drugs were also readily available. Marijuana, opium, and 90% pure heroin were available just off base. Servicing the needs of the Americans, either legally or illegally, became the major basis of the South Vietnamese economy. Civilian employees working for the Americans, usually in clerical positions, could earn three to four times as much as a colonel in the South Vietnamese Army. By 1967, a million tons of supplies per month poured into Vietnam, approximately a hundred pounds per American stationed there. American supplies often "disappeared" to reappear on the black market. Corruption also appeared in the form of false orders. Products were ordered and paid for, but never actually delivered. American investigators found that the total amount of cement ordered in one year was enough to pave the entire country! An American officer spoke in 1966 about the level of corruption in the South Vietnamese government which he believed hindered the war effort: "The plain fact of life is there is no future for this poor, bedeviled place as long as we Americans refuse to crack any kind of whip, and look the other way while Vietnamese officials are mesmerized by the fascinating opportunity to build their personal fortunes."

Even after the mass commitment of ground troops, the U.S. had hoped that bombing would provide a way to win the war without significant American casualties. In the North, the U.S. primarily bombed supply depots, harbor facilities, and troop staging areas. In the South, the main effort was to sever the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The goals of the bombing program were to both destroy the morale of the northern people and make it impossible for them to supply the communist forces operating in the South. Neither of these goals was achieved. The effect of the bombing was to unify the North against another invader. After the war, a prominent North Vietnamese physician recalled the spirit and the unity displayed by the people of the North in the face of the Rolling Thunder: "There was an extraordinary fervor then. The Americans thought that the more bombs they dropped, the quicker we would fall to our knees and surrender. But the bombs heightened rather than dampened our spirit."

Ho Chi Minh told a British journalist in December 1965 that, "our people are determined to persevere in the fight, and to undergo sacrifices for ten or twenty years or a longer time, till final victory.…" The CIA indicated in 1966 that hundreds of bridges in the North had been destroyed, but virtually all of them had been quickly rebuilt or bypassed. The bombing campaign was no more effective in halting the stream of North Vietnamese troops down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. American intelligence experts estimated that the annual infiltration rate rose from 35,000 in 1965 to 150,000 in 1967. An academic study (dubbed the Jason Study) conducted during the summer of 1966 concluded that bombing had "no measurable direct effect" on enemy military activities because North Vietnam was a "basically a subsistence agricultural economy" and that the volume of supplies sent south was too small to be stopped by air strikes. Even Secretary of Defense McNamara, who was viewed as the architect of Rolling Thunder, admitted its failure testifying in secret to Congress during the summer of 1967. "Enemy operations in the South cannot, on the basis of any reports I have seen, be stopped by air bombardment—short that is of the virtual annihilation of North Vietnam and its people." By late 1967, the U.S. had imposed $300 million in damage on the North, but at a loss of more than 700 aircraft valued at $900 million. The CIA estimated that it cost the U.S. $9.60 for every $1.00 of damage inflicted on the North.

With the failure of the bombing campaign came an increased emphasis on the ground war. In 1965, General Westmoreland had prepared a tactical timetable for an American victory. He believed that the first wave of combat troops would stop the rapid advance of communist forces and the disintegration of the South Vietnamese Army. By 1966, U.S. forces would be in a position to search out the enemy and destroy them in their rural sanctuaries. Meanwhile the South Vietnamese Army would be used to hold down the villages once they had been swept of communist infiltration. This combination of U.S. firepower and the "pacification" of the villages by South Vietnamese troops would either force the North to withdraw or engage the U.S. in open battle with its battalions in the South. Westmoreland estimated that, should such an open battle ensue, it would require eighteen months to destroy all of the communist base camps in the South. According to his estimate, U.S. troops could begin to withdraw by late 1967.

In 1965, it appeared that Westmoreland’s strategy might succeed. The introduction of U.S. troops did forestall a South Vietnamese defeat that had been predicted by many earlier in the year. The area around Da Nang was secured, and, in November, U.S. forces crushed three North Vietnamese divisions in the first major battle of the war fought in the Ia Drang Valley. At Ia Drang, a battalion of the 7^th Cavalry attacked a huge North Vietnamese base camp that had been used to threaten key southern bases at Pleiku and Qui Nhon. Outnumbered 3,000 to 450, the Americans lost 27 dead and 69 wounded the first day. Military technology formed the basis of the eventual American victory. Supplies, reinforcements, and replacement troops were delivered to the battle in helicopters that also evacuated the wounded. Artillery and bombing strikes were summoned by the ground troops. Four days of bitter fighting took place with the loss of 234 American lives. North Vietnamese losses were estimated at 2,000 killed. The fighting at Ia Drang convinced Westmoreland that battles could be fought in a conventional manner and that U.S. technology and firepower would prove decisive. The huge discrepancy between U.S. casualties and those of the communists led Westmoreland to believe that he could rapidly win a war of attrition.

Westmoreland constructed a system of hilltop artillery fortifications called firebases. Located in remote areas, these firebases were supposed to channel enemy infiltration into well-defined corridors where the U.S. could bring the full force of its military technology against it. Helicopters could bring entire battalions into combat within minutes. Airstrikes could be called up to hit enemy positions. Defoliants like Agent Orange could destroy jungle vegetation that hid guerrillas. Napalm, a form of liquefied petroleum, could be dropped on enemy troop locations (18 million gallons were used in Vietnam). At night, a prop-plane known as "Puff, the Magic Dragon" could drop flares, lighting up an area a mile in radius, and spray the area with weapons firing 6,000 machine gun rounds per minute. Claymore mines were capable of spraying shrapnel 50 yards, killing everything in its path. Electronic sensors, known as "people sniffers," were dropped to detect the movement of men and vehicles.

Conventional battles like Ia Drang proved to be atypical. The U.S. was seldom able to initiate combat on its terms. North Vietnamese units fought large combat operations only once or twice per year. Instead they engaged in hit and run raids, hoping to force the U.S. to exhaust its forces in often fruitless search and destroy operations. During the war the communists initiated 90% of the combat. As U.S. military analyst Brian Jenkins wrote in 1970: "It has been demonstrated statistically that the enemy initiates contact most of the time and avoids it when he desires. He therefore controls his own rate of casualties, negating any strategy based on attrition." They key to the victory at Ia Drang, rapid helicopter support, was eventually diminished as the communists obtained Chinese-made heavy anti-aircraft machine guns. The U.S. eventually lost 4,865 helicopters (at a cost of $250,000 each) to communist ground fire. The effect of bombing and artillery was often offset by the communist strategy of "clinging to the enemy’s belt" where communist forces would get so close to the American forces that U.S. officers were reluctant to call in bombardments out of fear of hitting their own troops.

Much more typical than the fighting at Ia Drang were search and destroy missions where U.S. troops tramped through the countryside in search of communist guerrillas. Here U.S. technology may have even been a hindrance. Captain David Christian, who won seven medals for bravery in infantry action, commented that large infantry units moved through the countryside "like a herd of elephants coming," allowing the guerrillas to evacuate or hide in tunnels. This allowed the Americans to pass without an engagement, and then, when they had passed, the guerrillas simply set up camp again. The enemy was seldom seen but known to be constantly around. Major Joe Anderson said, "During the months that I was a platoon leader in the field, there were only four or five significant contacts in the whole period." An infantryman, Tim O’Brien, described the frustration:

U.S. soldiers were reduced to tromping through the countryside where the elements were almost worse than combat. In many of areas of the South the ground was swampy and temperatures usually exceeded ninety degrees. Drenched in sweat and battling mosquitoes, the soldiers moved from village to village. A soldier, William Ehrhart, described the conditions: "You dug a hole right beside where you were going to sleep, and put up a one-man poncho tent. Unless something happened, you’d wake up in the morning with your mouth tasting rotten and your clothes still wet. You’d eat, maybe for a half hour or forty-five minutes, and then, you’d be off again, not thinking very much." The process of searching villages that were suspected of harboring guerrillas often served to further alienate the populace. Earhart went on to describe a typical village search:

It was virtually impossible to distinguish the Vietcong from innocent South Vietnamese. As a former marine captain recalled, "You never knew who was the enemy and who was the friend. They all looked alike. They all dressed alike. They were all Vietnamese." Seemingly routine searches could turn deadly as two marine companies experienced early in 1967. A marine private recalled:

The next day when the marines entered the village, there was no sign of the guerrillas, only peasants, mostly women and old men, who vehemently denied any connection with the Vietcong. Most frustrating to the U.S. soldiers was their inability to maintain control of territory that they had expended casualties to obtain. Areas were repeatedly cleared of Vietcong only for the guerrillas to return when the U.S. troops left. The major effect of the village war was to create an enormous number of displaced refugees. By 1968, a third of the rural population had been dislocated. One major paradox of the war was that to win, South Vietnam and its American allies had to win the loyalty of the rural population; however, in the effort to rid the countryside of guerrillas, villages were either antagonized or destroyed.

The presence of an unseen enemy led to a feeling that death could occur at anytime. Over half the American casualties in Vietnam were due to small arms fire or booby traps, compared to only a third of the casualties in World War II and Korea. Booby traps were responsible for 10,000 amputees (out of the total 300,000 wounded in the war) which was more than in World War I and Korea combined. Only part of the reason for the amputations was the presence of booby traps. The other reason was the high percentage of wounded who were saved by quick evacuation helicopters and modern medical facilities. In World War II it had taken between six to twelve hours to receive treatment in a field hospital. In Vietnam this was reduced to an average of 2.8 hours. As a result, 82% of the seriously injured in Vietnam were saved, in comparison to only 71% in World War II and 74% in Korea. With the enormous amount of support personnel, only a small percentage of Americans were engaged in search and destroy missions. Support personnel were not, however immune to danger. Guerrilla attacks could occur almost anywhere. A postwar survey indicated that 76% of U.S. servicemen were exposed to mortar or rocket attack, and 56% had seen Americans killed or wounded. Despite the difficulties in engaging the enemy, U.S. morale remained very high prior to 1968. Most soldiers believed that the security of the U.S. was at stake, and they were holding the line against communism.

In a war without static front lines, the U.S. strategy was based upon inflicting enormous casualties on the enemy. The goal was to reach the "cross-over point" where the rate of communist casualties exceeded their ability to field new troops. As early as 1962, an American general had commented that the goal in Vietnam was to "kill VC, pure and simple." When a reporter commented that the French had failed to win a war of attrition in the previous decade, the general responded that the French "didn’t kill enough VC." Because of this emphasis on inflicting casualties, enormous care was taken to track communist losses. Troops were under pressure to present a large "body count" from their operations. Officer careers and promotions depended upon producing an acceptable body count. Even for common soldiers, the number of kills brought rewards. Corporal Matt Martin recalled: "It was always better if you had a good kill count ‘cause everything would come your way. You’d get better supplies; steaks, booze once in a while. Everything would come your way." Body counts were even publicized to the American people as evidence of progress in Vietnam. Network news broadcasts reported American, South Vietnamese, and communist casualties every Thursday evening. The emphasis on body counts produced a tendency to exaggerate. A 1974 study of generals who served in Vietnam indicated that 61% believed that body counts were "often inflated." In some units, weapons were counted as kills. Soldier Robert Mall recalled that in his unit a weapon captured was "worth five bodies." "In other words, if you shoot a guy who’s got a gun and you get that gun, you’ve shot six people." Military analyst Brian Jenkins believed that "inflated body counts" were a major factor in convincing the U.S. that "we were doing better than we were" and that the entire attrition strategy was flawed in the belief that enormous casualties would have a "deterrent effect on the enemy—and that simply was not the case."

Efforts to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail were also ineffective. Throughout the war, the U.S. lost 500 planes and dropped a greater tonnage of bombs on the trail than had been used in the entirety of World War II. B-52s could drop a hundred 750-pound bombs within thirty seconds, cutting a path through the forest a mile long and a quarter-mile wide. The trail stretched 3,500 miles from North Vietnam, through neutral Laos and Cambodia, before emerging in a variety of locations in South Vietnam. In reality, however, the trail was almost four times larger as many areas had numerous alternative routes. As American Special Forces officer, Captain Dave Christian explained: "Well it wasn’t one trail. There were thousands of trails, thousands of rest spots along the way where the enemy troops could seek refuge and build up…" When one part of the trail was closed by bombing, traffic was quickly diverted to another route. In the early 1960s, the trail was simply a series of primitive paths and it took six months to journey from the 17^th Parallel to as far south as the Mekong Delta near Saigon. By the late sixties, the trail had grown into an intricate grid system where each area had permanent maintenance crews ready to wipe out any trace of movement and repair any bomb damage. Journeys that had taken six months years before could now be traversed in six weeks. One U.S. effort to cut the trail was a secret bombing campaign in Laos. Concealed from the American people (and not protested by North Vietnam because it would have forced an admission that they too had violated Laotian neutrality), the U.S. Strategic Air Force and the CIA-sponsored Royal Lao Airforce flew as many as 300 sorties per day between 1964-1968. Westmoreland even advocated an invasion of Laos to cut the trail in 1966 but President Johnson denied his request. The U.S. concentrated instead on high technology efforts to detect movement along the trail. Sophisticated sensors were deployed (one type was even disguised as a dog turd), providing specific targets for bombing. The U.S. was able to destroy a great deal of the supplies sent down the trail. In 1970, the Air Force estimated that it had destroyed 68,000 of the 89,000 tons of material. The major problem was that the amount of supplies required to sustain the Vietcong forces in the South was very small. Just twenty trucks could deliver the sixty tons of supplies per day required to sustain the guerrilla forces. After 1968 the focus of the war shifted to the cities and more conventional warfare; however, the trail continued to grow. Despite increased bombing, the U.S. was never able to deny the communist forces enough supplies to hinder their assault on the South.

After the initial wave of combat troops arrived in 1965, an increasingly larger combat role was played by draftees. By late 1966, draft calls were as high as 40,000 per month. Draftees only accounted for 39% of all American troops in Vietnam, but they were much more likely to be involved in ground combat. Draftees accounted for 88% of the combat riflemen. As a result of this greater exposure to ground combat, draftee casualties were higher as well. Draftees were 70% more likely to be wounded and accounted for 55% of the total deaths in the war. Because most of the draftees were 18 or 19, 86% of the U.S. forces in Vietnam was under the age of 21. This was a major contrast to World War II where 60% of the troops had been older than 24. President Johnson attempted to avoid the impression that the U.S. was engaged in a major war. The Army Reserves were not mobilized and sent to Vietnam. Reserves were older and usually held full-time jobs and families. The impact of their call-up would have been greater than that of draftees. Combat terms in Vietnam for draftees were limited to only twelve months. In order to give as many officers combat experience as possible, the majority of the officers were rotated every six months. This had a tremendous impact on the war. As one officer commented: "The U.S. Army was like a recording tape that is erased every twelve months. It condemns us to learn the same lessons over and over." Another officer observed, "the U.S. had not been in Vietnam for twenty years, it has been here one year twenty times." Inexperienced troops took the majority of casualties, and it was also only natural for troops nearing the end of their term to avoid combat.

Another major difference between earlier wars was that, after 1966, few units were sent in mass to Vietnam. Soldiers were usually sent as individual replacements rather than as entire squads or platoons. As a result, the camaraderie (spirit of fellowship) instilled by group training was lost. As one soldier commented about being assigned to an existing company: "The old clichés about camaraderie under fire did not seem to apply…. I was crushed by the combination of slipping one step closer to combat, and finding no one to pat me on the back and assure me that I would survive. Instead, I found that even my fellow soldiers had no real interest in my welfare." Unlike previous wars, there was little effort to build support for the war at home. Soldiers did not depart or return to cheering crowds. Despite the increasing cost of the war, it had little impact on the domestic economy. By 1967, the cost of the war was up to $21 billion per year; however, this only accounted for 3% of the country’s gross national product, compared to 48% for World War II at its peak. As a result, civilian life was not disrupted as it had been in previous wars. Young men left for Vietnam and returned in relative obscurity, and despite coverage in the media, few Americans really felt a daily presence of the war.

Through 1967, the overwhelming majority of the American people opposed any American withdrawal from Vietnam, and for every American who favored withdrawal, there were an equal number who believed that military efforts should be increased. In 1965, when the Harris poll asked Americans to choose between three courses of action—a negotiated withdrawal from South Vietnam, holding the line to keep the communists from taking over the South, or extending the war to the North at the risk of a Chinese intervention, 49% favored holding the line, 38% preferred negotiations, and 13% advocated an invasion of the North. Writing in the New York Times Magazine in 1966, military correspondent Hanson Baldwin voiced the beliefs of many in regard to the price of withdrawal from Vietnam when he said that withdrawal "would result in a political, psychological, and military catastrophe," declaring to the world that the U.S. had "decided to abdicate as a great power." When in 1967, the Harris poll asked if the U.S. should halt the bombing of the North in order to seek peace negotiations, only 15% said "yes," and 63% said "no." As casualties mounted in 1966 and 1967, there was, however, a lessening of support for Johnson’s handling of the war. Elected by a record landslide in 1964, Johnson’s approval rating dropped below 50% in early 1967. Approval for his handling of the war plunged from over 60% at the beginning of 1966 to 45% by the end of 1967. Although disenchantment with the handling of the war grew, there was no clear consensus as to whether the U.S. should be more aggressive or seek an opportunity to withdraw. As one housewife put it, "I want to get out, but I don’t want to give up."

Opposition to the war in Congress was virtually non-existent at the beginning. Only two senators had voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Even though the resolution was interpreted by the president as a virtual blank check for executive action, Congress was still constitutionally required to appropriate money for the war. Not a single request was denied President Johnson. When Senator Wayne Morse (one of the two Senators who had voted against the resolution) attempted to repeal them in February of 1966, the proposal garnered only five votes. Senator J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held televised hearings on the war in early 1966. Fulbright, who had supported the original Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, had begun to have grave doubts about the war late in 1965 and was one of the five Democrats to vote for the repeal of the resolution in 1966. When General Taylor testified before the committee that the U.S. had a "vital stake" in Vietnam, and that it was incumbent upon the U.S. to prove that communist led "wars of national liberation" were "doomed to failure," Fulbright responded by asking if the American Revolution was not also a "war of national liberation." Later, in May 1966, Fulbright spoke at length about what he saw as the futility of America’s efforts in Vietnam:

Johnson did not take kindly to the criticism by his old friend. He began to refer to him in private as "Senator Halfbright." At a joint public appearance with Fulbright, before a military audience, Johnson attempted to shame him. "He used the phrase ‘Nervous Nellies’ and the ‘Sunshine Patriots’ and no one stands up to support the President, and everyone hoots and hollers. You were made to look like a traitor," Fulbright later recalled. Despite the first public doubts expressed in the Senate hearings, when Johnson asked Congress a month later to approve an emergency appropriation of $4.8 billion for the war, Fulbright voted for it and the bill passed with only two negative votes. While Fulbright’s Foreign Relations Committee continued to periodically criticize the war, the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Senator John Stennis of Mississippi, criticized the president for not being aggressive enough. When the Pentagon complained of restraints placed upon the military by the administration, Stennis held hearings to investigate attempts by "unskilled amateurs" to shackle the "professional military experts." The only calls for an end to the bombing and an eventual withdrawal came from a small minority within Johnson’s own party. Most Republican leaders either argued for stronger military measures or shared the opinion of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who said in 1966, "We ought to support the President. He is the man who has all the information and knowledge of what we are up against."

Outside of Congress there was little public protest against the war. The National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam was formed in 1965 and organized 25,000 people to picket the White House in April. Taking its strategy from the Civil Rights Movement, the Committee urged non-violent opposition to the war. In November 1965, a young Quaker from Baltimore, Norman Morrison, doused himself with gasoline and burned himself alive in front of the Pentagon, and another young American followed by committing self-immolation at the United Nations later in the month. Protesters were usually viewed as disloyal at best, or communist-inspired at worst:

But even when the anti-war movement was in its infancy, Johnson feared the loss of public support. "The weakest chink in our armor is American public opinion," the president warned his staff. "Our people won’t stand firm in the face of heavy losses, and they can bring down the government." Concerned about the peace movement, Johnson also feared criticism by congressional leaders such as Stennis and prominent Republicans such as Richard Nixon that he was being too soft even more.

Johnson constantly sought a way to engage the North Vietnamese in negotiations that would result in a guarantee of South Vietnam’s security. After McNamara warned him that, regardless of U.S. military action, victory could not be certain and that "ultimately we must find alternative solutions," Johnson ordered at 37-day halt in the bombing beginning on Christmas morning 1965 in hopes of stimulating peace talks. This peace initiative eventually failed, mainly due to the North’s insistence that the U.S. pledge never to resume the bombing and the escalation of the ground war by U.S. commanders who believed that the war could be won by military means. Both sides were hesitant to negotiate until they could do so from a clear position of military superiority. In 1965, both were confident that they would eventually emerge victorious. When the bombing raids resumed in January 1966, Senator Robert F. Kennedy for the first time openly criticized the administration’s Vietnam policy by saying that the resumption of the bombing may become the first in a series of steps on a "road that leads to catastrophe for all mankind." Although Kennedy’s criticism of the war did not become frequent for another year, it frightened Johnson and exacerbated (made worse) his hate of the Kennedys. Prior to the resumption of the bombing, fifteen Democratic Senators, led by Vance Hartke of Indiana, had written to Johnson urging him to extend the halt and to explore a negotiated settlement. The issue of the bombing continued to frustrate efforts to start peace talks. The North refused to be "bombed to the conference table" and insisted that talks could only take place after the U.S. "unilaterally" halted the bombing. Johnson and his military commanders feared that a halt in the bombing would allow the communists to continue to build up their forces as they stalled at the conference table.

Despite increasing evidence that the bombing campaign was ineffective, the military still considered it as "America’s trump card" that was not to be bargained away for anything less than a communist pledge to halt their attacks in the South. As a result, the bombing campaign was intensified as most restrictions placed against attacks on Hanoi and Haiphong, as well as on the Chinese border, were lifted in August 1967. Administration critics of the bombing were brushed aside and eventually resigned. MacGeorge Bundy, George Ball, and Press Secretary Bill Moyers had all urged Johnson to halt the bombing but were rebuffed and left the administration by 1967. Johnson’s policies were guided by Secretary of State Rusk and National Security Advisor Walt Rostow, both of whom remained confident of military success. In contrast, as time went on, Secretary of Defense McNamara became convinced that the bombing and escalation of the ground war had been a mistake. In January 1966, General Victor Krulak had told the secretary that it would cost 175,000 American lives to reduce communist strength by only 20%, given the current casualty ratio of 2.5 communists for every American or South Vietnamese casualty. Continuing events over the next year and a half produced ever increasing doubt. In October 1967, McNamara told Johnson in a meeting of the White House’s top foreign policy advisors that the current strategy in Vietnam was "dangerous, costly, and unsatisfactory." Earlier he had told Congress that an increase in bombing would be ineffective: "We have no reason to believe that it will break the will of the North Vietnamese people or sway the purpose of their leaders … or provide any confidence that they can be bombed to the negotiating table." Johnson ignored McNamara’s advice and even claimed that he had been brainwashed by Robert Kennedy against the war. In November, Johnson announced that McNamara was leaving his position in the administration to become head of the World Bank. Following the announcement of McNamara’s departure, Johnson publicly rejected a halt in the bombing, saying that it would "be read in both Hanoi and the United States as a sign of weakening will."

By the end of 1967, the U.S. had almost half a million troops in Vietnam and had suffered over 15,000 combat deaths since the introduction of ground troops in 1965. Despite the apparent deadlock, public statements from the administration remained optimistic. In July 1967, Westmoreland had said, "The war is not a stalemate. We are winning it slowly but steadily. North Vietnam is paying a tremendous price with nothing to show for it in return." In November he had repeated this optimism, "I have never been more encouraged in my four years in Vietnam." Johnson’s most trusted advisor on Vietnam, Walt Rostow, proclaimed in December, "I see the light at the end of the tunnel." Most Americans, although growing increasingly weary of the war, had little cause to doubt this optimism. The war remained far-off, and news emanating from Vietnam was primarily controlled by the military and for the most part optimistic. Public opinion polls still showed that over 60% of the American public opposed any withdrawal from Vietnam (Although a May 1967 Gallup poll had found that 48% of the respondents could not provide an answer as to why the U.S. was fighting in Vietnam). Within months events would dramatically alter this situation, trigger the most violent opposition to the government since the Civil War, and end the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.