Those Who Have Borne the Battle by James Wright

Author:James Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2012-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Unlike President Truman in 1950, President Lyndon Johnson refused at the outset to ask for any new taxes to pay for the war in Vietnam. He was protective of his Great Society domestic program and did not want it to become caught in budget tensions—he insisted that the United States could have “Guns and Butter” without any sacrifice. In his January 1966 State of the Union speech, he argued that he would not take away any support from “the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.”39 Johnson argued that the war would not be a major expense—and the administration underestimated the cost of engagement.

Following some major Democratic defeats in the 1966 off-year elections and projections that the budget deficit due to Vietnam would be much greater than expected, Johnson did propose a 6 percent surtax on individual and corporate taxes. Even some of his conservative opponents were quoted in the Wall Street Journal: “I just don’t see how we can be hawks on the war and then vote against taxes to pay for it.”40 But Johnson balked at calling it a “war tax” and continued to insist that he would not cut domestic spending. After he announced in the spring of 1968 that he was not a candidate for reelection, he did make some domestic cuts in order to get a 10 percent surtax from Congress.

Neil Sheehan of the New York Times returned to the States in the fall of 1966 after completing his second posting in Vietnam. He wrote an article describing his growing frustration with the nature of the war there. He was concerned about the Vietnamese casualties in a war marked by heavy firepower, about the growing corruption in South Vietnam and the “mandarin” system of government, about the growing cynicism of American troops who found little support among the South Vietnamese Army or on the part of the civilian population.41 These concerns were becoming more widespread.

In 1967, as military activity increased in Vietnam, political discomfort intensified in the United States. In that year some of the media shifted—even supportive Time became more critical of the policies and strategies, and accounts from the field sometimes showed servicemen who were “bitter about their situation in Vietnam, resentful of the brass, and even emotionally scarred by combat.” These, of course, would fit into the images that would shape subsequent popular mythology about Vietnam as a place where unhappy troops were on an unclear mission.42 In 1965 General Westmoreland had wanted to impose some censorship rules on the media, but the Pentagon and the White House had refused to take this step. By and large, the media handled the war responsibly—if sometimes clumsily. They did realize by 1966 or 1967 that they were receiving a lot of double-talk from US authorities, which increased some of the skepticism they were developing about their sources.

The unexpected Tet Offensive in January 1968 provided a shock to the American public. It turned most assumptions upside down.

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