Bear Taylor 
RIPPLE SALVO… #767… WALTER LaFEBER’s THE DEADLY BET: LBJ, VIETNAM AND THE 1968 ELECTIONS: Borrowing and extracting liberally from LaFeber’s superb little book, Humble Host brings a sobering observation of Alexis de Tocqueville to the RTR commemoration of the 1,337-day air war coded Rolling Thunder. “Those who knew their history, should not have been surprised at the possible contradiction between fighting wars and maintaining democracy. One hundred and thirty years earlier (than the mid-1960s) Alexis de Tocqueville , perhaps the most observant foreign visitor ever to analyze the United States, had issued a warning to future generations of Americans in his classic two-volume work Democracy in America. A ‘protracted war,’ the French aristocrat wrote, would endanger American democracy not because a victorious general would take over in the manner of Sulla and Caesar’ but because war centralizes power. Tocqueville implied that Americans would allow such slow centralization (and loss of liberty) in return for the state giving them the comfort of security from outside threats. War ‘is the surest and the shortest means,’ he summarized, for those who want to destroy democratic liberties.”… see Ripple Salvo below… but first…
Good Morning: Day SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY-SEVEN remembering the events and participants of Operation Rolling Thunder fought fifty years ago by Yankee Air Pirates and Red River Rats…
HEAD LINES from the OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER on THURSDAY, 11 APRIL 1968… FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY…
Page 1: “U.S. REJECTS WARSAW AS PEACE TALKS SITE”… “Despite a official Hanoi proposal that peace talk preliminaries be held in Warsaw, Poland, a White House spokesman said today this government is pressing for ‘an appropriate site in neutral territory… ‘The United States government has proposed a number of neutral countries as possible sites for contacts, and we have not yet had any response to this proposal.’ “…
Page 1: “LONG FIGHT FOR OPEN HOUSING ENDS–AS HOUSE PASSES CIVIL RIGHTS BILL–LBJ Hails Action On Plan”… “Congressional passage of landmark open-housing legislation has won applause from civil rights leaders along with renewed demands for massive federal attacks on shabby housing and unemployment in riot-prone slums. A 250 to 171 House vote Wednesday sent to the White house a civil rights bill to outlaw discrimination in the sale or rental of 86 per cent of the Nation’s housing by 1970.”… Page 1: “KANSAS CITY VIOLENCE KILLS 5–REST OF NATION REMAINS CALM” … “Five Negroes died during a second might of racial violence in Kansas City but elsewhere there were only scattered and sporadic incidents as the nation’s troubled cities edged back toward normalcy.”… Page 2: “46 BODIES FOUND, 13 MISSING IN NEW ZEALAND FERRY MISHAP”… “Searcher’s in patrol boats an mountaineers scouring Wellington harbor’s rocky shoreline have found 46 bodies from the ferry Wahine which sank Wednesday in a wild storm…”… Page 3: “MARCH TO WASHINGTON LURES KING’s WIDOW”… “The Southern Christian Leadership Conference will conduct a ‘poor people’s’ march on Washington next month despite the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. organizer to the crusade.”… Page 4: “NEGRO MAYOR KEEPS IT COOL–GUIDES CLEVELAND PEACEFULLY”… “Since the night Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes has gone into the city’s Negro areas with the message: Cool It! Stokes’ message has paid off. There has been no racial disturbances in this city, which has about 280,000 Negroes.”… Page 5: “SENATE REJECTS HOUSE SUPPLEMENTAL MONEY BILL–WANTS MORE MONEY FOR SUMMER JOBS”… “…for needy youths and pre-school aid for slum children.”…
Page 1: THE WAR… COMBAT DEATHS TAKE SHARP DROP”… “The number of American troops killed in combat in Vietnam last week was the lowest in two and a half months …U.S. headquarters said 279 U.S. troops were killed in combat during the week that ended last Saturday. …the drop reflected a lull in the fighting that has been developing for the past month. However, the number of U.S. wounded last week totaled 3,190, only 696 less than the week before, and the South Vietnamese command said its dead increased from 393 the week before to 407 last week. enemy casualties also were considerable… The Americans reported 2,251 enemy killed last week.”… DURING THE KHE SANH SIEGE… In a special casualty report the U.S. Command said only 93 American troops were killed during the 76-day siege fo Khe Sanh and 400 wounded troops were evacuated from the Marine combat base just below the demilitarized zone. …The enemy hot the base with a total of 9,891 rounds of artillery, rocket and mortars, while American forces responded with 104,741 rounds and U.S. planes dropped about 103,500 tons of bombs in the area before the siege was lifted last week. Meanwhile the lull in the ground war continued with no significant contact…Operation Complete Victory is now in its fourth day.”…
11 APRIL 1968… THE PRESIDENT’S DAILY BRIEF… SOUTH VIETNAM: There still is a good deal of apprehension about US-North Vietnamese talks. Prominent men both in and out of government are expressing concern that the US will not adequately protect Saigon’s interests…On the military front, Communist forces are generally staying clear of large-scale actions… SOVIET UNION…The Central Committee wound up its two-day session yesterday with a statement reflecting Moscow’s growing concern that events in Eastern Europe will encourage domestic dissent. The statement blames the west for undermining socialist society and disrupting Communist unity….Luna 14 launched Sunday apparently did go into orbit around the moon yesterday. Its principal mission probably is to send back photographs of prospective landing sites for a manned lunar program….
11 APRIL 1968… OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER … No AP or UPI coverage of Rolling Thunder… “Vietnam: Air Losses” (Chris Hobson) There were two fixed wing aircraft lost in Southeast Asia on 11 April 1968…
(1) COLONEL I.T. FREY, USMC, and MAJOR D.F. NEWON, USMC, were flying a TA-4F of the H&MS-11 and MAG-11 ot of Danang on a FAC flight seven miles south of Danang and on their second attack on a Vietcong village when hit by small arms fire. They were forced to eject and were rescued by a Marine helicopter to fly and FAC again…
(2) COMMANDER FREDERICK H. WHITTEMORE, was flying an A-4F of the VA-95 Green Lizards embarked in USS Bon Homme Richard on a ferry flight from Cubi Point, P.I. to recover aboard Bonnie Dick but failed to arrive. Searches of a vast area of the South China Sea for several days failed to yield a clue to the disappearance of COMMANDER WHITTEMORE fifty years ago today… He rests where he fell and is remembered with highest respect and admiration on the anniversary of his death…
From the compilation “34 TFS/ F-105 History” by Howie Plunkett: 11-Apr–68: “Simmer flight from the 34 TFS hit a Sky Spot target in Route Pack I. the line-up was: #1 Major Sam Armstrong; #2 Unidentified; #3 Major Melvin Irvin; and, #4 LCOL Nevin Christensen…This was Major Armstrong’s 96th mission.” From General Armstrong’s 100-combat mission log: “We were originally scheduled to work with a FAC in South Vietnam. The weather there was too bad for a visual delivery. They were going to set us up for a Sky Spot in the same area. Fortunately for us, the Sky Spot facility was pretty well stacked up with flights waiting for a target and control, so I got Hillsboro to set us up with another agency for a Sky Spot drop just over the DMZ and got a ‘counter’ the only way possible….
RIPPLE SALVO… #767… A FEW WORDS FROM THE DEADLY BET: LBJ, VIETNAM, AND THE 1968 ELECTION by Walter LaFeber… on the eve of President Trump’s decision to authorize a retaliatory strike on Syria for continued use of chemical weapons of mass destruction… I quote…
LaFEBER…. “Looking back more than three decades later, a witness to the 19670s wrote that 1968 ‘was a year of fearful portents and strange exhilaration. Everything–on every scale, from the global to the personal–seemed to be coming unmoored. The weep of events was like a hurricane.’ A hurricane indeed struck the United States, as well as many other countries, in 1968. Resembling other such storms, this hurricane had causes that can be analyzed and continue to be instructive in the twenty-first century: during the 1960s U.S. Presidents made a life-or-death bet that America could fight a long war against a determined foe, and at the same time, maintain order and protect constitutional rights in their own society. If the presidents were wrong, their own society could be torn apart, and two hundred years of U.S. democracy endangered, by the war they believed they had to fight. The result was a hurricane that struck American society with greater fury than any destructive force since the Civil War.”….
LaFEBER… “The top-secret U.S. policy document of 1950, NSC-68 (National Security Council paper no. 58) set out principles Washington officials followed in waging the Cold War over the next forty years. A pivotal section of NSC-68 discussed why the document’s authors (Truman’s top advisors) believed the American people would agree to sacrifice at home over a long period of time in order to fight the enemy abroad: NSC-68…
“The vast majority of Americans are confident that the systems of values which animated our society–the principles of freedom, tolerance, the importance of the individual and the supremacy of reason over will–are valid and more vital that the ideology which is the fuel of Soviet dogmatism. Translated into terms relevant to the lives of other peoples, our system of values can become perhaps a powerful appeal to millions who now seek or find in authoritarianism a refuge from anxieties, bafflement, and insecurity.”…. “Essentially, our democracy also possesses a unique degree of unity. Our society is fundamentally more cohesive than the Soviet system….This means that expressions of national consensus in our society are soundly and solidly based.”
LaFEBER… “Johnson believed this American ‘consensus’ was ‘solidly based.’ He had closely watched Roosevelt keep the nation together through World War II, witnessed firsthand Truman’s success in creating an anticommunist consensus with the Truman Doctrine, and as Senate leader personally supported Eisenhower, a Republican, in nearly every foreign policy initiative of the 1950s. Once in the White House, LBJ believed his intimate knowledge of Washington politics and his vigorous use of the ‘Johnson treatment,’especially on reluctant members of Congress, he could keep the anticommunist consensus–and American society–pieced together as he escalated the war in Vietnam”… “Committing a democracy to war is a highly risky business, especially if the bloodshed lasts over a long period of time and results in boatloads of treasure going out and the body bags of dead soldiers coming back. Committing a democracy to both war and, as Johnson demanded, deep reforms at home in order to keep minorities, the poor and young, and the elderly–that combination was especially risky, perhaps politically explosive.”…
LaFEBER… “American political leaders, even conservatives, argued that the United States was enduring not merely a war but a profound crisis that marked the mid-1960s as a turning point in history–a point equal in importance to 1776 an 1861.”…
LaFEBER… “Despite de Tocqueville’s warning, Johnson had made his bet. By late 1967, American protesters and potential voters alike were proving Tocqueville right, Johnson wrong. The president decided to throw the dice again. He ordered his commander in Vietnam, General william Westmoreland, to return home so he could tell the nation, and especially such political dissenters as Fulbright, that the war was actually being won. This action created such a full-blown crisis that, for only the second time in nearly two hundred years of American history, a sitting President was forced to conclude he could not successfully run for reelection.”… End quotes…
Humble Host wishes the cadre of troops mustered in the White House war room today and pondering the escalation of military operations in Syria–another quagmire–had time to absorb the wisdom of LaFeber’s brilliant little book before they make the next deadly bet… (abebooks.com has about 50 copies of
The Deadly Bet on their shelves for $5 or less…)
RTR Quote for 11 April: AMBASSADOR to the United States from Britain SIR PATRICK DEAN in a letter to the Home Office amid the April riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr : “The effect of the riots has been to bring home forcefully to the American people the state of insecurity which they face at home as well as abroad.”…
Lest we forget… Bear
