Mark Moyar

So there is a great amount of deceit.

In fact, Johnson's advisers come to him several times in 1964 and say, you know, we've actually got a pretty bad rap Democrats because we had Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt

uh promised they were going to keep us out of war and then they get us into war and we could be heading down that road this way so we may be fighting a war so you might not want to talk about being the peace guy but he ignores them and keeps going on this so uh it is a you know a rather sorry uh aspect of the conflict and um do you think there's any truth to the idea that actually there were some forces that really did want this war to escalate within the american administration at the time

there are some who see that it's probably going to happen and there's a big debate within between the ones who are in the mcnamara camp who binds these academic theories and they think they can kind of keep this as a limited war and then it's going to continue now the joint chiefs of staff and others in the military say

you know, that doesn't make any sense if we either need to fight this war hard or we need to get out.

And so that undercurrent was running for the next several years.

And for the most part, you know, McNamara is the number one guy.

So he largely prevails.

And so he pushes this idea that we're going to fight a limited conflict rather than going all out or getting out.

So the first American troops come ashore in March of 1965.

And at that point, the situation is continuing to get worse in the South.

And the American that said Johnson is already thinking about doing some bombing, but he thinks that they can bomb the North, but it's going to kind of keep on up.

somewhat modest pace.

They don't know that this big invasion is coming.

So they send these first troops thinking that they're just there to guard American bases.

They're not there to actually get into the fighting.

But what happens then is May of 65, the North Vietnamese, these divisions that have coming from the North, they launch a big offensive.

And by June, it's clear that South Vietnam is probably gonna fall unless the Americans get in.

So in June and July, Lyndon Johnson

decides thinks this over and will ultimately in late july say okay you know what yeah maybe i said we weren't going to send boys but actually we need to send our boys because otherwise vietnam's going to fall and the consequences of that are things that we just don't want to accept it's too too damaging again going back to the domino theory this is going to lead to the fall of other countries in asia because when we look at the american