Demonstrating Lack of Resolve, Misguided Negotiation Expectations, and Limited Strategic Outlook
From early 1965 through early 1968,
there were six major confrontations between Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara and the Pacific Area Commander (CINCPAC) and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff (JCS). These involved a number of Johnson-McNamara policies and
strategies that CINCPAC Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp and the JCS believed
severely hindered the defeat of Communist aggression in Southeast Asia.
After the war and his retirement, Admiral Sharp even wrote a book titled
Strategies for Defeat: Vietnam in Perspective, first published in 1978.
It was Sharp who characterized Johnson’s Operation Rolling Thunder as
“powder-puff air warfare.” A major issue with Sharp and the JCS was the
Johnson-McNamara policy of highly restricted bombing of strategic
targets in North Vietnam, leaving huge enemy sanctuaries around the most
strategic North Vietnamese military and logistical targets critical to
their invasion of South Vietnam. President Nixon eventually reversed
this costly and absurd policy.
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