Days of Reckoning: August 1964-July 1965

Abstract Between late 1964 and the middle of 1965 the U.S. passed the point of no return in Vietnam. The number of U.S. troops in Vietnam rose from fifty thousand to ninety thousand with a promise of another hundred thousand by the end of 1965. Their role changed from advisers to combatants.

In the fall of 1964 President Johnson and his principal advisers on Vietnam policy watched in horror as a succession of unstable governments in Saigon failed to develop popular support and wage the war effectively. The United States took a series of steps designed to bolster the flagging morale of the South Vietnamese authorities, but nothing seemed to work. For both political and military reasons, in early 1965 the United States escalated the air war over North Vietnam.

By June, Johnson had taken a series of decisions that irrevocably transformed the Vietnam conflict into an American war. In July the President presided over a celebrated discussion with his key advisers about whether to increase the number of U.S. ground forces. By the time these discussions took place, Johnson had so deeply committed the United States to the fighting that it seemed far easier to go forward than to diminish American involvement.

Throughout this period of gradually increasing American participation in the fighting, the Johnson administration struggled to limit the U.S. role.