The Best and the Brightest: Kennedy-Johnson Administrations (Modern Library)

by David Halberstam

The Taylor cables also outlined the dangers: our strategic reserve was already weak and we would be engaging U.S. prestige. If the first increment failed, it would be difficult to “resist the pressure to reinforce,” and if the ultimate mission were the closing of the border and the cleaning up of the insurgents, “there is no limit to our possible commitment,” unless “we attacked the source in the North.” It might increase tensions “and risk escalation into a major war in Asia.” Yet for all these drawbacks, Taylor reported, nothing would be so reassuring to the government and the people of South Vietnam as the introduction of U.S. troops (a crucial departure, the American assumption here, that the government and the people of South Vietnam were as one, that what Diem wanted was what “the people” wanted; a quick assumption which haunted American policy makers throughout the crisis). It would not have to be a large force, but it must be more than a token. It must be significant. It would help morale because it would show resistance to a Communist takeover.