Indifferent to Consequences

Abstract

In March 1965, Lyndon Johnson agonized over a request for Marine battalions to defend US missile and aircraft sites in Vietnam. In a March 6 telephone call with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, captured on the White House recording system, Johnson worried that the Marines would end up “fighting with the Vietcong and really starting a land war.” He summed up the discussion with what must be one of the most tragic remarks ever uttered by an American president: “My answer is yes,” he told McNamara. “But my judgment is no.”1