15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
<youtube>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAq6MrYgLr0</youtube>
[[File:operation-rolling-thunder.jpg|thumbnail|left|400px|Operation Rolling Thunder]]__NOTOC__
====Troop Build Up and Early Dissent====
One of the themes, if not the major theme, throughout 1965 was the build-up of American troops in South Vietnam. At the beginning of the year, there was just over 23,000 American military personnel in South Vietnam. This number grew steadily over the year and until 1968, but with each increase in troops, each strategic decision was often debated in the Johnson Administration. There was a decided tension between civilian leaders, military commanders in Washington , and the military commanders in the country.
As early as January of 1965, the ambassador to South Vietnam, Maxwell Taylor , did not advocate the deployment of US ground troops into the country. Instead, he supported actions to disrupt the supply chain from North Vietnam, commonly referred to as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Taylor believed that if the United States did not stop the aid streaming from the north, South Vietnam would fall to the communists.
Taylor was not the only government official who thought the situation in Vietnam was dire, though they took a different tact. Senator Forrester Church from Montana spoke from the Senate floor, calling on the United States to begin the process of negotiation with North Vietnam and declare the South a neutral country. Several fellow senators and world leaders supported Church’s ideas, though the White House did not.
