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This chapter analyzes how the overall American manpower shortage in Vietnam and the ever-present interservice rivalry between the U.S. Army and Marine Corps affected the Combined Action Program. In June 1965, when Lt. Gen. Lewis Walt arrived in Da Nang as the commander of U.S. Marine forces, he realized that securing and providing for the civilian population should take precedence over large-unit conventional military forays into the unpopulated jungles. However, Walt's strategic approach disagreed with the war of attrition that U.S. Army general William C. Westmoreland implemented as the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) commander from June 1964 to June 1968. Westmoreland enjoyed operational control over all U.S. forces in South Vietnam. Many top-ranking Marine officers such as Lt. Gen. Victor Krulak and Gen. Wallace Greene accused the army of intentionally retarding the growth of the program. However, solely to blame the army and MACV for the sluggish growth of CAPs ignores the overall manpower shortage that afflicted the U.S. military in Vietnam. More than the army's war of attrition, the lack of manpower in the IIIMAF area of operations prevented the program from flourishing at the high level envisioned by the Corps.

The tragedy of Lyndon B. Johnson was that despite his many legislative accomplishments in civil rights, health care, and antipoverty programs, his administration is best known for the quagmire that was the Vietnam War. However, it was in this arena, both as an informal adviser to Johnson and ultimately as secretary of defense, that Clark Clifford distinguished himself. With but one exception, Clifford was the lone voice in the Johnson administration speaking out against the war. In March 1965 the first combat troops were dispatched to Vietnam: two battalions, or about 6,000 men. The troops were sent to protect the air bases from which U.S. forces were unleashing the bombing campaign known as Rolling Thunder. General William C. Westmoreland, commander of the U.S. forces, requested that the president provide him with ground forces with which to pursue the enemy. Clifford was one of the few opponents of escalation who had any access to the president.

Southern soldiers served, died, and won Medals of Honor in numbers that appreciably exceeded Dixie’s share of the nation’s population. This chapter examines their motives for service, their wartime experiences, and their reflections on the war. This examination includes whites, blacks, Chicanos, men, and women. It also highlights the role of General William Westmoreland, the US commanding general from 1964 to 1968; the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore at the battle of Ia Drang; the experience of the Bardstown, Kentucky, National Guard unit, one of the very few units activated during the war; the experience of Lieutenant William Calley and Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, key participants during the My Lai Massacre; and the stories of two marines, Jim Webb and Gustav Hasford, both of whom wrote acclaimed novels based on their Vietnam service.

In the Vietnam War, the U.S. sought to preserve the viability of a noncommunist South Vietnam. America waged a ground campaign in South Vietnam and an air campaign, “Rolling Thunder,” over North Vietnam. While the air campaign ran the risk of inducing China's intervention, U.S. strategy avoided that outcome. However, America was unable to defeat its opponent in the ground war because General William Westmoreland incorrectly believed that a conventional military strategy held greater promise than a counterinsurgency strategy. Vietnam was a mixed strategic outcome for the U.S. In the air, strategic intelligence was shared among President Lyndon Johnson, the National Security Council, and the military resulting in rational, timely, and effective strategic adaptation. On the ground, the U.S. Army nearly monopolized information thereby preventing positive strategic change. This chapter argues that America's moderately truncated information institution generated the strategic outcome of diplomatic success, but military failure in the war.

In this chapter I explore Taylor’s role in the American escalation in Vietnam in 1964-1965, when he served as ambassador in Saigon. Lyndon Johnson put Taylor in charge of all American assets and agencies in Vietnam, including the military effort. Taylor feared the spread of Communism and held that Vietnam was the place to stop the spread of “wars of national liberation.” Taylor was a vocal advocate for air strikes against North Vietnam, yet he opposed deployment of large numbers of US ground forces and wanted to leave the fighting to the South Vietnamese army. By the end of his tenure, however, the United States was committed to an air and land war in Vietnam and Taylor would become one of the war’s most ardent defenders.

This chapter explores the role of leadership in military adaptation, which may be the most important factor of all. Adaptable tactical leaders must rapidly assess the battlefield and identify the need for change, remain willing to abandon accepted procedures when required, and candidly advocate for organizational change when needed. At the theater level, adaptive leaders face more challenges in identifying the need for change. They need to actively seek out ideas from throughout the chain of command, and to lead rapid battlefield change within their formations. The chapter examines the successful tactical adaptability of Captain John Abizaid during the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the failed tactical adaptability of Lieutenant Colonel Robert McDade in 1965 during the Vietnam War. It also examines the successful theater adaptability of Field Marshall William Slim during the Burma campaign of World War II, and the failed theater adaptability of General William Westmoreland in Vietnam War.

The innovative aspects of the intelligence collection and exploitation staff (ICEX) system, or the Phoenix program, included the action capability that the Quang Nam team and Walter Roberts had built into the District Intelligence and Operations Coordination Center when they assigned it a Provincial Reconnaissance Unit. In Robert Komer's view, the proposed structure would generate the integrated, organized attack on the Viet Cong infrastructure which had not been mounted. In addition to better intelligence coordination and more effective use of information, Komer expected ICEX to address two other perennial problems. One was the disorderly administrative and judicial processing of Viet Cong prisoners, with the attendant difficulty of tracking their disposition. Implementing ICEX meant a substantial change in the command arrangement governing military advisers, and Komer needed General William Westmoreland's approval.

This chapter compares and contrasts CAPs with two of the U.S. Army's major counterinsurgency and pacification weapons that most resemble the Combined Action Program: the Green Berets and Mobile Advisory Teams. CAPs proved to be a viable alternative to William Westmoreland's war of attrition, but they did not represent the only American military endeavour in Vietnam dedicated to counterinsurgency. Although all three appear similar on the surface, a detailed breakdown reveals a myriad of differences. Americans in CAPs, Green Berets, and mobile advisory teams all lived in or near a target civilian population, trained the inexperienced local forces, and encountered similar military, cultural, and social obstacles. However, the overall purpose of the units, their training procedures, the military composition and ranks of the American troops involved and the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the villagers whom the Americans worked alongside were all different. The discrepancies among the three help to illustrate the Marine Corps' unmatched commitment to its counterinsurgency program for the duration of America's combat involvement in Vietnam. CAPs constituted the only major organized American force dedicated to living in, not around, the villages.

The Reagan era proved difficult for conservative public-interest foundations, which lost key legal talent to the administration and struggled to maintain the same level of fundraising without a Democratic administration to oppose. Mountain States Legal Foundation nearly collapsed after bringing a lawsuit about the cable television industry that proved unpopular with its board of directors, and Capital Legal Foundation went out of business after bringing a difficult libel action against CBS. But Pacific Legal Foundation won a major, precedent-setting case in the US Supreme Court. Nollan v. California Coastal Commission determined that regulators could not force a homeowner to grant public access to his dry beach in exchange for a building permit. And it showed that the Supreme Court wanted to determine when a government regulation might constitute the “taking” of private property without compensation.

This chapter presents examples to illustrate how the story of Ajax plays out in real-life situations. General Ulysses S. Grant, for instance, can be considered a modern Ajax in his use of words as well as in his military actions. Grant was a fine general despite being a poor student at the US Military Academy. His military doctrine was simple: “Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as soon as you can, and keep moving on.” Grant was also a man of few words who hated making speeches, even as a politician. But, like Ajax, at the end of his life, he produced plenty of words when he most needed them for a best-selling memoir that he wrote in order to save his family from poverty after his death. Another example is the Vietnam War, which called for an Odysseus to fight the insurgency, but was given to an Ajax, General William Westmoreland. In Ibsen's Doll's House the wife Nora, like Ajax, saves the life she thinks most important to her, the life of the man she loves. And, like Ajax, she pulls away when she sees that her contribution is not valued. But unlike Ajax, she chooses to live, to carve out independence through education.