Would Caro address those dark theories? He didn’t shy away from “Landslide Lyndon” in ‘48.

It might have been some payback by Castro. But then again, it might not. It would have been all a big secret to him. He know nothing.

I don’t and never have bought the Castro Did It/Payback theory — Fidel was no dummy, and sending out someone like LHO, with Fair Play for Cuba written all over him, plus his alleged “defection” to the USSR, would have been breathtakingly suicidal. Further, literally on the day of Dallas, Kennedy had sent over an approved 3d pty emissary to meet with Castro to break the ice and signal Kennedy’s willingness for a new relationship. They were literally talking when news of Dallas arrived, at which point Castro, clearly shocked by the news, told the emissary that Now everything is changed … and he was right of course …

Interestingly, LBJ at various times in the last decade of his life offered up a few ideas as to who really was behind Dallas (he did it often enough so as to put him squarely in the Conspiracy Theorist category, ironically for the guy responsible for putting together the comm’n that was tasked with putting together the Lone Nut cover story.

To a top LBJ aide, Marvin Watson (who told it to the #2 at the FBI, DeLoach), Johnson believed (ca 1967) that the CIA probably was behind it.

To Walter Cronkite in 69 (edited out of the original broadcast, on bogus nat’l security grounds …. vy strange) he indicated that he’d discovered we’d (the US) been operating some “damn Murder Inc” against Castro, and Castro struck back.

To Earl Warren, trying to get him to head up the Comm’n, he supposedly said there was enough evidence linking the Soviets with Dallas, and indicated to Warren that unless he wanted to allow other investigations in Congress to proceed and uncover that evidence and force his hand, he’d better sit on that damn comm’n and give the right conclusion which would avert the loss of “maybe 60 million Americans in a war”. Or that’s my recollection of that very peculiar Nov 63 meeting in the Oval, the one from which EW allegedly emerged with tears in his eyes.

My sense of it is, Lyndon knew more about Dallas than he ever let on, though his comments to trusted aide M Watson may have come closest to revealing at least a major part of the real story. His other speculations may have been misdirection …

So, do you think LBJ’s desire to stay/escalate was mainly based on a desire to prove himself tough on communists?

Could be. He was the most personally insecure person to hold in the office in recent times, with the possible exception of Dick Nixon. ANd, like Nixon, he had this thing about proving himself better than Kennedy. He couldn’t get much satisfaction from out-liberalling JFK, though he tried with the CR bills, but he might have gained more relief from out-toughing Kennedy in VN.

We don’t now fully know why the escalation, even as he did so knowing how he was going into a quagmire, nor do we fully know why he was so damn stubborn about further escalation even after he could see that the war effort was cutting deeply into his GS programs and as it was badly splitting the country. Might know more when hard-digging historian Caro publishes his presidential yrs volume, due out hopefully in our lifetimes …

Johnson’s claim that he was being a voice of reason when hawks at the Pentagon wanted to “bomb Vietnam into the stone age” and he was trying to appear moderate? One wonders if there ever was that pressure (outside of a few…)?

LBJ no doubt felt some personal satisfaction in considering himself as having carved out some moderate position — no nukes, no indiscriminate mass bombing of civilians in northern cities.

As to other pressure, there have been a few who’ve posited, darkly, that LBJ was under tremendous pressure from the Pentagon and maybe CIA not to continue with JFK’s withdrawal plans — almost as a personal threat. The implication, from some holding this view anyway, is that if he didn’t go along with their war plans, he would either meet the fate of JFK or some very dark secret of Johnson’s having to do with … (insert your best conspiratorial guess here) would be revealed.

Another view (James K. Galbraith, iirc) is that the threat from the Pentagon had to do with a stark ultimatum from the brass — either give us our war in Nam, or give us that preemptive strike against the Russkies.

Makes me wonder about Johnson’s claim that he was being a voice of reason when hawks at the Pentagon wanted to “bomb Vietnam into the stone age” and he was trying to appear moderate? One wonders if there ever was that pressure (outside of a few…)?

I remember reading somewhere that LBJ had deluded himself into thinking he might just “get away with” Vietnam. Hubris.

on Dallas and how he implied it might have been some payback by Castro

It might have been some payback by Castro. But then again, it might not. It would have been all a big secret to him. He know nothing.

/s

True, Goldwater or whoever JFK would have run against, would have tried to make an issue of it, or the Rs might have tried in 66, but, again, Kennedy had proven his toughness already in the missile crisis — by contrast, LBJ when he became president had not.

One thing that hasn’t been discussed much today is foreign reaction to a U.S. withdrawal in S. Vietnam? Would we have broken committments? How would our allies have seen this?

This is the Halberstam (ca 63-4) argument, somewhat common among some FP conservatives at the time (Rusk et al). But the record shows that our allies the French and the Brits were both against major US military involvement and wanted us to negotiate our way out, as with Laos. Of our allies, iirc only the Aussies sent in troops as per Johnson’s request. Otherwise, our friends elsewhere were more worried about the US repeating the French disaster in Nam than they were about meeting alleged treaty commitments to a tiny insignificant country. There was no more of a clamor among allies for us to go full bore into Nam than there was for us to invade Iraq 40 yrs later.