Chapters 21-22 Summary and Analysis

The government bureaucracy was gearing up for a war. They engaged in war games. Everything the U.S. did, Hanoi countered by sending more men down their trails. The more the U.S. did, the more men Hanoi sent from the North in the war games.

The conditions in the South continued to deteriorate and the U.S. kept hoping that something would happen to halt the deterioration. There was nothing that happened and the North kept getting stronger. By Thanksgiving 1964 there were calls for increased escalation, especially by Maxwell Taylor. Taylor made a trip to Vietnam in July and explained the objectives to the staff there. There were four alternatives open to the United States: they could withdraw, negotiate and accommodate, have the South take military action against the North or they could expand the pacification program. They...