THE WILL POWER TO WIN
THE WILL POWER TO WIN
by William H. Benson
August 28, 2003
The Sixties were years marked by two massive struggles: first, the Black Americans demanded equality and an end to discrimination and second, whether to fight or give up in Vietnam. The outcomes of both hovered around the question of who had the superior willpower.
Young Americans today often fail to understand the widespread discrimination and racism that characterized American society up and into the Sixties. Beginning in 1955 when Rosa Parks sat down at the front of the bus, the blacks demanded a chance to get out of the ghetto and to find better jobs, homes, and educations. Too often black children in the ghetto had picked up the message that they were neither able nor expected to get anywhere.
Black leadership gathered around Martin Luther King, who called for a year-long boycott of Montgomery, Alabama’s bus system until a federal court ordered desegregation. He then led a march to Washington D.C. that included 250,000 people, and on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial he spoke for sixteen minutes on August 28, 1963, forty years ago today.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by their character. I have a dream.” His words are now chiseled into the Lincoln Memorial’s steps.
King had argued for peaceful nonviolent resistance, using the boycott and the march, but after his assasination the pent-up frustration that discrimation had produced boiled over into city-wide destructive riots that tore at the very fabric of American society.
However, by then the black leadership’s will to win had produced results. President Johnson stood before Congress in 1963 and said, “We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for a hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.” The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Twenty-fourth Amendment that eliminated the poll tax.
As for the war in Vietnam, as early as July 14, 1964 the Joint Chiefs reported to President Johnson that, “There seems to be no reason we cannot win if such is our will–and if that will is manifested in strategy and tactical operations.” The air force told him that the offensive would produce results if it was heavy, swift, repeated endlessly without pause nor restraint.
But when General Earl Wheeler told Johnson that it would take 700,000 to a million men and seven years, Johnson was unwilling to pay this bill. Instead, he chose the cheap way with hesitant, slow, and restricted bombing that allowed the North Vietnamese time to build shelters and adjust.
And the North Vietnamese leaders never wavered in their determination to control the entire country at any cost; they were never influenced by the number of the casualties they received or gave. The will to win was all on their side.
The media turned against the war first, and so the coverage of the war became biased. The media was misled by others, and in turn it misled its readers and viewers. American successes became reverses when the facts were often otherwise. Paul Johnson, the historian, wrote, “Once the TV presentation of the war became daily and intense, it worked on the whole against American interests.”
In the face of media criticism, Johnson’s once strong spirit in Vietnam faltered, and he announced he would not run again for President in 1968. His will to win had vanished.
Then, on August 28, 1968 Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daly called in the police to break up an anti-war demonstration during the Democratic National Convention. The cameras zoomed in, and finally public opinion against the war soared to record levels.
To fight and defeat an enemy requires an overpowering will to win. Lincoln had it, and so did Grant and Sherman, as did Churchill and FDR and Truman.