Today’s word of the day is expiation. It is defined as “the act of expiating” or “the means by which atonement or reparation is made” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/expiation). You know how annoying I find circular definitions, but what can we do? We can look up expiating, which is probably the present participle of to expiate, so that is where we’ll start. Expiate means “to atone for; make amends or reparation for” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/expiate).

Expiation entered the language in the “early 15c., expiacioun, from Latin expiationem (nominative expiatio) ‘satisfaction, atonement,’ noun of action from past-participle stem of expiare ‘make amends for, atone for; purge by sacrifice, make good,’ from ex– ‘completely’ (see ex-) + piare ‘propitiate, appease,’ from pius ‘faithful, loyal, devout’” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=expiation). The verb expiate entered the language “c. 1600, from Latin expiatus, past participle of expiare ‘to make amends, atone for’” (ibid.). Given the timing, one wonders if perhaps expiate was actually a backformation from expiation. By the way, for those who might be unfamiliar with the abbreviation, c. before a date is an abbreviation of the Latin circa, meaning “approximately.”

On this date in 1968, two important things happened in the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

First, LBJ authorized a troop surge in Vietnam that would bring the number of American troops to 549,500. At the time of this authorization, I would have been eleven years old, so to me this is more history that I read than something I remember. For some of my readers, I’m guessing that it is all history that you read, if you read it at all. So here’s some background.

The USA supported France in the years after World War II in France’s efforts to hold on to Vietnam as a colony. The Vietnamese people wanted independence, but the French weren’t willing to let them go. The war between the French and the Viet Minh last from 1946 to 1954. The Viet Minh were led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh, both of whom were communists. But Hồ in particular was quite the revolutionary. He cooperated with the OSS (later to be the CIA) to fight the Japanese. He offered sanctuary to David Ben Gurion prior to Israel’s becoming a state, when Ben Gurion was considered by some to be a terrorist.

But Truman was unresponsive to Hồ’s overtures. Initially, the US stance was neutrality. But eventually, after the success of Mao in China, Truman supplied materiel and advisors to the French. Then, when the French gave up, Vietnam divided into North and South, with the communists in control in the North, and a pro-Western government in control in the South. Eisenhower continued to support South Vietnam during his presidency, and Kennedy did likewise. During his not quite three years in office, Kennedy increased the number of military advisors from 900 to 16,000. Then, on November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated, and Johnson became president.

In August of 1964, the USS Maddox was supposedly attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats, leading to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, leading to greater military involvement by the US. Part of that involvement was Operation Rolling Thunder, a relatively continuous aerial bombardment of North Vietnam by the US Air Force. In 1965, Johnson sent 3500 marines to Da Nang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_in_the_Vietnam_War).

In 1965, Johnson announced that the number of troops on the ground would increase by 50,000 immediately and gradually rise to 125,000. He also announced that the number of draftees would increase to 1000 per day. The next year the number would increase to 385,000 (ibid.). In 1966, Johnson said to Senator Eugene McCarthy, “I know we oughtn’t to be there, but I can’t get out,” Johnson maintained. “I just can’t be the architect of surrender” (https://prde.upress.virginia.edu/content/Vietnam). He had a personal stake in not losing.

The war was becoming less and less popular in the USA. The voices against the war were particularly on the Left. McCarthy had already declared that he was running for president in July of 1967, and he was the leader of a dump Johnson movement in the Democratic Party. In the New Hampshire primary, which was held on March 12, 1968, McCarthy was the only name on the ballot. He earned 42% of the vote, while Johnson, a write-in candidate because he had not filed for the primary, got 50% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries).

Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s younger brother, entered the Democrat primary race against Johnson after New Hampshire. A national poll a few days later showed that McCarthy had actually overtaken Johnson. But Johnson was not one to lose a war or a race (.

So on March 31, 1968, after announcing, in a televised address, that the number of troops in Vietnam would be increased to almost 550,000, he announced that he would not be running for re-election. You can’t lose if you don’t run.

Johnson, by withdrawing, was able to maintain enough control of the party machinery to help his Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey, run successfully. And Humphrey did just that, winning the nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a convention that will always be remembered by those of us who were cognizant in 1968 for its riots. Ultimately, of course, Richard M. Nixon won the election.

Just a few months after becoming president, Nixon announced a drawdown of US forces by 120,000 troops. Later than year, under his “Vietnamization of the War” effort, 25,000 more were withdrawn. Eventually, Nixon agreed to the complete withdrawal of American forces in South Vietnam. The Paris Accords had it that North Vietnam would leave the South alone in exchange for a cessation of hostilities. Of course, even before all US personnel were out of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese were entering Saigon. The irony was, of course, that the Leftists, particularly in the media, referred to Vietnam as Nixon’s War. It was, of course, Johnson’s War.

Despite the attempt to make Nixon the villain of Vietnam (he was a villain in other ways, like imposing wage and price controls), Vietnam was mostly Johnson’s mistake, and he knew it. One of the ironies of it is that, when he ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964, his famous Daisy Girl ad made it sound like Goldwater would be the warmonger. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a classic of political hypocrisy.

One of the things that really bothers me about politicians is that they never engage in expiation. They never apologize for the mistakes that they make, and their mistakes often have far greater consequences than most people’s mistakes (except for, perhaps, judges and prosecutors, who destroy and undermine people’s lives without, apparently, a single guilty pang). Johnson’s withdrawal from the 1968 presidential campaign was not an expiation. He never apologized and never publicly acknowledged that he cost tens of thousands of young men their lives, and tens of thousands more their mental and physical health.

The image today is of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (https://www.nps.gov/vive/index.htm), in Memorial Park in Washington, DC. Almost 60,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1974.