How Johnson got Senate approval to escalate war

The following article, “How Senate voted for escalation and called it a ‘motion to table,’” is reprinted from the Workers World of March 10, 1966. It explains how the administration of Lyndon Johnson, through a parliamentary maneuver, was able to escalate the Vietnam War with the support of many in the Senate who wanted to be known to their constituents as doves. Many of the names will be familiar, even 40 years later. Al Gore’s father was a senator at the time and he voted with the administration, as did Robert Kennedy and Frank Church. Bill Moyers, seen by many today as a defiant liberal, was the president’s press secretary in charge of prettifying the war. As the article predicted, this vote laid the basis for a terrible blood-letting in Southeast Asia. It also turned a whole generation in the United States into militant anti-war activists who eventually forced the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The March 1 congressional vote on appropriations for Vietnam was a major turning point for the so-called “great debate” on the war.

It quietly laid the “legal” basis for further escalation, while at the same time forcing a large number of the “loyal opposition” to raise their hands in favor of it.

Previously, the much-publicized Senate hearings on Vietnam reflected to some small extent the tremendous popular opposition to the war. But the imperialist politicians’ vote on March 1, which was a put-up-or-shut-up proposition, found nearly all the Senatorial “doves” lined up with the worst hawks.

Moods of opposition and grudging support were still clearly evident. But the voting on the $4.8 billion supplementary military appropriation bill was rightly regarded as a true test of support for the war. And all the “doves” except [Sen. Wayne] Morse and [Sen. Ernest] Gruen ing folded their wings on this.

As the pro-fascist New York Daily News exulted on March 3: “The President got pro-hawk roll-call votes in the Senate of 93 to 2 ... and in the House, 392 to 4.”

There was another test of the opposition legislators’ seriousness in the same day’s vote on a motion to table a resolution by Senator Morse.

Morse had moved to rescind the so-called “Tonkin Bay Resolution” of August 1964. That resolution had provided the legal cover under which Johnson has constantly escalated the war. Morse’s move to rescind that resolution was in effect a proposal for a vote of no-confidence in Johnson’s conduct of the war and a demand to stop the escalation.

A motion to table Morse’s motion—that is, politely kill it—was made by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (sometimes regarded as a “dove”), who said, “We’re in too deep by now.”

The motion to table was in reality a motion to escalate, disguised as a parliamentary maneuver. Senator [Richard] Russell, the chief hawk, made this clear on the Senate floor by saying that the defeat of the Morse resolution by means of the tabling motion would really be a re-en dorsement of the Tonkin Bay Resolution.

Johnson himself threw down the gauntlet to the Senate. His press secretary, Bill Moyers, told reporters before the vote that Johnson believed that those senators who wanted the original (Tonkin Bay) resolution to stand should vote to table.

And Johnson said flatly in his own name that the Senate could “vote against the war” if it wanted to, by voting against the motion to table.

Just five senators took up the gauntlet—Senators [William] Fulbright, [Milton R.] Young, Eugene McCarthy, Morse and Gruening. The New York Times said the next day that “Sen. Fulbright broke completely with the President.”

This was true insofar as Johnson’s conduct of the war was involved, and very important from some points of view. But Fulbright made the limited character of his “break” quite clear when he voted for the appropriation for money to carry on the war. He said at that time, “Nobody wants a white flag over the Capitol.”

The twenty or so senators like [Frank] Church, [Albert] Gore [Sr.], Mansfield, Robert Kennedy, etc., who are in apparent opposition to the war—or some aspect of the war—fell in line with Johnson on both the motion for military funds and the tabling motion.

Mansfield, Russell and Fulbright arranged the tabling maneuver in a clubby little meeting of “friendly enemies” the night before, when Russell agreed not to present a motion of open reaffirmation of the Tonkin Bay Resolution. Fulbright said he did not want a “long and divisive” debate “in time of war.” So it was agreed that the whole test of sentiment for escalation should be on the motion to table. And the motion to table would be made by the once-oppositionist, Mansfield!

A motion to table, according to the rules of parliamentary procedure, cannot be discussed on the floor.

Thus the lives of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, were disposed of without a “divisive debate.” And a large number of fallen doves can innocently say that they did not mean to vote for a bigger war—when they did just that.