- Historic Sites 1964 - The Year The Sixties Began Viewing a
transformation that still affects all of us—through the prism of
a single year October 2006 | Volume 57, Issue 5 Few observers
could have imagined how quickly LBJ would avail himself of these
unprecedented and sweeping powers. Though he promised a national
television audience on the evening of August 4 that he would
“seek no wider war,” between the incidents of August 1964 and
late 1965, the number of servicemen fighting in Vietnam rose
from 17,000 to 184,000. By late 1966 the figure had climbed to
450,000, and by early 1968 more than 500,000 Americans were
serving in the steadily escalating conflict. Historians and
political analysts have long debated the extent of Lyndon
Johnson’s responsibility for the tragedy that was the Vietnam
War. Some have convincingly argued that his predecessor, John
Kennedy, had grown circumspect about the direct engagement of
ground forces after the Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1961 and that he
would never have committed comba