Tracing the origin of Fulbright’s antiwar views reveals an intriguing ancestry for Clinton’s views. Fulbright had not initially opposed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was originally viewed as a measured, flexible alternative to full-scale escalation in Vietnam. But after a major increase in US ground deployment in summer 1965, and after Fulbright’s relationship with President Johnson became strained over Dominican Republic policy that September, he began questioning Johnson’s Vietnam policy.
At this point Fulbright began researching Asia intensely. He read a number of books about the Far East over a trip to Australia that December. He came back complaining about the history of British imperialism in China and declaring there would be hearings on Vietnam. He opened hearings the next month. He subsequently began sending his assistants James G. Lowenstein and Richard M. Moose to Southeast Asia for regular fact-finding missions that formed the basis of periodic Senate reports. (In 1969 Fulbright, Lowenstein, Moose, and Fulbright’s assistants Carl Marcy and Norvill Jones would begin advising former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg on how to go about leaking the Pentagon Papers, a set of classified military documents on the Kennedy-Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy.)
Ping to correction in #33.
Thanks for the Ali stuff.