14. “The Moron Corps”: The Pentagon’s Solution to a Manpower Shortage During the Vietnam War
When America got involved in Vietnam, it mired itself in a quagmire. By 1966, the country was getting sucked ever deeper into that quagmire. When President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed office following JFK’s assassination in 1963, America had 16,000 troops in Vietnam. The following year, the figure grew slightly to 23,000. In 1965, however, in response to requests from American commanders in Vietnam for ever more US troops, the figure mushroomed to 185,000. It would more than double again in 1966, to 385,000.
The Vietnam War’s insatiable demand for ever more American troops put the LBJ administration in a bind: where to get them, without risking a public backlash? The solution was to turn to an immoral recruitment scheme: a program for enlisting otherwise unfit soldiers, whom the rest of the US military referred to derisively as “The Moron Corps”.