During Lyndon Johnson’s administration of the Vietnam War (1964-1968) 36,618 Americans were killed in action; total Americans killed in action equals 58,253 — and the Communists eventually marched into Saigon and won the war. One man — and one man alone — had the power to win the war in the first two years of the conflict with our overwhelming air superiority and 10 or 20 more divisions — but he chose not to because of public opinion. I am not excusing LBJ’s successor by any means; Nixon is as much to blame as LBJ for expanding the war and not winning it. No balls. No principles.
I just want to remind all of you of LBJ’s most enduring legacy: 58,253 names chiseled into the black granite, almost two-thirds of which belong to him.
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When liberals say that we should pull out of Iraq I tell them I agree, but not for the reasons they want us to leave. They cringe when I tell them that we are too afraid to fight this war like it should be fought, which I think in the long run would have saved lives, not caused more causalities. We won’t bomb mosques so where is the opposition? Holed up in mosques. Does anyone really think that if the situation were reversed that our churches, synagogues and other holy places of worship would be spared?? Does anyone really believe that the enemy would warn OUR civilians to leave the area before they bombed us? (I’m all for this, of course, but then, drop the bomb after you warn them to leave.)
This war will continue to incur casualties until someone decides to fight it like it means something. Otherwise, why bother?
We can also thank LBJ, along with FDR for the welfare state that decimated black families.
The problem folks is that everyone likes to speak in generalities without a fundamental study of history. FDR had his faults; but he was a great war president. In the end, when his health deteriorated, he screwed up by giving up to much to stalin instead of listening to churchill. In any event, I suggest y’all read FDR and Winston which gives an accurate portrayal of their relationship and of the war years.
On Domestic issues, the FDR administration gave us important laws that still stand today, namely the NLRA and the FLSA which secure bargaining rights to employees as well as the right to overtime for working in excess of 40 for non-exempt employees. The FLSA resulted in increased employment by requiring employers to hire more people rather than force workers to work more hours and then pay overtime. FDR also passed social security and while it’s not perfect and needs fixing esp. in the changed workplace of the 21st century; you must admit that while not perfect, it improved the lives of many americans and many immigrants like our grandparents who came here and were perhaps too old to work but at least were able to receive assistance. So I take issue with y’all on that.
As to LBJ, I suggest y’all read his excellent bio by Doris Goodman as well as the Cold War by John Gaddis. LBJ’s flaw with Vietnam was not being honest with the people; plain and simple. He was afraid that he told the truth about the cost and that it was really a war, then he would not have the funding for his great society programs. While his great society programs proved to be more of a problem than a cure, many were eliminated during the Nixon administration. But LBJ did great things for civil rights contrary to the insinuations above by using his skill and working with the GOP to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 knowing full well that his support for civil rights would be political suicide as far as the south was concerned. That took courage and showed more courage than what any modern day poll driven politician would do.
He also enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act which has allowed many of our families to come here w/o impunity.
So yes, he screwed up by getting into Vietnam half ass; but he also did some good for this country. More troubling is the fact that the Vietnam issue or french indochina issue could have been avoided altogether if the Eisenhower administration had taken more action when the french bailed out.
The conclusions and generalities drawn while nice, are innaccurate and do not paint the whole picture of the times and the other factors that played a part in US and world history.
I’m with Claudia, well sort of. Bring our troops home. Turn the place in to a parking lot, then start from scratch! Before you argue with me just look at Japan. We nuked it and look at the results. Look how well off they are now. Don’t you guys remember when they had so much money they were buying up NYC, blocks at a time? And isn’t Toyota now the world’s largest auto maker? The last time I was in NYC and I went window shopping at the pricey designer boutiques, the Japanese girls were actually buying. Hello? Am I missing something.
“I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
(What movie?)
Mike, I understand you are trying to keep a historical perspective here, but I was one of those who came of age during Vietnam. I lived through that era. If LBJ had done the right thing, there would have been no Nixon and people would be sitting in parks in front of his statues. But he didn’t did he?
The Cuban Adjustment Act, notwithstanding — and I think that was more of a bone to a community he knew JFK had royally fucked rather than the magnanimous act of a statesman its painted to be by the historically deficient — what LBJ did in Vietnam is unpardonable. He sent 36,000 of our boys to their deaths knowing he would not do what he had to do to win the war. He did it out of a misguided political expediency that was guided by advisors that were too full of themselves, including the execrable Robert McNamara, the real architect of our loss in Vietnam. Read Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest for more on the lying viper’s nest of McNamara, Bundy, et al.
Bush is dangerously close to duplicating LBJ’s mistakes, but I am not one of those that parallels Iraq and Vietnam. A very different set of circumstances.
LBJ was a bully and a wimp. And the cherry on top of the cake is that, IMHO, he bears more responsibility than FDR for the insane expansion of the welfare state: six TRILLION dollars to date that all started with him. He’s not the worst President of my lifetime only because Jimmy Carter existed, but by far, he was one of the worst to ever sit in the Oval Office.
Compared to LBJ, Clinton is a statesman.
George:
You should download into your IPOD the Reagan speeches collection. I was listening earlier today to the speech he gave at the vietnam memorial on veterans day 1988 and his words are so much more poignant today:
“Unlike the other wars of this century, of course, there were deep divisions about the wisdom and rightness of the Vietnam war. Both sides spoke with honesty and fervor. And what more can we ask in our democracy? And yet after more than a decade of desperate boat people, after the killing fields of Cambodia, after all that has happened in that unhappy part of the world, who can doubt that the cause for which our men fought was just? It was, after all, however imperfectly pursued, the cause of freedom; and they showed uncommon courage in its service. Perhaps at this late date we can all agree that we’ve learned one lesson: that young Americans must never again be sent to fight and die unless we are prepared to let them win.”
few folks just fail ro learn from history.
God bless Ronald Reagan.
It’s amazing how clueless some people are. Bathed in the light of their self-importance, and protected in their cocoon of sad isolation, they are too intellectually lazy to actually read and truly understand, all the while actually projecting their own thoughts into the writings of others. It would be funny if it weren’t so sadly pathetic.