[Soul of the South]

When you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there and you can choose at what point the trip has ended.

There is a reason the Constitution requires all wars be declared by Congress. The language of the Constitution is clear. Congress, representing the people approves the war and the goal. The president, as commander in chief of the military, develops and executes the plan to achieve the goal through use of the armed forces. The Founders intentionally did not give the president the authority to take the nation war at any time and any place he chooses.

I can remember when President Lyndon Johnson took the nation to war in order to prevent South Vietnam from being conquered by communist North Vietnam. At one time the US, on the authority of the president, had over 500,000 US troops in Vietnam. After 8 years of war, over 50,000 dead Americans, and over $15 trillion dollars (2025 dollar value), the United States exited without victory. North Vietnam subsequently conquered South Vietnam and today united Vietnam is a communist country. One of the greatest tragedies in our nation’s history.

Then there is the Afghanistan war. . .

[Wallace T.]

The United States was defeated in Vietnam by three factors: (1) the failure, until Nixon was up for re-election in 1972, to engage in the bombing of Hanoi, Haiphong, and the supply lines coming in from China; (2) the Communist inspired antiwar protests and the hostility of the prestige press and the news departments of the Big Three networks to the war; (3) the Democratic Congress refusing to fund the South Vietnamese army after America withdrew combat troops.