Don't try to defend LBJ. He is one of the worst criminal Presidents the Democrats ever inflicted upon the American People. The deaths of tens of thousands of Americans are on his hands.
I believe that seeing his motives up along-side the results is very informative for people who didn't understand the dynamics up to this point. We have younger people around who didn't live through that period. It's for them that it's important to make clear "good feelings" don't mean squat. It's the outcome you need to be cognizant of.
This applies directly to Obama and the Left's policies in our own time. Don't be suckered by talk of pie in the sky. Use your brain, and challenge wigged-out Leftist ideology and promises. If they defy logic and rational explanation, oppose those promises and the ideology that drives them.
As for the Vietnam war, we hate it all the more because Johnson and MacNamera were unfit to lead out in that effort.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident aside, if you want to carry out a military action, do it on the up and up. And when you commit men and resources, put the right people in charge.
If they had done this, the people of Vietnam would be free, and we wouldn't have lost 10% of the men we did.
The execution of that war did verge on the criminal for those who directed operations.
If we had capable people in there, we wouldn't have that scourge on our national conscience.
Great post!