[Elihu Burritt]

Johnson would have been aided in this had he asked for help from Sen. Russell, a Georgia hawk known as "Mr. Defense" who was head of the Armed Services Committee. In private, Russell told LBJ repeatedly that Vietnam was not our war. In the summer of 1965, he confided to Johnson his horror that Vietnam's leader, Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky, was saying he would let Americans do the fighting in Vietnam while his own troops hung back, engaging in pacification. Russell told LBJ, "If they're going to try to fight that kind of war, I'm in favor of getting out of there."

There's a flip side to this too. Ho Chi Minh got to know America as a crewmember of French cruise ships that docked periodically at New Orleans. He kept a collection of lynching memoriabilia he picked up on shore leave. He also wrote articles for a French publication about them. It was not a good introduction, and as much as he admired America, it's a good chance his firmness in resisting us had something to do with his awareness that we had in us some of those sterling qualitities so reminiscent of the gracious French colonialism. The real horrors of Nam had their roots in that Colonialism, and it made the Japanese occupation seem relatively benign.

For some reason, Georgians have always had a profound sense of when it is that war crosses the ideals of the founders; a sense that is largely missing in a lot of other states. They gave Jefferson Davis a really hard time in that way.

[Robe]

This realy pisses me off!
How dare a US President commit troops WITHOUT the expressed purpose of overwhelming the enemy.
I think of the young lives lost, the friends incinerated, and the injuries and trauma that I/we are still coping with today. My only hope is that Johnson and McNamara are burning in hell!! For they have the blood of a lot of good boys on their hands.

[185JHP]

If you haven't read the book "Dereliction of Duty", the West Point grad who wrote it lays out the dishonesty of the leftists who enabled LBJ to run his scam on the American people. OTOH, how many guys who already had two, three, or four stars took early retirement and told the truth about the dishonesty? (none)

[RLK]

Lyndon Johnson was a not too bright dishonest blowhard with a touch of grandiosity who should not have been president. He put his money on Robert McNamara who was a subversive.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

ping

[liberallarry]

You always seem to find the good ones before me, Pokey. Great post. I really like Michael Beschloss.
Here's a recommendation for a description of pretty much the same situation during an earlier war;

"Stillwell and the American Experience in China 1911-25" by Barbara Tuchman.