Quite right reply...
But basically we were working our way PAST the "lessons" of Korea... and we succeeded. We brought Korea on ourselves by one of our less considered speeches.. and then brought the Chicom on our own heads by ignoring their backstairs communications and MacArthur's mistake...
I can really relate to the pussyfooting confusion over VN policy in that environment. But we put the big stall in... and it worked... and then we slipped into the Afghan war against the Russians (I was involved in that) and even then we made a mistake of turning ISI from a quonset hut into a huge operation by trying to use them as a cutout.
Even so THAT worked as well.
One loses a lot of embarrassing battles in a war... the key is not to lose the war and to hold the principle strategic points... and not lose sight of what they are.
Leftist media/academic thinking tends to obscure it. And Lipscomb reminds us WHY we went into the swamp.
Thanks for your great postings.
Lyndon Johnson and his people said his bugbear was the possibility that someone on the other side would go nuclear if a "tripwire" were passed.
I wonder if that is so, even if we did receive a back-channel communication from someone.
It is never far from my mind, that Lyndon Johnson was an enormous ego with an agenda, and that Vietnam was an inconvenience to his efforts to build a "legacy" worthy of his ego needs -- IMHO, I think he sought parity with Franklin Roosevelt (he was surpassingly vindictive, and always sought to "even the score" in some way with every mentor he ever had) and was hoping for a shot at Mt. Rushmore.
Johnson basically didn't want to fight a war in Vietnam, and he absolutely refused to compromise his domestic legacy-building agenda. His ego tied his hands more than the Russians did, IMHO.