The disaster in Vietnam happened on LBJ’s watch.
“The disaster in Vietnam happened on LBJ’s watch.”
Not exactly, even though LBJ is deserving of plenty of blame.
The disaster began because of John Kennedy.
In early November 1963 JFK let it be known that he wanted to get rid of Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s President. Diem wasn’t compliant enough to suit President Kennedy.
Well the result of this was a coup and the assassination of Diem and his family. This left RSVN leaderless and chaotic, a situation that would persist for years. And just a few weeks later JFK was himself assassinated and Lyndon Johnson had the whole mess dumped in his lap.
Ho Chi Minh could hardly believe his good fortune; Diem was the most effective foe he had of the Communist war against South Vietnam. Now his victim was severely weakened.
In order to bolster a weakened South Vietnam Johnson decided to send in American combat troops, something that both Eisenhower and MacArthur had warned against. And to make that decision even worse Johnson decided to keep control of the war in Washington DC instead of leaving it a military commander, like Ike had been during WWII. The combination of Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara insured that the war was fought badly, ineffectively, and at great expense to the GIs sent to fight it.
The Big (ger) Vietnam Disaster(s) did indeed happen on LBJ's watch. However, it was JFK who initially began the War in Vietnam as an American Armed Forces Show, by replacing Dulles' and Eisenhower's "unarmed" and un-uniformed Advisory Group with at first, The First Marine Division.
He did this in the face of stern warnings from Eisenhower ... and MacArthur(!) JFK, a fervent supporter of McCarthy, simply bdid not wish to be identified with the loss of territory to the Communists ... and thus "weak on Communism," which was the Democrat Party's rap after the loss of China and Korea. It is also true that he sought a way to back off from this ill-considered commitment to "boots on the ground," but then he was murdered in office and LBJ manufactured the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" to drastically increase the commitment of more and more men ... eventually reaching the more than half=-million-man total ... before Nixon began the face-saving "Vietnam-ization process that led to withdrawal and a perceived defeat.
Remember, this war draqged on from 1961 to the beginning of 1975! JFK was actually a Foreign Policy disaster. His legacy is the belief held by Democrat Presidents Clinton and Obama that running the US Executive Branch can be handled in 2-3 hours per day or less, with the real work done by delegation to increasingly socialistic advisors, cabinet members, and "czars."
The philosophy apparently is: "Whatever is going to happen, will. The important thing is to control the "spin," the perception of the public after what is going to happen anyway, actually happens."
Working for them rather well, all things considered.