Posted on 09/05/2002 2:57:55 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Had nothing to do with technology,and everything to do with being "out of place" and on the attack when surprised by massed enemy troops. Things change when you are in a well dug in defensive position,and have a Quad-50 and all the ammo in the known world.
You really need to listen to the tapes, or read the transcripts. Yes, Johnson was afraid of hitting a Russian ship. But Johnson also said, he didnt think we should be in that pssannt country, that it wasnt worth one american boys life, but that if he withdrew, he would go down in history as the first president to lose a war, and would not get re-elected(telephone covnersation with Russell Long-1965)
The transcripts are full of how Johnson made every effort to hide the truth from the American people, the Joint cheifs, and from congress.
When Fullbright and Mansfield found out that Johnson was lying to them, they were furious.
Vietnam never attacked the United States unprovoked, Johnson was running secret missions in Vietnam in 1963-65, bombing and killing Vietnamese. The Vietnamese only tried to defend themselves.
The military told Johnson that it would take at least 10 years, and a million men over there to hold that country, right from the get-go. There never was a time when Johnson went in there without knowing the consequences and futility of being there.
Johnson NEVER, EVER, wanted to win. He never ever had a plan to win. He just did not want to lose.
Read the transcripts for the truth.
The protestors knew more about vietnam than anyone else. The protestors studied vietnam, studied the war, and saw what the situation was. That is why they were protesting.The war, and what we were doing, was well documented and written up by Bernard Fall, and other authorities. But only the college students ever read Bernard Falls books.
Those who supported the war, and the average public, didnt know didley about it, and never studied the war, nor the history of Indochina.
Well,when you have a country called Viet Nam,and you start bombing the communists who are trying to overthrow the legal government there,chances are the communists getting bombed and killed will be called "Vietnamese".
BTW,there was really nothing secret about the bombing in Viet Nam. Nor was it any secret US troops were there. There were US advisors there during WW-2,and I personally knew people who were sent there in 1961.
The Vietnamese only tried to defend themselves.
Awwwwww. Them poor Vietnamese communists! Just running along minding their own business while running a revolution,disemboweling village chiefs,murdering nurses,doctors,school teachers,and priests,enslaving people to work as laborers,stealing crops and livestock from villages while calling it "revolutionary taxes",and then being forced to defend themselves from evil Americans. The horrors!
The military told Johnson that it would take at least 10 years, and a million men over there to hold that country, right from the get-go.
HorseHillary!This projection was based on running a war there the way LJB wanted the war ran. 3 to 6 months would have settled it if they had been allowed to get serious about it.
There never was a time when Johnson went in there without knowing the consequences and futility of being there.
I'm not even sure I agree with that,and I hate and hated LBJ. The truth is we had a bunch of ballless senior military officers who put their careers ahead of their duty,and they only told LBJ what he wanted to hear. None that I ever heard of had the balls to stand up to him and tell him to his face how big a fool he was.
Johnson NEVER, EVER, wanted to win. He never ever had a plan to win. He just did not want to lose.
I'm in total agreement here,and will even take it a step further. LJB didn't even want the communists to lose. All he wanted them to do was quit fighting.His whole planning was based on getting the communists to quit.
I do too,and it really pisses me off!
I was a college student in those days, perhaps you were not there. I read book after book on Vietnam at the time. I went to every lecture of returning journalists and investigators, and veterans. Now that the transcripts have been available, it is a fact that the college students were even more educated on Vietnam than even the presidents own staff, who did not study Vietnam, and knew nothing about the vietnamese and their stuggle for independence for over 400 years.
No one who knew anything about vietnam, ever supported the war over there, whether is was a military man, or not. Trouble is, it was mostly the anti-'s who ever bothered to learn anything about vietnam.
The military was more interested in fighting among themselves, one branch of service against the other. Yes, LeMay wanted an all out war, but other top generals did not want America to be there, and saw the futility of it. It had no strategic value, and the domino theory was already discredited by 1965. If you read the transcripts, the military was completely left out of all decision making prosesses. McNamarra went around the top military officers, and the war was waged by civilians, the bombing targets were NOT selected by generals, but instead, were selected at the Tuesday Johnson lunches, by McNamarrra, Dirkson, etc.
I am not talking of the advisors who were there since 1954, I am talking about combat missions, by americans, up the mekong river, and in other places, which secretly bombed and killed. Those missions were officially secret until the 1990's,although the vietnamese complained about them in the early 1960's.
You are right, but it is not a "feeling", it is a fact.
If you read the white house tapes, you will see that it was a consious, deliberate, purposefull, effort to replace the strong joint chiefs officers with war experience instead with "staff" desk jockey officers, to keep them at bay.
Johnson and McNarrah and others discussed how to get rid of any top military officer who had any strong knowledge of waging war.
The custom that Johnson started, by getting rid of good officers who know about war, in the joint chiefs, continues to this day.
It had no strategic value, and the domino theory was already discredited by 1965.Thirty-seven years later, do you still agree?
[Hint: include the words "Cold War" in your answer]
Bullcrap!
The protestors knew less about the War than anyone else. I know, I spent time in both worlds.
For most of them (the students, anyway) their knowledge was sloganeering and ignorant one-liners. What they most disliked about the War was they could be called in the Draft. They were usually led and organized by the most leftist professsors on campus. What the students liked most about it was they could sit around, smoke pot and pontificate to everybody who would listen to them blather on about how wise and righteous they were. Most were silly children, indoctrinated deeply by their Liberal/Communist professors and funded by clandestine money. Many of the non-students were radical opportunists who liked anarchy, hated the United States but craved the fawning babes, drugs or any cause they could influence with their faux-intellectualism.
Most of the entire anti-War movement was a planned and supported Communist operation from the get-go, with full-time operatives and organizers. This has come out recently with the translation and release of KGB and other internal documents from the Soviet Union, defectors and ex-Soviet spooks, although much of it was known at the time. Go check out some of the Congressional Hearings of those years.
The college anti-War crowd were on the whole dupes, not scholars. They were just too stupid or hate-filled to realize they were being played for patsies by the enemy. They "hated" war (unless it was promulgated by such freedom-lovers as the USSR, Red China or North Vietnam). But, what they did like was partying and legitimately missing classes and this gave them lots of opportunities!
Of course, with Liberals fools like LBJ and MacNamara running the show, it is easy to see why the entire War languished far beyond what it could have and should have, thereby giving ample opportunity for the enemy to marshall their American Fifth Columns and eventually drive the US troops (through politics, not force of arms) out and win.
I read somewhere (Paul Johnson's MODERN TIMES?) that surreptitious tapeing of White House conversations went as far back as FDR.
It only makes sense since................who the hell is going remember what, on such-and-such a date and time, one was doing and said when it comes to writing memoirs, as all the modern presidents seem to do.
It is now a fact that Vietnam DID go communist in 1974, and all of southeast asia did NOT fall since then, as was predicted by the domino theorists.
Hint: There is no Soviet Union anymore, Japan is not communists, neither is Indonesia, etc. More countires have abandoned communism since Vietnam fell, than prior to 1974.
Thank you.
But please, don't get me started!
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