Why do so many on the left hate the Jewish people? Nazis, Communists, Progressives, it always bubbles to the surface.
I don’t get it. What is it that makes Hagel a liar, excuse me, casuist? That he represents Johnson’s reasoning as further along in the war than it actually was? Is calling it a war before the Tonkin Gulf incident inaccurate? We hadn’t deployed major combat troops or bombed the hell out of a jungle yet by May of 64, but we weren’t playing paddycakes, either. This was after Diem’s assassination, by the way, and we’d had troops there since WWII.
Does ot really come down to when a war is a war? LBJ’s the one to say he didn’t want to be the first president to lose a war (he wasn’t, that was Madison). So he was wrong about it being a war, if anyone. Apparently enough Americans would have seen cutting and running as forfeiting, or at least that’s what he thought.
Isn’t it worse, by the way, for Johnson to have seen it as a loser earlier? Especially considering he lied to get us all in.