BEEN DOWN THIS ROAD BEFORE
The people in the war party, who think nothing of sending the idealistic and the desperate to the Middle East to die in the desert in fairy tail wars, should be required to view the Bill Moyer's Journal "Hearing History: The LBJ Tapes" which aired November 20.
It told of the escalation of the Vietnam War, mostly through the actual tapes of President Johnson and his advisors assessing the deteriorating Vietnam civil war which began spinning out of control shortly after Johnson assumed the Presidency, in November, 1963, and ending with the colossal buildup to over half a million soldiers and 58,000 dead by the time it ended twelve years later.
It was stunning to hear LBJ's gut tell him right from the getgo that the war was unwinnable due to the utterly corrupt and hated South Vietnamese government, which essentially put America on the wrong side of a civil war. Equally stunning was the 1964 GOP Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, declaring with absolute certainty, that LBJ's dithering and indecisiveness was leading America to lose the Vietnam War, and LBJ buckling to Goldwater's pressure by widening the war, setting the table for its disastrous resolution.
Watching LBJ announce his decision to escalate a war he knew we could not win and did not need to win is as heartbreaking a speech by a President we may ever see....until possibly the current President has to stand before us in the next few weeks to tell us his decision whether to escalate another lost and unnecessary war.
Let's hope the President of hope has the audacity to listen to and ponder the destruction of his predecessor forty-four years ago.
Also published in the Glen Ellyn News, November 25, 2009
It told of the escalation of the Vietnam War, mostly through the actual tapes of President Johnson and his advisors assessing the deteriorating Vietnam civil war which began spinning out of control shortly after Johnson assumed the Presidency, in November, 1963, and ending with the colossal buildup to over half a million soldiers and 58,000 dead by the time it ended twelve years later.
It was stunning to hear LBJ's gut tell him right from the getgo that the war was unwinnable due to the utterly corrupt and hated South Vietnamese government, which essentially put America on the wrong side of a civil war. Equally stunning was the 1964 GOP Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, declaring with absolute certainty, that LBJ's dithering and indecisiveness was leading America to lose the Vietnam War, and LBJ buckling to Goldwater's pressure by widening the war, setting the table for its disastrous resolution.
Watching LBJ announce his decision to escalate a war he knew we could not win and did not need to win is as heartbreaking a speech by a President we may ever see....until possibly the current President has to stand before us in the next few weeks to tell us his decision whether to escalate another lost and unnecessary war.
Let's hope the President of hope has the audacity to listen to and ponder the destruction of his predecessor forty-four years ago.
Also published in the Glen Ellyn News, November 25, 2009
posted by Walt Zlotow at 4:51 PM
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