The wrong lesson George Buxh learned from the Vietnam War

[JohnnyRingo]

By 1968 Vietnam had become an unbearable nightmare for Lyndon Johnson.

With nearly 75% of Americans expressing a desire to pull out, Walter Cronkite on the evening news showing carnage of the Tet Offensive, and increasing casualties, LBJ called on a series of escalations in a last ditch effort to salvage victory from his fatally flawed policy.

He was known to micromanage the war during this time to the point of personally approving each and every bombing target, as if he was a strategic genius. Information on the situation was slanted by advisers to accommodate his policy decisions.

We know now that despite the apparent bubble from within which he commanded, he knew as well as everyone else that the war was already lost, at home and abroad.

Yet he continued his futile escalations until the day he left office.

When Richard Nixon was elected in 1972 on an "end the war" platform, it was clear that something had to be done. Though he dragged his feet for more than a year, resulting in thousands of needless deaths, he finally began a draw down in 1973. To this day Nixon is dubiously credited by historians as the first president who lost a war.

The lesson learned by the man who started the Iraq War is if he can hold out and hand it off to the next Milhouse without flinching or reducing troop levels, he can claim "we were still winning when I was president".

If only he'd studied the history books before he got us in this quagmire he could have learned a much more important lesson.

[lostnotforgotten]

1. When Your pResident Is The Offspring Of Freepers, What More Can You Expect?

He was warned. But like all true Freepers, he never studied history.

[The Count]

2. BRILLIANT! It's what he thinks when he blabs about "historical perspective"

I am sure of it!
He did make the idiotic remark when visiting Vietnam no less: "The history lesson is that we should have stayed" (which amounted at slapping his hosts in the face with an "I am only sorry we aren't still occupying you")

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

3. Sadly, I agree with you.

There's no way that Bush will pull out of Iraq before his term is over. He's already said as much anyway. I just can't see it happening.

[Salviati]

4. Hopefully the next president WILL have learned their lesson

and not hesitate to start drawing down troops immediately. If they do that, then they may be able to shirk the taint of any "ownership" of the debacle.

[KharmaTrain]

5. The GOOP Was Still In Favor In '68

The ruse Nixon played with was "Peace With Honor"...to "declare victory and withdraw". He was constantly searching for that opening cause that was the only acceptable means to get out of the mess to his base. The similarities to today are telling...as Nixon tried to "Vietmazation"...similar to the training of Iraqi security to "stand on their own"...and then the Cambodian incursion that is the equivelent of "The Surge"...it was the Cambodian escalation in '70 and the subsequent Kent State and Jackson State killings that really sent the war into the dumpers...and force Nixon to lower the standards of that "Peaace with Honor" that led to opening contacts with "Red" China (the Iran of that war).

Also, Nixon didn't completely pull out after the Paris Peace Accords were signed. I vividly remember the USAF still maintaining operations in support of the South Vietnamese and Cambodian allies almost all the way to their falls in '75. Remember, the things that checked Nixon's abiility to manuever in Vietnam in his last years were both Watergate and the '73 Arab-Israeli War. When he mined Haiphong Harbor in Dec. '72, the criticism was intense and Nixon's popularity (one that led him to a landslide a month earlier) began to slide...kinda like booshie's Terry Schaivo or Katrina moment...and forced him to accept what was on the table in Paris.

Boooshie lives in an alternate universe that created its own history...one that is constatly revised to fit the manchild's lastest whims. It's living in a bubble, believing in a big lie and deny the possibility you can ever be wrong...and, of course, like Nixon, anyone who critizes you is "an enemy".

The one who really should have learned from this time and appears to be in the greatest denial...desperately revising "history" as he goes is Crashcart.

[madokie]

6. bushie boy has the uncanny ability to pick and choose the facts he wants

with no regard for truth.

[MnFats]

7. Richard Nixon...peace candidate....ain't that a laugh?

"I have a secret plan to end the war."

(so tell us what it is, you asshole...)

don't get me started...

[zanne]

8. The president who "loses" this war will be a hero.

Vietnam was Vietnam. I don't think Dems have anything to worry about this time around.

[JohnnyRingo]

11. I agree with you

Much as America was hopeful of Nixon an '72.

The current Democrat's plan as I see it however, is to force Buxh to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal before he leaves office.
That will forever label this conflict as "Buxh's War" from reckless beginning to disastrous end.

I believe the next president (likely a Dem), will be viewed by history as "just mopping up and continuing the draw down of the previous administration" without chance of partisan blame.

[Demeter]

9. The Only Thing W Learned About Vietnam Was Let the Other People Pay

Other people's money, other people's futures, other people's health, other people's lives.

Bush will never be able to get out from under that massive debt he's incurred--it's worse than karmic. And if this nation doesn't present him with the bill, it will also never escape that massive debt.

[MsMagnificent]

10. Welcome to the greatest page

...proud to be #5 :D

[TahitiNut]

12. Newsflash: Nixon was elected in 1968 and took office in 1969.

:eyes:

I can't fucking believe the 12th post is the first to note this error! (But what the fuck do us old farts who were actually there have to say?)

LBJ announced his decision not to run and Hubert was the nominee of a brokered Democratic Convention in Chicago ... the site of an oppressive police crack-down on free speech and protest. It was abominable!

This is grade school history ... or sure should be.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. Now that you mention it

I voted my 1st time in '72 for McGovern and I recall now that RMN had lost confidence of the American people to exit the war by then.

Still, my opinion that Nixon was tagged with "losing the war" because no draw down was effected before then is the point.

Good eye and I'll leave the error as testimony to how easy it is to forget history and to my own senility. Thanx for pointing it out.

[EVDebs]

13. LBJ , Christmas Eve, Dec '63 to JCS Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war.

""Johnson subscribed to the adage that "wars are too serious to be entrusted to generals." He knew, as he once put it, that armed forces "need battles and bombs and bullets in order to be heroic," and that they would drag him into a military conflict if they could. But he also knew that Pentagon lobbyists, among the best in the business, could persuade conservatives in Congress to sabotage his social legislation unless he satisifed their demands. As he girded himself for the 1964 presidential campaign, he was especially sensitive to the jingoists who might brand him "soft on Communism" were he to back away from the challenge in Vietnam. So, politician that he was, he assuaged the brass and the braid with promises he may never have intended to keep. At a White House reception on Christmas Eve 1963, for example, he told the joint chiefs of staff: "Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war."(3)""

http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100lbjnam.html

The M/I/Congressional complex required JFK's elimination. This time around they required a 9-11 'new Pearl Harbor'. They got what they wanted.

[ClintonTyree]

15. Whatever the outcome of the Iraq quagmire.....

it is now, and shall always remain, GEORGE W. BUSH'S WAR! If the next President withdraws our troops immediately or, if for some insane reason, continues to throw our troops lives and countless billions of dollars away, it MUST remain BUSH'S WAR! There is no way in hell anyone other than George W. Bush himself should bear an iota of blame for this clusterfuck.

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[uppityperson]

18. Did you know that people who donate can use search?

Why are you copy/pasting this same thing over and over and over and over? IF you really want to get it read, a better way would be to start a topic with this as the subject, rather than spamming the board with this.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.