How Vietnam Killed the Great Society

The dearth of comments on this important article really saddens me. Is it because readers fail to see that the errors of Vietnam are being repeated over and over again in our time? The pain at watching Ken Burns' documentary on Vietnam last week was amplified by how little the realization of America's distorted view of the world has changed. At least if we had learned something, anything ... I realize I filter all things political through the lens of my perception of what happened during that time. The level of killing imprinted itself on my soul. I have a healthy mistrust of politicians, ALL of them. I cannot totally admire even the rock star Obama, as he betrayed my trust by positioning the woman whose vote for Iraq and hawkish posture was the reason I opposed her and voted for him in the first place. How could someone like Hillary, exactly my age, have experienced the horror of Vietnam and voted for Iraq? I remain incredulous. In 2020, I will vote for the man or woman who looks into the camera and tells me forthrightly that our government will wage war only as a last resort. But I will not totally believe them.

If anyone is interested, here is a link to the August '67 Herblock cartoon that was referred to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/herblock/gallery/13.htm

The Great Society killed, wounded, displaced and made refugees of millions of Vietnamese. Without any armed military uniformed assistance from the likes of Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, John Cornyn, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly etc.

America will always choose guns over butter. Always. And never look at ourselves and ask what kind of country we have become. But, the rest of the world knows, told in no uncertain terms at the UN this week.

The great society was killed because government spending can't make a great society. It can and did make a dependent on the government society that we still suffer from today.

Mark Lawrence wrote a really good opinion piece. I would only add that before too many get involved in grinding away at their own political agenda - or the points made by Mr. Lawrence - they should watch the Ken Burns documentary "Vietnam." I thought I knew a lot about this period in our history because I had studied it, and I had been a combat soldier. But Burns and his crew have showed me that there was so much more to be evaluated, but that was hard to do because we were lied to so often by political and military leaders. Members of Congress should be required to watch "Vietnam" and perhaps by doing so they would make better informed decisions going forward.

Vietnam is here today. It is embodied in the Middle East endless and unwindable wars. It is a mindset, championed by the Republican Party, that the United States was anointed policeman of the world. Democratic presidents, unwilling to look weak on foreign policy, are sucked into the vortex. Even Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex as he was leaving office. War should be the last resort not the first response out of the box. Acknowledgement of the mistakes of the past and the unintended negative consequences is a starting place, not something to be buried and disavowed. The Colonial Age of Europe is still a major factor in world issues. War and repression started it, why would the world continue with that same tool? If humans (primarily European descendants) cannot acknowledge and truly accept that all human are created equal, the future of us all is dicey.

If 3% to 5% of the most informed, progressive, principled anti-war (and anti-Empire) younger patriotic, peaceful, Americans do not start to immediately; 'call-out', expose, 'shout-down', and overtly protest 'in the streets' against this cancer of EMPIRE, which now so clearly is killing our country under faux-EMPEROR/president Trump's insane regime ---- there will be no future for any of us, our children, grandchildren, our fellow global citizens, or our fragile little world!

Let's bottom line it...according to history...imo. The great....Civil rights, voting rights, medicare, medicaid The bad....turning his and previous president's society programs into the welfare state. The Ugly....Vietnam..

Given how well virtually every single war since world war two has worked out for us, you'd think that we would learn.

Watching the documentary on PBS and revisiting the War in Vietnam, this time without the distractions of youth and disinformation, and with a consideration of American history before and after that war, I've come to the conclusion that the American presidency brings with it a propensity for two things: 1) the need to lie--a lot, and 2) the urge to kill people who pose problems--since killing is, seemingly, the easiest route to a solution. Lying and killing are the occupational hazards of the Presidency.

Johnson was both a victim and a beneficiary of the times. McCarthyism demonized communism and made it impossible to ignore. And he fell right into the civil rights era. In the 1960's, most Americans believed communists aimed to take over the world. Very much in the same way they believe Muslims wish to take over the world today. But Johnson must take the blame for manufacturing the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which provided him the leverage to attain Congressional approval to place combat troops in Vietnam. Kennedy would have been smooth enough to sidestep Vietnam. But would he have given us the Great Society in a second term? We'll never know, but there's reason to have doubts. So let's praise LBJ for getting done what he got done. That said, we can learn from his mistakes. Preemptive military efforts often chase the impossible. It takes a cool head and great thought to make prudent decisions. Doing nothing doesn't mean nothing has been done in making such a determination. Obama was great at measuring every single issue carefully. Trump can't tell the difference between and inch and a mile. His base loves the bluster, but it's not conducive to finding success. In fact, it's dangerous. Money will be spent without merit and worse yet, lives will be lost without merit. Ignoring our mistakes is Trump's rallying cry. Buckle up.

In 1964 while running for President LBJ said he didn’t think American boys should be fighting a war that Asian boys should be fighting. He got elected and spent the next four years reneging on that statement. I have not believed a word from a politician since. That is LBJ’s legacy.

According to the film now on PBS..Ken Burns.."The Vietnam War"...it appears Johnson was very hesitant in reference to expanding the war..from the beginning. Circumstances includes the "Gulf of Tonkin" incident which did not occur (North Vietnamese PT boats attacking the Turner Joy destroyer) was the first major decision to increase the war with Operation Rolling Thunder..the bombing of North Vietnam. Secretary of defense McNamara also had great reservations about the war from the beginning it was disclosed. Because of the resolution because of the Gulf of Tonkin incident (alleged), this gave unparalleled and un-check power to one man..the President. Do any of these historical examples seem current today...i.e. the war on terror. Without Congressional debate and conversation, centered power over such strategic topics of "making war" is very dangerous. Now comes Trump...who wishes to extend his own "hubris" via the US military. Extremely dangerous!

And then: Richard Nixon found that the Vietnam War worked quite well for him, politically speaking, and for the big business sector of his constituency. Nixon found ways to continue the killing and spending another four years. He took the country off the gold standard, borrowed like mad and turned on the monetary printing press. The bills started coming due in the early and mid-'70s. Remember the wage and price controls that Nixon laughingly said would "zap labor?" And the Ford Administration's pathetic "WIN" (whip inflation now) campaign? remember stagflation? President Carter's attempts to put the country on something like austerity through "zero-base budgeting" were just getting traction, to the alarm of a lot of entrenched interests, when it seemed the entire media turned on him. Which brings us to Reagan - his call for budget cuts and the actuality of his massive run-up of the national debt. Where did all that money go? Who got it? Inequality? I've heard of that.

Obama had called for the 2017 US "defense budget" to be $582.7 billions. Trump upped that to $639.1 billions. On July 14, 2017, the House passed the amount: $696.5 billions. 60% of Democrats voted for it. "As the cost of the (Vietnam) war soared close to $2 billion a month...." Johnson wanted a "10 percent surcharge" to pay for both the war and domestic programs but he wanted "$6 billion in cuts to (those) domestic programs". However, "legislators could only find $4 billion to slash from the 1969 budget". Still, that year's budget "ended with a $3.2 billion surplus..." So, the first betrayer of the Great Society was LBJ, himself, just as the Democrats today shovel the bucks into the craw of "defense" spending. The dismal Republicans, I expect this of. But the "yea" votes of the Democrats on slashing domestic needs, approving Trump's ignorant cabinet, and quietly approving this nation's circling the drain, has become too much to stomach. We are not a "Great Society". Never were. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsherman/2017/07/14/most-house-democrats...

Domestically Johnson was a great president. Hubris, false pride and viet nam brought him down. It was a real shame.

As a young adult in that era who always was interested in politics I must admit that the discord that the war caused drowned out any recognition of the great and lasting domestic legacy of LBJ. What a shame it was to sacrifice close to 60,000 Americans and untold hundreds of thousand Vietnamese to avoid political criticism from rabid anti Communist conservatives. And to lose the chance to continue to try to transform American society for the better. LBJ was truly a character worthy of a play by Sophocles.

I would go even farther than this article. I believe that, while Johnson's failure to inform the American public in 1965 and 1966 served his short term interests well (read re-election, Civil Rights, Voting Rights), that decision started the crumbling of White House integrity and believability. And after Nixon tried the same tricks during his tenure, it opened the door for Ronald Reagan to denegrate not just individual politicians, but government in general. This trend continues to this day through the Republican party, and may just be the end of us.

And what would winning on the battlefield require? what would it look like? McNamara said, years after the war, that the US killed 3.4 million Vietnamese through bombing & artillery barrages. How many more Vietnamese would the US have had to have killed to get the Vietnamese to accept a US-dictated regime? Would 6 million dead have sufficed? A number that resonates forever.

Money is what matters. If the costs of our wars, actions, conflicts, hostilities, however you want to call it, were levied on the American public to fully pay for them as they occurred, more Americans would take much more interest and perhaps support or not support it. However with the current system, paying for it on credit, many people are unconcerned, unaware and apathetic. I mean the finalists on Americas got Talent and Survivor Island and what Kim Kardashian is doing is much more important don't you think?

Until we discover how to 'make money' on societal-improvement projects, war will always win between the two, because making money is what we are all about.

Rejecting Eisenhower's wisdom that America could have guns OR butter, but not both, Johnson said we could have "guns and butter, too." And presidents ever since have fought wars and built up the military on the back of mounting national debt.

The underlying assumption was that the threat was International Communism. In retrospect, it's relatively easy to see that the assumption was wrong. The irony now is that the US not only got stuck in Vietnam, it embarked on efforts to promote social and economic justice. Those efforts were another way to discredit Communism and promote truth, justice and the American way. Since the USSR disintegrated, capitalism "won" and we have seen inequality increase and opportunity decrease. Terror is the new threat that distracts us from positive action to make people's lives better. The lies of the past make us distrust government and other institutions. When we seek hope, we find lies and betrayal. Instability provides opportunities for the unscrupulous. These are dangerous times.

just as Johnson gave in to the generals Trump surrounds himself with generals who are part of a failed military that cannot shoot straight but yet gobbles enormous resources out of our domestic budget

Johnson, as some presidents before, and all presidents after, have found themselves part of a political system skewed to push the president to do more than than he should. As an FDR Democrat, Johnson saw the power of the presidency, but he should have asked relied on Congress more, and he should have been strong enough himself to reject Vietnam as a proving ground for American strength. Presidents fall into the same trap today. The false belief that war is the place where America gains power and that all war choices fall on the president. As the Trump administration ponders striking North Korea so that it does not unleash an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test, the choice for the current administration is actually quite clear: do nothing. If preemptively launch an attack we fall right into the hands of the small communist nation, just like we fell right into the hands of North Vietnam. Trump should rely on guidance from Congress, but also be adult enough to not fall for the taunts of a bully of a dictator.

What the current policy makers learned from Johnson is to not escalate but just keep enough U. S. military men and women engaged to prevent the enemy from winning. Thereby resulting in endless war.

Great history lesson. But when I demonstrated against the Vietnam war, I didn't do it because I wanted more butter. I did it because I didn't accept anti-communism, the domino theory, and the right of the U.S. to impose a government on another country.

Wow, a war surtax and a military draft! Maybe adding those two ideas now could get us out of Afghanistan. Also, note the budget surplus, indicating that taxes were high enough to fund both the Great Society and that horrible war.

" He signed the landmark Voting Rights Act in August 1965..." Which gave us government sanctioned race based gerrymandering. Try instituting a congressional redistricting plan that would only take into account population and state borders with no political, racial, ethnic or religious considerations. The loudest cry will come from the Congressional Black Caucus. For all the complaints about Republicans gerrymandering congressional districts all they are doing is making sure super-majority minority districts are "safe". "The liberal early ’60s, when Americans enthusiastically embraced government activism to address social ills, were giving way to a new era of political fragmentation and diminished expectations." Try this - institute another round of New Deal policies for working class Americans and keep race and gender out of the equation. Deal?

Why......every time we have to choose, we never cut the waste in the Defense Department? Again, today, we feel obliged to cut healthcare for everyone, but still increase the Pentagone budget. Why? Perhaps the real world already knows that we are not living in a real democracy......while promoting it abroad. Perhaps, we naively believe we are a free society.....ignoring that we are controlled by the War machine.

the real disease is the empire, and the illusion that we are somehow better than everyone else and have a right to impose our beliefs by force of arms and imperial dominance. that this feeds a gargantuan economic corporate enterprise (at the expense of everything else) is not accidental. much of the disease is of course based on race. the vietnam war destroyed our country and the man---johnson---who perpetrated it. the tragedy is heightened by the fact that he knew better. we have been paying for his weakness ever since. trump is the latest, most virulent expression of this imperial cancer. do we survive it? that will depend on the power of the millennial-based grassroots social movements that brought 30 million people out for bernie sanders. as the tangible metastasized destruction of this Trumpian corporate death spiral escalate, it looks more and more like a very close call.

Conservatives made giving up the war impossible, and not giving up the war made continuing the expansion of the Great Society impossible. So conservatives could slow down and kill the Great Society (and, in the South, preserve the subordinate position of blacks) not by explicitly opposing its goals but merely by calling them unaffordable. Communism must be defeated first and most importantly. The modern conservative way to ultimately get rid of the New Deal is to run up the debt and deficit to produce, sooner or later, a financial crisis that can be used to reduce the New Deal. The older conservative way was to demand a balanced budget and low taxes, but after World War II our economy was healthy enough that social initiatives, major infrastructure investments (the Interstate System), and defense spending (bombers and missiles) were all affordable. Vietnam served the conservative cause by eating enough money that the Great Society was no longer affordable without the sorts of deficits that Republicans later did not hesitate to produce but at that point would not tolerate. The South was somewhat a special case. It supported the New Deal so long as most benefits went to whites. Its solid conservatism was often only racial and social, while in economics there were clear divisions. But as Johnson cut down on the racism of social programs, the South decided it wanted no part of these programs, which were seen as benefitting lazy blacks.

Sure, maybe "that bitch of a war" destroyed Johnson's hopes for The Great Society. But it wasn't just Johnson. We, the United States, could have gotten out of that war many times and any time. We chose to stay. Eisenhower chose to stay. Kennedy chose to stay. Nixon chose to stay. Johnson is just a figurehead on this ship of state. We had our opportunities. Plenty of powerful men knew what was happening, and they didn't choose to leave. When the French left we could have stayed out. When the Diems put down the Buddhist riots we could have left. We could have departed when the Diems were murdered, and with each successive bad regime running that country we could have said, enough is enough. But our own dead started to pile up and grudges were registered and anger and hatred filled hearts and minds and irrational dread and fear of worldwide communism possessed us like a demon in "Exorcist." Our military industrial complex society is the problem, not Johnson, and not just Vietnam. That's our demon. And if you think "that bitch of a war" doesn't still get most of our attention, while Trump and this Congress are promising to slash a trillion dollars from our budget, where do you think that money will stop going? It will stop going to our great society just as surely as it did when Vietnam burned it in great big piles. War isn't just the bitch that ruled Johnson. War still owns this nation and it seems likely to on owning us.

Until the current presidency, our leaders walked a fine line between the greater good and the legacy they would leave. Building a great society entails building up all of its people. The war certainly got in the way, but there have always been deeper undercurrents that have prevented America from realizing true greatness. Those undercurrents are the same internal forces that are dominant today. What have we learned from the last century? How have we applied those lessons and at what cost? Those who falsely paint a tableau of an America that never existed, won over those who falsely claim that all truth and progress are in a non-existent middle. The struggle now is for progress to force its way out of the grip the neo-conservative and neoliberal establishments have on power. Only then can a new Great Society be imagined and realized. https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/09/04/triangulation-when-neoliberalism-is...