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"The United States, in their infinite, altruistic, naive and downright incompetent Foreign Policy, tried to have it both ways. On the one hand we wanted to stop communism, but on the other hand we were equally (and stupidly) against colonialism."

Exactly what happened in the Congo! Kennedy was doing well to even find the place on a map. The Soviets used The power of the UN against the Belgians and the US and played us like a cheap fiddle!

CIA withholds ho chi minh's letters -angry, some noname State Dept underling decides he has the best plan and types types a get-it-on response for a coup whilst everyone is on vacation - angrier still, McNamara has ph00king marketing flow charts and bar graphs to gauge military effectiveness and goals - furious now. Kennedy and Johnson both reached their decisions to escalate and not looking soft on the commies by the overriding desire to be re-elected instead of taking one for the team. Goddammit. No words.

Johnson said he had "things" he wanted to accomplish. So correct me if I'm wrong, 58,000 good men died so he could pass the civil rights act, food stamp act, gun control act, social security act, Medicaid/medicare, voting rights act, and of course, the PBS act - of which, makes Ken Burns rich. It seems the whole liberal agenda was passed during his time in office. New Deal and Great Society on these boys sacrifice - Goddammit.

And Egypt and Iran...

you got it right too, the awakening. There are a lot of people who were to young or not around at that time, or didn't realize what was going on.

I was a week old when Kennedy was shot. Dad was with the DoD for 35 years. Some of my earliest memories of dad's job was his small, but not insignificant role supplying the troops in Vietnam.

...some noname State Dept underling decides he has the best plan and types a get-it-on response for a coup whilst everyone is on vacation...

i remember the moment i found out kennedy had been killed. I was a kennedy democrat, bought his line hook, line, and sinker. My girlfriend was a goldwater girl. After going to college, and reading, and johnson, i realized what a big lie it all was. I switched party affiliations. She did too, now a liberal. I keep thinking i need to switch again to independent as i don't see a lot of difference in the lies on both sides of the aisle.

"Nixon Prolonged Vietnam War for Political Gain—And Johnson Knew About It, Newly Unclassified Tapes Suggest
Nixon ran on a platform that opposed the Vietnam war, but to win the election, he needed the war to continue
By Colin Schultz
smithsonian.com
March 18, 2013


In 1968, the Paris Peace talks, intended to put an end to the 13-year-long Vietnam War, failed because an aide working for then-Presidential candidate Richard Nixon convinced the South Vietnamese to walk away from the dealings, says a new report by the BBC’s David Taylor. By the late 1960s Americans had been involved in the Vietnam War for nearly a decade, and the ongoing conflict was an incredibly contentious issue, says PBS:

In 1967, with American troop strength in Vietnam reaching 500,000, protest against U.S. participation in the Vietnam War had grown stronger as growing numbers of Americans questioned whether the U.S. war effort could succeed or was morally justifiable. They took their protests to the streets in peace marches, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience. Despite the country’s polarization, the balance of American public opinion was beginning to sway toward “de-escalation” of the war.

Nixon’s Presidental campaign needed the war to continue, since Nixon was running on a platform that opposed the war. The BBC:

Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

… In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris – concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

President Johnson had at the time a habit of recording all of his phone conversations, and newly released tapes from 1968 detailed that the FBI had “bugged” the telephones of the South Vietnamese ambassador and of Anna Chennault, one of Nixon’s aides. Based on the tapes, says Taylor for the BBC, we learn that in the time leading up to the Paris Peace talks, “Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.” The Atlantic Wire:

In the recently released tapes, we can hear Johnson being told about Nixon’s interference by Defence Secretary Clark Clifford. The FBI had bugged the South Vietnamese ambassadors phone. They had Chennault lobbying the ambassador on tape. Johnson was justifiably furious — he ordered Nixon’s campaign be placed under FBI surveillance. Johnson passed along a note to Nixon that he knew about the move. Nixon played like he had no idea why the South backed out, and offered to travel to Saigon to get them back to the negotiating table.

Though the basic story of Nixon’s involvement in stalling the Vietnam peace talks has been around before, the new tapes, says the Atlantic Wire, describe how President Johnson knew all about the on-goings but chose not to bring them to the public’s attention: he thought that his intended successor, Hubert Humphrey, was going to beat Nixon in the upcoming election anyway. And, by revealing that he knew about Nixon’s dealings, he’d also have to admit to having spied on the South Vietnamese ambassador.

Eventually, Nixon won by just 1 percent of the popular vote. “Once in office he escalated the war into Laos and Cambodia, with the loss of an additional 22,000 American lives, before finally settling for a peace agreement in 1973 that was within grasp in 1968,” says the BBC.

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I want to see what good old Ken has to say about the anti-war movement. It was known then in intelligence circles and somewhat moreso now that Russia paid for a large part of the anti's activeties by passing the money to cutouts in Sweden and then from them to US affiliates. The antis became a fifth column element at home. Also don't anyone take me wrong, the war was fought by half measures and not to win. To my eye Vietnam was Korea but with a very large difference. The west side of Vietnam abutted Cambodia and Laos which allowed for land resupply. Korea had only one path in for Northern soldiers and supply. Johnson didn't let us cut the resupply in Hanoi harbor (Hyphong?). That made a huge difference.

Johnson was a socialist in the Roosevelt model and shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the levers of power. Otherwise this seems to be a pretty balanced presentation. And yes I am old enough to remember all the mess. I was 4F in 1968 with two cousins who went; luckily both returned physically intact. That doesn't say mentally so.