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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (347470)	8/18/2007 6:46:28 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577183

I think Johnson just got sucked into Vietnam. The "generals in the field" kept telling him if he just escalated a LITTLE more, they could "win" the war. Eventually, he gave up on them, started ordering strikes and ops himself, and was lost to the his own hubris. He didn't want to be the "first American President to lose a war" as he himself said. Bush is at the same place. He doesn't want to be the second. A really crappy reason to die, in both cases.

To: combjelly who wrote (347470)	8/18/2007 7:12:12 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577183

But, a lot of Texans served in WWI, WWII, Korea. Not to mention later wars. So there is experience, either direct or through an immediate family member. And nothing discourages discretionary wars than that. Of the three, Johnson was probably the outlier. We know that Smirk is a man of limited vision. His father launched a limited war against Hussein because there were few choices. Although, an argument could be made that they screwed up and unintentionally gave ambiguous signals to Saddam. Yes, I tend to agree with you. Interestingly, I think Bush senior is the only one of the three who actually fought in a war........that may have made a difference. But, what about Johnson? I think at least part of it was hubris. He was arguably the most powerful congressman at the time. In the mold of earlier, powerful Texas congressmen. When the responsibility for Vietnam passed into his hands, he figured he could make the stand for democracy. He was wrong. Yup. You don't lie to make a democracy happen. By lying, he took away from Americans the right to democratically choose what they wanted because he thought he knew what Americans would choose and that's not what he wanted. And I know that Johnson did a lot of good for Texas. I never told you but in one of my courses, we read the history of how Johnson brought electrical power to the valleys around Austin. From what I could tell, his heart was in the right place........but then there is Vietnam? Major screwup IMO.