LBJ was bullied into VietNam war same way they are bullying Obama now...

[freshwest]

28. And we see a steady chorus about PBO being weak because he refuses to take on Bush's job.

And the obstructionist GOP has and is still doing all it can to ruin everything he wants to focus on domestically. I think Johnson got a lot done domestically because they would have gone after that if they didn't get their way.

As a person who grew up in that era I also know the fear of communism was as knee jerk as the monster under the bed to many. Not me or my family, but that was the national atmosphere from post WW2 and then after the Cuban missile crisis. It was a time when people were going with the bunker mentality.

LBJ was not immune to the hysteria, anymore than HRC was. The fear was almost a solid object that could not be ignored. Some forget the anthrax deaths, the horror of WTC and the pivotal event it was. There were years of terror stoked leading to Vietnam being used a proxy by superpowers who dared not attack each other directly. The country was made into a sacrifice zone.

The Tonkin incident was a tool to stop what some saw as a greater evil in the world, and we can look back on it and mock and hate them all we want, but we were not in charge of all those things. I was out in the streets and doing all I could with so many others to raise the national consciousness and insist we must leave the Vietnamese to make their own decisions and stop the war. We also saw what it was doing to us domestically.

But we were also confronted with a Iarge segment of the American people who felt the war was right and necessary, just as they did with Bush and Iraq. No amount of persuasion or education made them change their minds and they have not gone away. Their fury at our ascending to power and doing progressive things turned into the toxic waste that is the Tea Party and lunatic fringe groups.

LBJ realizing he was not on the right side is why he decided not running for office was the best choice. Johnson was stuck in a war growing since WW2. He left office a broken man, and the job of a POTUS is a very conflicting one. I think Obama will leave office with less affecting his soul than Johnson did. As to Bush, well, you can't lose what you never had.

We are still not over Vietnam, and neither is the tortured nation that all that blood was shed over it.