President
Lyndon Baines Johnson had grown accustomed to success in office. He was rather
a giant in a number of ways. But the anti-war protesters of ’68, of which I was
one, brought him down. He took his great wealth and stole away to his estate in
Texas.
by Charlie Leck
by Charlie Leck
I’ve begun the
five volume (four of them, so far, published) biography of Lyndon Baines
Johnson by Robert Caro It’s brilliant stuff that is remarkably well written.
Though it’s accurate and historical and carefully documented, it reads in a
very suspenseful and tantalizing way. In other words, it’s a page-turner. It’s
gripping and deeply interesting. Though there are four or five thousand pages
to read, I just keep plugging along, turning page after page in great
anticipation and with total interest. My dear wife gave me these volumes for Christmas
and I cannot thank her enough. Wow! These are incredible books. Caro is a
brilliant writer.
We think of LBJ
as one of our most successful presidents because of his ability to move
Congress into action; however, LBJ’s great failure was Vietnam. He made
terrible and foolish mistakes there even after the time he became aware there
was no possibility of victory. The following comes from the introduction to
Volume II of his biography (Means of
Ascent):
“When Lyndon
Johnson became President, the number of American troops – advisers, not combatants
– in Vietnam was 16,000… And during his campaign, in 1964, for election to the
presidency in his own right, Lyndon Johnson had pledged not to widen the war…
Not a month after he took the oath of office following that campaign, the bombers
were going north – in a program, “operation Rolling Thunder,” that would be
enlarged and enlarged, and enlarged again, with Johnson personally selecting
many of the bombing targets. And in April, 1965, the President sent American
boys – 40,000 of them – ten thousand miles away, into a land war in the jungles
of Asia.
“…By July, 1965,
there were 175,000 men in Vietnam; by August, 219,000; by December, 1966,
385,000. By the time Lyndon Johnson left the presidency, 549,000 American
troops were mired in a hopeless jungle war. By the end of 1966, more Americans
had died in Vietnam than had been in Vietnam when Johnson became President…
When he returned
to Texas after his presidency, Lyndon Johnson simply didn’t know how it had
happened and how it had happened so quickly. Many of his friends and
Congressional colleagues recalling him tell them that the war was impossible
to win; yet he kept sending young men there to die.
In retirement, Johnson found it
difficult to escape the memories or flee from the sounds of the protesters in
every part of America – protestors who had shouted to him while he was in
office: “Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”
This president,
who had accomplished so much for civil rights – who had launched the War on Poverty – had lost all his
credibility and standing over his foolish decisions regarding the unwinnable
and unnecessary war in Vietnam.
I’ll keep you
posted on this immense biography as I work my way through it.
_________________________
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