Lyndon Baines Johnson & George Walker Bush

[Deraj]

So, last night I'm sitting home alone. After watching some television for a while (News Hour and some C-Span) it occurs to me that I need to read a new book. So I go to the shelf of books I have never read. Why are they there? Forget the why, I don't even know how most of them got there. Gifts? Thrift store purchases? Who knows.

Anyway, my eyes settled on The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson by Ronnie Dugger, former editor and publisher of the Texas Observer - a paper not too friendly to the Texan president. The jacket says Mr. Dugger was able to spend endless hours interviewing Johnson over the course of his presidency, though, because "while Lyndon Johnson often reviled his critics, he respected the seroius ones and spent a lot of time and effort trying to win them over.

Whatever. After reading through the intro and the first chapter I'm quite impressed with the author. I've been meaning to sit down and read another author's - Robert Caro's - works on LBJ for years, but have never made the time. Since everyone seems to think Caro's are the definitive work on Johnson, I didn't think I should waste my time on Mr. Dugger's. But ol' Ronnie did alright - not so much because of his treatment of LBJ but his examination of the presidency as an instution - specifically how it drives our national politics and, consequently, what he calls the "national ethos".

America, he argued, between 1931 and 1981 should be considered the Johnson Period because "Johnson, more than any of the other presidents of the time, helped generate the values and participated in and then presided over the trends that ultimately prevailed." There are some really memorable and well-crafted sentences in the book. For instance, "Our leaders have more choices than they admit or even realize and higher liability for history than they will accept when things go wrong. Expecting to be forgiven their politiccal self-interest, they do not keep enough in mind how paltry that motive is when we can all die together in a thirty-minute war."

I laughed out loud at that last sentence. My, how the world has changed since this book was written in 1981. I don't think many people think about nuclear holocaust any more - not even when considering who to consider as their next president. It doesn't mean they shouldn't. But that's just the fact. They don't.

So, where am I going with this? Why is GW in the thread title? Well, while reading this interesting book it has occurred to me that there may be far more parallels between LBJ and GW than we might readily think. It would be a mistake and completely futile, I think, to work too hard on drawing parallels between the two presidents' policies, but I think there is a convincing case to be made in the similarities in the way they think and decide and behave, and, unfortunately, in the results of their policies. In other words, both men have pushed us in the same direction.

Vietnam is obvious. What needs to be said here? Dugger seemed to think Johnson's foolishness in Vietnam was rooted in his yearnings to be like one of his long-dead relatives fighting Mexicans in frontier Texas. Ha. I don't know why it makes me laugh, but it does. Dugger does a great job producing numerous quotes from personal interviews and meetings and publich speeches in which LBJ recalled his antecedents' sacrifices at the Alamo, San Jacinto, etc. Could we say it was a cowboy mentality? I dont know. Dugger speaks of Johnson comparing the Vietnamese to his toddler grandson; "...he takes one step, then another, and then another, but it's slow; it just takes time." Sounds worryingly like our current administrations view of the Iraqi government, does it not?

Yes, today we have Iraq. As a product of what? I'll leave that for the historians decide. But I just have this feeling that in thirty years GW will be compared to LBJ more than any other President and the way in which he entered and waged war in Iraq will be couched in the same terms we use today to describe what LBJ did in Vietnam.

But it's hard to tell. After all, like Dugger says, "We are so close in among these present events, they come so thick and fast, and they recede into the past at such an accelerating rate, we are not sure what anything means...Yet we also, in this same period, feel that we here and now are participating in the re-formation, or destruction of civilization for a long time, perhaps forever."

[Zeebadee]

One big difference between the two is that LBJ actually got bad intel, which led him to escalate the Vietnam war, while bush cherry picked the intel that supported his agenda to start a war. In thirty years, IMHO, bush will be universally solely remembered as the worst president the country has ever suffered under, no comparisons needed.

[Milton Bradley]

Perhaps some German, or Italian politician comparisons could be made.

[Jack]

Bush might succeed in making Nixon appear less incompetent than we thought at the time.

[The Decider]

Quote by: Zeebadee One big difference between the two is that LBJ actually got bad intel, which led him to escalate the Vietnam war, while bush cherry picked the intel that supported his agenda to start a war. In thirty years, IMHO, bush will be universally solely remembered as the worst president the country has ever suffered under, no comparisons needed.

Johnson did some intel cherry-picking of his own. He used so-called "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" to dramatically increase the number of US troops in Vietnam. Later, Johnson ignored or downplayed the ever-rising number of US casualties to assert that victory was within our grasp. He repeatedly warned Americans of the consequences of defeat: " "If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco." Sound familiar?

The major difference between LBJ and GWB is in both men's reactions to the clear failure of their war policies. LBJ came to despise the Vietnam War and even regret his past policies. GWB remains a true believer in this American disaster in Iraq to this very day.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: The Decider Johnson did some intel cherry-picking of his own. He used so-called "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" to dramatically increase the number of US troops in Vietnam. Later, Johnson ignored or downplayed the ever-rising number of US casualties to assert that victory was within our grasp. He repeatedly warned Americans of the consequences of defeat: " "If we allow Vietnam to fall, tomorrow we’ll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week in San Francisco." Sound familiar?

The Gulf of Tonkin wasn't cherry picking, it was a lie.

Quote by: The Decider The major difference between LBJ and GWB is in both men's reactions to the clear failure of their war policies. LBJ came to despise the Vietnam War and even regret his past policies. GWB remains a true believer in this American disaster in Iraq to this very day.

He has to, those contracts are sstill quite lucrative.


Inceidentally, that's why the other pro war candidates still quote the same mantra, it works.

[Zeebadee]

Quote by: The Decider Johnson did some intel cherry-picking of his own. He used so-called "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" to dramatically increase the number of US troops in Vietnam.

Quote by: Milton Bradley The Gulf of Tonkin wasn't cherry picking, it was a lie.

I believe that the escalation based upon the Gulf of Tonkin incident was indeed the result of bad intel, not deliberate cherry-picking.

"Hanyok further argues that Agency officials had "mishandled" SIGINT concerning the events of August 4 and provided top level officials with "skewed" intelligence supporting claims of an August 4 attack. "The overwhelming body of reports, if used, would have told the story that no attack occurred." Key pieces of evidence are missing from the Agency's archives, such as the original decrypted Vietnamese text of a document that played an important role in the White House's case. Hanyok has not found a "smoking gun" to demonstrate a cover-up but believes that the evidence suggests "an active effort to make SIGINT fit the claim of what happened during the evening of 4 August in the Gulf of Tonkin." Senior officials at the Agency, the Pentagon, and the White House were none the wiser about the gaps in the intelligence."
Newly Declassified National Security Agency History Questions Early Vietnam War Communications Intelligence

A full report on the incident, formerly highly classified, is available at:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/...relea00012.pdf

[PatrickHenry]

Lyndon and Dubya... both possessors of ranches in Texas.

The public blew it by not sending BOTH of them back to work like peons on the ranch.

At least Lyndon brought us the guaranteed franchise for a less favored minority. Dubya has targeted them for his own political gain, while stealing election after election.

Lyndon was followed by an even MORE flawed president. Pray that doesn't happen this time...we will REALLY be in a mess...

[The Decider]

Quote by: Zeebadee I believe that the escalation based upon the Gulf of Tonkin incident was indeed the result of bad intel, not deliberate cherry-picking. "Hanyok further argues that Agency officials had "mishandled" SIGINT concerning the events of August 4 and provided top level officials with "skewed" intelligence supporting claims of an August 4 attack. "The overwhelming body of reports, if used, would have told the story that no attack occurred." Key pieces of evidence are missing from the Agency's archives, such as the original decrypted Vietnamese text of a document that played an important role in the White House's case. Hanyok has not found a "smoking gun" to demonstrate a cover-up but believes that the evidence suggests "an active effort to make SIGINT fit the claim of what happened during the evening of 4 August in the Gulf of Tonkin." Senior officials at the Agency, the Pentagon, and the White House were none the wiser about the gaps in the intelligence." [url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/press20051201.htm]Newly Declassified National Security Agency History Questions Early Vietnam War Communications Intelligence

There were two alleged incidents, on August 2nd and August 4th. The August 4th incident, which you cite, probably didn't happen. But few people contest the attack on August 2nd, including the author you quote, Robert H. Hanyok:

Hanyok argues that the SIGINT confirms that North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a U.S. destroyer, the USS Maddox, on August 2, 1964, although under questionable circumstances.

The Vietnamese confirmed the August 2nd attack, but not the one on August 4th.

http://vi.uh.edu/pages/buzzmat/world198_4.html

In any case, Johnson and McNamara were itching for an excuse to attack North Vietnam and ratchet up the war. The suggestion that bad intel led Johnson to take an action he would not have taken otherwise is wrong IMO. You aren't making that claim, are you?

[Zeebadee]

Quote by: The Decider The suggestion that bad intel led Johnson to take an action he would not have taken otherwise is wrong IMO. You aren't making that claim, are you?

Nope, not at all. LBJ probably would have found justification for escalation some other way. I'm just saying that LBJ actually believed the bad intel he got, whereas bush, IMO, knew all along that his intel didn't support his lies.

[The Decider]

Quote by: Zeebadee I'm just saying that LBJ actually believed the bad intel he got, whereas bush, IMO, knew all along that his intel didn't support his lies.

I'm saying that LBJ knew that Vietnamese boats had attacked US Navy vessels on August 2nd (good intel). He didn't need the bad intel from August 4th. Like Bush, Johnson was intent on escalating the war by any means necessary.