Vietnam – The Longest War
A fellow Vietnam vet, a Marine A4 / CAS pilot, sent me a very revealing link that will shock you. It’s an excerpt of a book chapter written by Lt. General Charles Cooper, USMC (Ret) that demonstrates LBJ’s disingenuous behavior, his micromanagement and mismanagement of the Vietnam War. He believed he knew more than his generals and boasted about it.
General Cooper’s work represents confirmation bias for me since it makes many of the points I made in my historical narrative RECALL and blogs. General Cooper’s insight documents LBJ’s disdain for the military. If LBJ had taken the Generals’ advice on the day General Cooper witnessed the meeting with Chiefs of Staff and wrote about, we may well have avoided 58,000 casualties and many more wounded.
The link: https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/34024
This excerpt gives you an idea of what kind of character LBJ possessed, or lacked. And explains why things turned out as they did in the most controversial and poorly understood war in our nation’s history. A war that divided the country politically for over the past five decades.
Half our population was not born back in the sixties and many others have little or no recall of the war. There are many lessons we failed to learn from that wartime experience. If we don’t learn them, we’re condemned to repeat the same mistakes, to paraphrase Santayana.
General Cooper gives us some important insight into LBJ’s lack of leadership, arrogance, and despicable behavior. I hope you will take ten minutes or so to read the article and my links. You will be appalled.
Your comments are welcomed, if civil.
Today, I have been thinking a lot about my stint in the US Army Nurse Corp. during the VN War.. I was assigned to a Field Hospital in Europe. There are things that still make me angry and things that bring tears to my eyes. One of them is the wreck less thought that “the boys” soldiers were in indispensable. The other was the sexual harassment and attempted rape and assault by a superior officer. I was told, report it and you will end up in Vietnam. Some nurse who served in Vietnam was raped more than once in while there. How can that generation of women encourage nurses to serve in the military when there is no protection from sexual predatprs.
I agree about Johnson. I also would not not doubt he was involved in the death of JFK. Try to find the YouTube video of Johnsons mistress telling the interviewer what she knew about him before the assassination.
Dodie- In a war of attrition like Vietnam our troops appeared to be “dispensable” to LBJ’s administration. Points I make in my historical narrative, RECALL. Hope you read it.
Regarding the treatment of women in the military, your story represents another sordid chapter that needs to be addressed. I’m sorry you suffered such shameful behavior.