To see all of the posts in this series, please scroll to the bottom of this post. In a nationally televised address attempting to quell growing public dissent by explaining his administration’s failed efforts at negotiating “peace” with North Vietnam, LBJ shocked the world by announcing he would not run for reelection in November, 1968. […]
The Vietnam War Revisited- Part XVI- Coming Apart at the Seams
I recall 1968 as one of the most chaotic years of my lifetime. A year or so prior, I had come back to San Francisco to complete my surgical residency following my USAF air evacuation experience in Vietnam as a flight surgeon. I was greeted with a wild, mindboggling “cultural revolution”, full-blown anti-war protests, and […]
The Vietnam War Revisited- Part XV – No Way Out
Previous blogs discussed LBJ’s failed efforts to get the North Vietnamese to capitulate following Operation Rolling Thunder’s graduated bombing of targets in North Vietnam. Why did they fail? Our 7th Air Force pilots flying Wild Weasel missions quickly noted many vital targets were off-limits. They complained to command they were bombing the wrong targets, nonessential […]
The Vietnam War Revisited- Part XI – Two Earthshaking Events
1963 – A pivotal year hallmarked by two earthshaking events affecting the outcome of the Vietnam War. Diem never enjoyed a popular mandate to govern South Vietnam. That background set the stage for the first event. The CIA operative, Edward Lansdale propped up his rule thoughout most of the Fifties. Diem’s presidency favored Catholics, not […]
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part IV- Was It Worth It?
This series of blog posts is based off my reading of The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, by Barbara Tuchman. The Vietnamese repulsed Chinese invasions for millennia, resisted the Japanese in WWII, and defeated the French after almost a century of colonization of Indochina. I recount and document this history of the Mandarin […]
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part II – It Did Not Have to Be That Way
If you read my first blog with this title posted in January 2019, you have some understanding how that controversial war divided and polarized our society into political camps that persist over five decades later. We suffer a form of national PTSD as a consequence of the confusion and myths that Vietnam engendered. Negative societal […]
