Opinion of Scoop Jackson

[War on Want]

Preventing communism from spreading to South Vietnam = Not worth a single dead US soldier. No oppressive regime like South Vietnam is ever worth a single American life no matter what the alternative is. Diem and his gang should've just've been told to go to hell like NATO European allies did.

I'm guessing you don't think it was worth in Korea either?

That was a UN-approved action against aggression by the north while Vietnam was just the US attempting to continue France's ridiculous colonial war.

We were attempting to preserve a non-Communist government, which is what mattered.

OK, so lets force thousands of our citizens to go to a hell hole and likely die so we can prevent a despotic Communist government from replacing a despotic non-Communist government. Brilliant! Wonderful cause! Especially considering the despotic non-Communist government DID not survive and where was the stack of dominos that were going to fall?

If LBJ had not attempted to balance guns and butter, and had gone into the war full scale, fewer American lives would have been lost.

But why go to war? You haven't answered that. The Vietnamese people clearly wanted Minh.

[War on Want]

Exactly, there had always been mass public support for the Communists in Vietnam.

[War on Want]

That's because there never were fair and free elections there.

And you still buy the Gulf of Tonkin incident? It was obviously faked.

That was a problem, but it doesn't justify what the Communists did.

Yes, I still believe the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

What the hell does that mean?