Which foreign policy blunder was worse?

[dead0man]

It all depends on which way ones biases fall.  It's pretty easy to make damn good arguments for any of the three options.  I don't like either Texan who takes the brunt of the blame from the "other side", so that probably makes it easier.

I voted for Vietnam because it directly killed more people.  The Middle East was a basket case full of death and atrocities long before the West invaded Iraq, and it probably will be long after....whether we try and stick around to "fix our mess" or not.  Southeast Asia ain't exactly peaceful, but it's heaven compared to Southwest Asia.



plus LBJ was a bigger asshole than Dubya.

[dead0man]

Vietnam is seen as a disaster is because America LOST.

We didn't lose so much as quit.  I know I'm in the small minority with this view and it probably stems from internal biases of mine, but the military didn't lose.  They won all the major battles, had a silly K:D ratio, and could go anywhere they wanted to at any time.  The other side lost all the major battles, lost an insane amount of dudes and were extremely limited as to their mobility.  The American public lost their will to fight because it was on TV, every night, in their face.  I'm in no way saying this is a bad thing, this is a good thing.  We shouldn't have been there in the first place.

But we didn't lose, we quit while we were way ahead.