Would you have nuked North Vietnam?

[Erc]

The war in Vietnam wasn't an isolated event...it was clearly tied in with the rest of the Cold War, a fact which Johnson recognized.  He feared that if he invaded North Vietnam, the Chinese would intervene (just as they did in Korea), and that things could get messy and go nuclear.

He couldn't abandon S. Vietnam either (as that would have been politically unfeasible)...so he took the middle course, which was the worst thing he could have done...sat there and fight a pointless guerilla war on the Vietcong's terms.

Goldwater, in my opinion, would have handled it much better.  He'd probably have gone to the North Vietnamese and said: stop backing the Vietcong or you die.  And if they refused, he'd have invaded.  And since Goldwater was a bit trigger-happy when it came to the nuke, everyone else would have been very reluctant to get involved...

"They said that if I voted for Goldwater, we'd have a war in Vietnam.  Well, I voted for Goldwater, and that's what I got."