Opinion of Lyndon Johnson

[Landslide Lyndon]

For me, the most fascinating presidential personality.
 
Epic FF for the passing of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act. He did what was right, even though he was fully aware it would harm irreparably his party. And I agree with Hillary on that: it's because of him, more than anybody else, that Barack Obama sits in the Oval Office as we speak.

He botched Vietnam of course. But then again as one of my compatriots said ''Little men make little mistakes. Big men make big mistakes''.

P.S. Forgot to add the poll.

[Landslide Lyndon]

From what I see conservatives hate him even more than Bill Clinton.
Now that's something that I never expected to see.

[Landslide Lyndon]

He botched Vietnam of course. But then again as one of my compatriots said ''Little men make little mistakes. Big men make big mistakes''.

So was Iraq a big mistake or little mistake?

An idiotic one.

[Landslide Lyndon]

He botched Vietnam of course. But then again as one of my compatriots said ''Little men make little mistakes. Big men make big mistakes''.

So was Iraq a big mistake or little mistake?

An idiotic one.

Which was a bigger mistake, Vietnam or Iraq?

They were equally bad.

The problem is that Johnson didn't start the war, he escalated it. And he could at least invoke the real communist threat for doing it. Unlike W.'s imaginary WMDs and link with 9/11.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Correct, it was started by the French and JFK (and to a lesser extent, Ike).  How do you feel about those entities?  LBJ just took the ball and ran with it.

Extremely negative opinion about French colonialism. They should have had the good sense to leave peacefully after WWII, like the British did from India and Burma. Instead they created a mess that resulted eventually in a Holocaust-like genocide and spanned over 40 years.

I don't know what to think about Kennedy. There are all kind of conspiracy theories that one of the reasons for his demise was his decision to disengage from Vietnam. Of course he is guilty of supporting a corrupt dictatorship until then.

Also, wasn't the Communist threat, at least in the case of Vietnam, imaginary as well?

And then there is this:
South Vietnamese civilian dead: 1,581,000*
Cambodian civilian dead: ~700,000*
North Vietnamese civilian dead: ~3,000,000*
Laotian civilian dead: ~50,000*

Iraq War ~1,000,000 (total)

   

The Viet Cong were very much real, as was their support by the North Vietnamese regime and it's allies. You can argue that they weren't particularly threatening to the US and it's interests, but they didn't exist only in Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's wild imagination like Saddam's WMDs, neither were they manufactured by the CIA, like the Prague meeting.

And the numbers would be equally horrifying even if they were a fraction of what you mention. After all the Indochina conflict took place over several devades and involved at least four countries.

[Landslide Lyndon]

How was Iraq dumber than Vietnam? 

Because Bush should have learned from LBJ's mistake.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Nobody for LBJ to have learned from I guess.

Obviously, since this was the first time the US lost a war.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Obviously US Presidents can only learn from the mistakes of past US Presidents.

If they are smart enough.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Each of your posts just confuses me more and more.

What's so confusing?

G. H. W. Bush learned from Johnson's mistake and stayed out of Iraq. His son apparently wasn't that smart.

[Landslide Lyndon]

You think that's what kept Daddy Bush out of Iraq?  Odd.

Anyway, you start out by saying Bush should have known better because of how stupid LBJ was.  I question why you don't fault LBJ for not learning that lesson from somebody else in history.  You counter that Presidents can only learn from mistakes of past Presidents (but only if they are smart enough), as if mistakes by other people couldn't be learned from.

I know it's easy to make up excuses for our own, but you guys have raised this to an art form with LBJ.

So saying that LBJ was stupid is a defense of him?
What exactly would be an indictment? That God told him to escalate the war, like W. said about Iraq?

And if you can enlighten us about Poppy Bush's motives for not invading Iraq and toppling Saddam you are more than welcome. Because silly me was under the impression that he knew that such a course of action would create an unmanageable mess, not unlike the one in Vietnam.

[Landslide Lyndon]

So saying that LBJ was stupid is a defense of him?

Wait, you haven't been defending him.  See, I told you I was confused

Not my fault if you're slow. From my first post I said that Vietnam was the biggest stain on his legacy and the he really screwed up the war.

Bush didn't topple Saddam in 1991 because he assumed (incorrectly) the Iraqis would do it for him, it had nothing to do with Vietnam. 

First time I hear that. And if he wanted the Iraqis to topple Saddam he would have assisted them at least covertly. He did nothing like that.
The truth is, he didn't care about Saddam, as long as he was ousted from Kuwait. And perhaps he considered him a useful check to the growing influence of Iran. So your theory doesn't make much sense.

..and before you or somebody else jumps on that and says "that's exactly what Vietnam was!" I ask you to again recall the death totals and the way we left.

Your argument is disingenuous. As I mentioned the Indochina victims spanned over three decades and four countries.
And of course you conveniently forget that warfare has changed drastically since then. We are talking about an ultra-modern professional army now, not some kids drafted out of their high schools and armed with a rifle. To expect casualties like the ones in Vietnam shows ignorance. 

[Landslide Lyndon]

Excellent point.  The military didn't lose Vietnam, America did.  And America was right, it was a pointless bloody war.  America was wrong to turn their back on the troops though.  That is a lesson America seems to have learned.  We need to keep letting our govt know we've learned this lesson because the govt has, in a few cases, already turned their back on the troops.

Haven't you had enough of the ''Dolschtoss'' theory the last 40 years?

And by the way, from the wiki article you posted it seems to me that the whole ''Iraqis will topple Saddam for us'' was more wishful thinking than anything else.

[Landslide Lyndon]

He was very much both in my opinion. This is a good example of why HP-FF is a false dichothomy. Johnson was the embodiment of a horrible person. But he was also a freedom fighter in many respects.

That's exactly the reason why I think his life is prime material for a fascinating movie.