Promise Peace, Deliver War
Of Presidential Betrayal
U.S. presidents since Lyndon B. Johnson, if not before then (think here of Woodrow Wilson’s false promises in 1916 to keep America out of the Great War, known now as World War I), always promise peace, especially while running for office. Trump is the most recent example here. Yet whether Democrat or Republican, as soon as they become president, it’s war and more war. LBJ led America into the disastrous Vietnam War; Trump led America into the ongoing disaster of the Iran War; and the overseas wars just never seem to end, whether George W. Bush is issuing the orders or Barack Obama.
I had this thought as I re-read a comment from Mike Murry, a frequent Bracing Views contributor and an astute student of U.S. political and cultural history. Murry, a Vietnam War veteran, had this to say back in 2018:
Then, in the first semester of my senior hear in 1964, JFK’s successor as President: Lyndon Johnson, started his campaign for re-election, promising not to send us American boys to fight a war in Asia that Asian boys could fight themselves. He sounded just like Donald Trump did last year [January 2017], before assuming office. Johnson beat Goldwater in a landslide. The American people did not want another Korean War and made that overwhelmingly clear. But President Johnson betrayed us all, the way all U.S. Presidents now regularly do. Every one of them without exception preaches peace to win election. Then they invariably give their generals the wars that they demand. It happens every time. The stunning cynicism of that betrayal by President Johnson, I think, severed once and for all time any sense of “patriotism” that I might once have felt for the “America” of my youth. From that point on, I became an alien in my own land. My government would later send me abroad for the worst possible reasons, to do the most unnecessary and shameful of things. That same me never came home again. Someone else did. A damaged, but better man, I think. But much less an “American” one.
Today, the most important act to restore America is to end these needless and disastrous wars overseas. And not just overseas but here at home, as Trump promotes the malicious and mendacious notion of an enemy within, often labeled as the “radical left” with “terroristic” tendencies.
Nothing, I think, is more important to America’s health now and in the future than ending wars that waste so much, that kill and destroy so many, and that estrange our own citizen-soldiers from their country.
It was on Eisenhower's watch that the US started funding (to tune of 80% I've read!) France's doomed effort to conquer the indomitable people of Viet Nam. Thus it was JFK who started direct US combat troop involvement in VN, not LBJ. I absolutely reject the myth perpetuated by Kennedy's admirers that he planned to end US involvement in SE Asia after being re-elected in 1964. In my view, JFK was no less a war hawk/Cold Warrior than his predecessors or successors. He foolishly signed off on the scheme prepped by Nixon--again, thank Ike!--to send anti-Castro Cubans on a catastrophic mission to "re-take" Cuba for the benefit of US Big Business and the Mafia. Some hero, that JFK! :-(
A thought experiment to support the arguments made in Bill's post.
For any of the Presidents over the last 60 years (or longer), replace the 'winner' of the presidential election with the 'loser'. How much difference would there have been? (And that difference does not have to be better - looking at you, John McCain).
Thinking back, the only possible change I see might have been if GHW Bush had beaten 'Slick Willie' Clinton in 1992. He might have slowed or stopped NATO's expansion eastward. But even then, I'm not sure if he would have been allowed to have any say.