I like domestic LBJ as much as the next liberal. But, acting like Vietnam just happened to him, as if he were an innocent bystander, is ignorant of history. Check out Doris Kearns Goodwin's biography of him or wait for the next Caro book (fingers crossed we'll get it some day). Until then, you're derailing the thread.
Bush was not a good president but Trump will be the best thing to ever happen to his legacy because now people will think "well he wasn't a very good president but at least he conducted himself like a respectable adult unlike you know who." I think about it this way: you had a boss who was a nice guy but just wasn't very effective and made some poor decisions but now your current boss is a self-absorbed lunatic so you find yourself longing for the days when your problems at work were much simpler.
i have read Goodwin's biography on LBJ, as well as books/articles on the Viet Nam war by David Halberstam and Edgar Snow. check out my post again
I should give him more credit to his aid package to Africa. It wasn't perfect but what is, and it helped out foreign people rather than raining death upon them. He had to handle 911. I can't imagine trump handling 911 without him plugging his yuuuge still standing 6 star towers. Everyone expects Lincoln but there were 5 other guys who punted the issue before him. I have a bigger issue with the admin portraying the dissenters as lunatics and traitors to the flag. As a democracy, its the civilians duty to stand up to an elected leader. Its like we've deferred the responsibility of that voice to soldiers in a post Nuremburg twist. When this was happening, Iremember reading an article about how the neocons were planning to use Iraq as a client state for a Domino Theory of sorts. By installing a democracy there, it's neighbors would start crumbling under pressure and become democracies too. Back then, I thought it was a decent idea to try out. The 911 terrorists were more or less home grown inside our slimy allies. What better way to break a 60 year impasse... Unlike the Arab Spring, which came from the ground up and was more triggered by famine than day to day oppression, the dominoes were meant to come from the top down and were to be highly predictable. You can expect nothing less from Vietnam ere draft dodging culture warriors whobelieve in the revisionist dreams of the incompetent generals who delivered us disaster after disaster in the first place.. It'll happen with Iraq (1 and/or 2) and Afghanistan. Americans quickly forget and like a war or two because the odds are in our favor, its not boring like 7day football, and the shitshow in Washington is becoming more scary than sitcom funny.
I think you'd like last night's Frontline episode. Toppling the GCC monarchies, especially considering the tenuous relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Wahhabi clerics, would create a vacuum that Iran would quickly fill in places like Saudi Arabia's east coast. For as awful as they are, the Saudi royals are the devils we know.
Cheney was the true evil in that administration. Bush was just in over his head. I liked Bush in a "wouldn't mind having a beer with him and shooting the breeze" kind of way, but for the most part I was dissatisfied with his job performance as President. (I generally felt the same way about Obama, btw.)
I object to the idea that Bus was a good guy and it was the guys around him that were bad. I think that's some rationalizing bs. All those other guys derived their power from the President, Bush, and could be dismissed by Bush at any time. They took the reputational damage because somehow Bush's charisma is such that no one wants to hold a grudge against him. I get that. I like Bush too. But I think he lacked humility (especially at the beginning) and he seriously lacked wisdom. So all his 'good intentions' ended up getting us to do some very bad things -- an unjust war in Iraq, a prolonged occupation in Afghanistan, denying due process to prisoners, torture, domestic spying. I like him better than Trump, but I don't miss him. And I think it is still possible that Bush will have done more long term harm to our country than Trump will do (which isn't a credit to Trump, btw, if he does less damage it will only be because he isn't as competent as Bush).
Fair assessment, but Bush did not try to think for himself first at every turn, which Trump is doing. Like you said, if he could screw the country or anyone for that matter and benefit himself, he would do it in a heart beat.
Can you believe this is the same party that condemned Comrade Vladimir Putin. Oh how they hated Putin and all of glorious CCCP. In my motherland we have good saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me..you can't get fooled again.
As for now, Bush is better than Trump and Obama. He is a good man who wanted to do his job, but was not smart enough to have Cheney as his VP to run the country. Overall, he is ok, not bad at all.
Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie, LBJ used that to turn it into an even bigger mess and conflagrate a generational and cultural warfare. Unfortunately everyone was a WWII vet so anyone in office would have rationalized its continuation. I just had to stipulate before fully conceding your point that Operation Iraqi Freedom was literally woven out of whole cloth. And comprehensively avoidable, whereas Vietnam at the time probably seemed strategically similar to Korea or Germany or something. Also in furtherance of your point remember that W. commuted Scooter Libby's sentence after he outed Valerie Plame in retaliation for Joe Wilson fully debunking that idiotic Niger Yellow Cake uranium nonsense. Bush was a not horrible governor at a time when the Texas Democrats were old and traditionalist enough that he could work with them; but I think his public affability is being mistaken for ethics or even good intent.
I made some Bush 43 jokes back in the day, but yeah, the Bush family are all good decent people. As you implied, perhaps with better intentioned advisors, Bush 43 would have been seen in a much better light.
unsolicited corroboration of my point that LBJ, after inheriting the mess in Viet Nam, escalated the war efforts there. this point was made w rich details in David Halberstam's book, "The Best and Brightest" W was the POTUS, he could have easily fired his advisors. but he didn't. he was way over his head
Your argument implied that only Bush lied in furthering his war aims, while I noted that LBJ built his expansion of the United States' involvement in Vietnam on the lie of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Furthermore, whatever LBJ inherited, he took ownership of with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and expanded to full-scale deployment well beyond his predecessors' scope.
i posted that W concocted a lie to start a war. LBJ, in help from Robert McNamara, lied to the American public to justify escalating war efforts in Viet Nam. I blame LBJ more than his predecessors, cos he was VP to JFK and knew what a mess VN was. yet, he lied to escalate the war efforts there.
Did you know that there are several international arrest warrants against W. to this day? For example, Bush had to cancel a trip to Geneva a couple of years ago out of fear to be taken to custody. I still remember very well how each and every one who knew just a little bit about the Middle East advised against the Iraq invasion and how Bush would destabilize not just Iraq, but the whole region. Of course they were right and the people in Iraq and Syria have to pay the price for Bush's irresponsibilites to this day, not to speak of innocent people who were kidnapped and tortured. The backlash is far from over. Just because he's now surpassed in ignorance and incompetence doesn't make him somewhat a decent president or person. Too bad he'll never face court because he's hiding behind his home country's power. But history will condemn him as the war criminal that he is.
WNBA, you are wrong. Bush is a decent man although he is not that very smart, but he is not a divider to drive the country to chaos.
