The main reason why we stayed in Vietnam so long (if you believe what was written in the Pentagon Papers) was that no sitting President wanted to ever be the FIRST President to sit in office during an American military defeat. It was pride. Sadly, Gerald Ford now holds that infamous distinction.eCat wrote: ↑Mon Jun 23, 2025 7:52 pm watching a documentary on the Vietnam War.
as early as 1967 McNamara and Westmoreland knew America couldn't win. McNamara told LBJ to get America out.
LBJ was pissed because he thought McNamara was the reason America was in Vietnam. Westmoreland told him they had dropped more bombs on the Vietcong than we had on Berlin or Tokyo and their numbers of forced increased.
LBJ lied to the American public, saying they were winning the battles overwhelmingly because he wanted to get elected. He pulled out in '68 after he realized the war had made him so unpopular he'd lose to Nixon.
In 67, 72% of America supported the war until the Tet Offensive, primarily because they were lied to.
Seems like Bush followed a similar playbook on Iraq
Robert McNamara was consistent in his hatred of Communism. He believed in containment and domino theory, the two single biggest reasons why he felt it was essential that we stay in Vietnam until we win it. But you are correct about him going back to LBJ and saying it couldn't be won. There were not enough boots on the ground. So LBJ approved McNamara to go ahead with this fucking thing!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000
The idea was, put 350,000+ Forest Gumps in the field and we would overwhelm the NVA and the Viet Kong. McNamara thought that it would be a two-fer-one, win the war AND give these village idiots a chance to better themselves and give themselves a future when they came back from the field. All it did was spike our body count way too high and get a whole bunch of morons addicted to heroin and pot. Nixon fixed all this in 1972, brought troop strength down from 400,000 morons down to 20,000 elites and proceeded to carpet bomb the living shot out of the North. That won, because Nixon had these brand new inventions for the US Navy by the name of F-14 Tomcat. It was an unbeatable aircraft in the air, total air superiority in Vietnam. Our B-52s were able to fly fearlessly over Hanoi Jane and the North.
Paris Peace Accords in 1973 and Vietnam looked like Korea. God Bless Nixon.
Then Watergate and it all came tumbling down.
