* starting to remind me of LBJ ..

[Clinton Crusader]

Anyone old enough or has read up on their history/seen documentaries knows LBJ was half insane over Vietnam. * is starting to remind me of this. The whole thing a fucking disaster, getting worse every day, more and more people hating it, voicing it, protesting it.

Maybe Im just exhausted but Im really starting to see similarities...

:kick:

[Snow]

1. You're exhausted.....

LBJ was tons more intelligent, &
he was actually running things (not Rove or God)

[sandnsea]

16. And could multi-task

Could actually get some major domestic programs passed. He was wrong on Vietnam, but everything else he did makes it all a wash in my book.

[tsuki]

17. No he was

not. He relied on the traitorist lies of Westmoreland and McNamara to formulate policy.

[maine_raptor]

2. Read my sig line

and the similarities are there.

[Lefta Dissenter]

3. OMG

I just posted the other night that the footage in "Going Upriver" of Johnson at the podium looks exactly like bush!!! posture, head thrust forward... it was scary! :scared:

[Jacobin]

4. Naaaah, not even close, IMHO

Johnson had a conscience. He was an actual human being. Protesters outside the WH day and night screaming and chanting "hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today", HUNDREDS of body bags a week, civil war about to break out, thousands going to Canada, kids being SHOT AND KILLED on campuses in protests.

It hasn't gotten that bad for IraqNam, but it will.

[Philostopher]

5. Well, except the thing that dogged LBJ about VN

was that he actually felt a sense of responsibility and guilt, and that's what drove him off the deep end.

Bush* has no such conscience problems. Bush* has no conscience. He's just afraid he'll lose because 'other people' have f*cked Iraq up for him. He'll never accept any culpability for the quagmire he pushed to start. Nothing is ever his fault.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

6. LBJ stepped down, realizing he'd lost the confidence of the people.

Big difference.

[flyingfysh]

7. the sad thing about LBJ

is that except for the Vietnam boondoggle, he was actually a pretty good president who did lots of good things.

[dogtag]

8. LBJ had the good grace to bow out of running for a second (elected) term

He devoted his time to trying to deal with the war instead of mounting a campaign. He agonized over the war, unlike Shrub, who is only now finding it somewhat inconvenient.

Otherwise, it is looking more and more like Vietnam every day. The good news is that Kerry won't repeat the same mistakes that were made then.

[ZombieNixon]

9. I disagree.

With regard to the situation in the war, maybe, but LBJ actually has a sense of guilt. Remember in 2nd debate, W was unable to say he had made any mistakes?

[efhmc]

10. He actually cared about the soldiers. This man? has no heart.

[Clinton Crusader]

11. I dont think I expressed it correctly...

I totally understand (as much as I really dont like him) LBJ had a conscience of sorts, had enough sense to step down, after the lies of Tonkin, escalation, etc. Im not saying the SITUATION is as bad, Im saying the way he LOOKED, drawn, tired, giving up, exhausted. * looks fucking AWFUL lately. THAT'S the comparison. The two wars and circumstances, the way they looked, trying to convince everyone (LBJ for a TIME) things were hunky dory, it will get better, we will win, etc.

I shouldnt have started this thread, lol.

:kick:

[sr_pacifica]

14. Bush is looking awful but not in the way LBJ did

LBJ's face showed a man who cared. Bush is looking awful as a man crazed with delusions about himself, America, the war---everything!

[sleepystudent]

12. ugh...

leave LBJ alone. He was a *great* president that got Vietnam handed to him by the Kennedy administration and was railroaded into staying there by JFK's old cronies. Without LBJ, no Civil Rights Act, no Great Society, no War on Poverty(something we really need to do battle with). I think history will judge him kindly as one of the great true liberal presidents ever. And one of the most tragic. But because he's from Texas, he just can't do anything right in some people's eyes and it's easy for them to reduce him to just one word "Vietnam". Bush isn't fit to lick LBJ's boots.

[Clinton Crusader]

13. You have NO IDEA what you're talking about

JFK's cronies???? God, please! That's NOT the case AT ALL. Why is it he signed an executive order before JFK was cold escalating the war? Sure he got alot of things passed, riding on JFK's coat tails, using his programs. JFK was OUT of Vietnam by Christmas 1965.

You should read up on the period a bit more.

Yeah, yeah, he was a Dem, but he was not the image he portrayed of this good ol down home boy.

Where do you think Vietnam started? Try EISENHOWER.

Look, he's not my fave guy in the world for MANY reasons, so Ill leave it at that and not reply and enflame this any longer.

:kick:

[sr_pacifica]

15. Eisenhower---thank you

For clearing up that popular misconception that the Vietnam War started with John F. Kennedy.

[Snow]

19. *Snort!* And Teddy Roosevelt started the Korean War

by supporting the Japanese take-over. But you have a point.

[pretzel4gore]

18. right, but 'nam was forced on JFK too

and for those of you who missed those years (still unborn) RFK and Martin Luther King had been assassinated early '68, they were liberal dem heroes even then...so much of the energy was lost with them... and you're right about LBJ....hell today we'd freak over a politician with Johnson's guts, his wit (he once said he not fire J edgar hoover cus he wanted him inside tent 'pissing out' rather then outside 'pissing in') and his texan charm too! christ could we use his like right now!