This is a tale of two Texans. Please understand, I love Texas. I
always have a good old time when I visit the Lone Star State.
Texans are some of the friendliest, most warm-hearted folks in all
America.
But Texas also gave our great nation two of our most
dishonorable presidents.
This is a tale of two Texans. Please understand, I love Texas. I always have a good old time when I visit the Lone Star State. Texans are some of the friendliest, most warm-hearted folks in all America.
But Texas also gave our great nation two of our most dishonorable presidents.
The first of these White House scoundrels is Lyndon Baines Johnson. LBJ is No. 1 on my list of the ultimate worst American presidents. His deception of Congress and the American people sent more than 58,000 American service men and women to die in Vietnam.
LBJ, in my view, is as responsible for their tragic deaths as if he’d put a gun to each of their heads and pulled the trigger. Harsh words. True words.
Here’s the tragic tale. Forty years ago, LBJ was hungry for a fight. And the folks he wanted to fight were the North Vietnamese. Why? Because they were the Communists. The Asian conflict had been simmering for America since at least 1955.
So LBJ devised a plan.
The U.S. Navy and CIA trained South Vietnamese commandos for a covert mission to demolish radar stations on two North Vietnamese islands in the Gulf of Tonkin. Just like some redneck bar brawler, LBJ was winding up the North Vietnamese.
On Aug. 2, 1964, the day after the raids, the American destroyer Maddox was sent within 10 to 11 miles off the North Vietnamese coast – and about four miles from the islands.
Fearful of more attacks, the North Vietnamese sent three patrol boats to close in on the Maddox. The Maddox was the first to fire – warning shots. The patrol boats responded by firing back torpedoes – which missed the destroyer.
The captain of the Maddox radioed the nearby carrier Ticonderoga. Three fighter planes flew to the rescue. One North Vietnamese patrol boat was sunk. The other two withdrew. The battle lasted about 30 minutes.
LBJ wanted to hit back then and there, but Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at that point recommended not to.
“I want to leave an impression we’re going to be firm as hell,” LBJ told McNamara. “We want to leave the impression if you shoot at us, you’re gonna get hit.”
It’s called Texas swagger, and LBJ was full of it.
LBJ ordered the Maddox and a second destroyer, the Turner Joy, to return to Tonkin on Aug. 4 to “reassert freedom of international waters.” Navy officers on board were ordered to destroy codes and secret documents. They were being a set up by LBJ. They knew they were sitting ducks.
“We were sent up there to be attacked again,” John Baley, the Maddox’s communications officer, said years later.
Were they attacked? No one can say for sure. The seas were rough that night. The sailors were on edge. They had had little sleep. Sonar men reported possible torpedoes in the water. In the chaos, people panicked.
Fighter jets from the U.S.S. Constitution went up to look. They reported no North Vietnamese boats in sight. A Navy Intelligence listening post in Saigon also concluded no Vietnamese boats attacked the destroyers. They were in port that dark and stormy night.
“The Navy is shooting at whales,” one Navy officer said. “This is a non-event as far as the North Vietnamese were concerned.”
Despite the lack of solid evidence, LBJ aimed to have his fight. Despite official Navy reports that a second attack never took place, he went on national TV and told a Texas-size whooper: “Unprovoked,” the North Vietnamese attacked the Maddox and the Turner Joy.
Unfortunately, too few leaders asked LBJ the right questions. And McNamara blatantly lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the press. He insisted no covert operations provoked the incident.
With a unanimous vote in the House, and only two dissenting votes in the Senate, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed on Aug. 7. It gave LBJ the power “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”
LBJ used the resolution to scale up direct attacks on North Vietnam. He escalated the war and led the U.S. into a deadly quicksand trap. The Texas charmer kept telling Americans we were winning the war in Vietnam. We just needed to stay the course, he insisted.
We stayed the course – and 58,000 Americans paid the price.
It’s too bad our current Texan president never learned from LBJ’s costly lesson. Now with Iraq, we again sink into deadly quicksand.
As with Vietnam, Congress and the American people were sold a war on a false premise. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, our current Texan in the White House told us with a straight face. Iraq is responsible for 9/11, was his second whooper.
We believed our dishonorable Commander-in-Chief. Scary. Even scarier is the fact the current death rate of Iraq is higher than it was in Vietnam at a similar point in that war. By the end of 1965 – a year and a half after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution – a total of 636 Americans were killed in action in Vietnam. The current Iraq war has consumed more than 1,000 American lives during the same span of time.
America should bear in mind two lessons from the sad tale of LBJ.
First: before we go to war, let us be patient; let us wisely wait until we’re 100 percent certain why we’re fighting.
Second: when you’re heading in the wrong direction, let go of your ego and change course.
