Sunday, November 22, 2009

LBJ and the Vietnam War

I hear that Bill Moyers is giving up his weekly program on PBS. That is a real shame, because he has some of the best and most informative programs on television.

In any case, last Friday evening Moyers presented excerpts from telephone conversations that President Lyndon Johnson had with a variety of Senators and advisors on the issue of Vietnam. What is so interesting is that so many of the Senators, including the southern ones like Dick Russell and John Stennis, were for pulling out of Vietnam. But Johnson seems determined to not only maintain the force of military advisors until the 64 election, but then 'get in' full force.

What I wasn't aware of before Moyer's program was how hesitant the Senate was to commit combat troops, and how Johnson worked it around to do just that. From other reading I'm doing, it seems clear to me that his many Texas political friends and contributors--many of them standing to gain financially from a war in Vietnam, such as Herman and George Brown, of the now infamous Brown & Root corporation--were urging him to go in, along with the military.

Ah yes, the military-industrial complex and their compliant politicians.

See it here.

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