Further Food For thought---- Johnson made two monumental Vietnam blunders. First he failed to get a declaration of war, which he could have easily had. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which LBJ regarded as the Functional equivalent of a formal declaration of war. was passed unanimously by the House and there were only two dissenting votes cast in the Senate. This would have altered the judicial state of the nation, exactly as the Founding Fathers had intended. The Founding Fathers were all veterans of the American Revolutionary War and knew just how hard it had been to maintain public support during their war (At one point, 80% of the American people were against that War. If the Founding Fathers had bowed to public opinion, today we would still be British subjects not American citizens). A formal declaration of war would have allowed for control of the press. If Vietnam had been fought under WW II conditions (during WW II Congress formally declared war) folks who gave aid and comfort to the enemy, people in the ilk of Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite, would have been charged with treason, tried, found guilty (their treasonous acts were on film / video tape), and then hanged by the neck until dead. Second, LBJ exempted college kids from the draft. Presto! The nations campuses immediately filled with dastardly little dodgers and became boiling cauldrons of violent rampaging dissent. The dodgers knew they were acting cowardly and could appease their conscience only if they could convince themselves that the war was somehow immoral. Once the immoral escape concept emerged and became creditable, it spread across the college campuses and out into the main streets of America like wild fire. Miraculously, acts of cowardice were transformed into respectable acts of defiance. Anti-war protests and violent demonstrations became the accepted norm. However, when one goes back and scrutinizes those anti-war demonstrations, one quickly finds they were not really against the war. They were only against the side fighting the Communists! This of course turns out to be the side which had the army, from which the dodgers were dodging. The most glaring example of the existence of the dodging guilt syndrome can be found in a statement made by the ranking head dodger himself. When asked for his reaction to McNamaras book In Retrospect, Clintons spontaneous response was I feel vindicated. (of his cowardly act of dodging the draft). Clinton is a lawyer and understands the use of the English language very well. For one to feel vindicated, as opposed to being vindicated, one must first have been, by definition, feeling guilty.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 11:18:00 +0000
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