The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Sixties Flashback: ‘Hey, Hey, LBJ! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?’

Posted on | April 12, 2014 | 44 Comments

That was one of the slogans chanted by anti-Vietnam War radicals at protests circa 1967-68. Another one was, “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! The NLF is gonna win!” NLF was the National Liberation Front, otherwise known as the Vietcong, so that the Left was cheering for terrorists long before 9/11 and the Bush-era madness of Ward Churchill, et al.

The truth about the 1960s — especially the pro-Communist, anti-American allegiances of the so-called “peace movement” — is nearly forgotten now, and no one under 40 knows anything at all about it. Our education system is such a complete failure that the past is a tabula rasa for most young people, whose knowledge of history ranges from minimal to non-existent. And most of what young people think they “know” about the 1960s is substantially wrong. Anti-war protesters were not seeking “peace” in Vietnam, they were seeking Communist victory, and the reason they hated Lyndon Baines Johnson was because he was in favor of defeating the Communists.

It was therefore with astonishment that I watched MSNBC Thursday attempt to retrieve and repair LBJ’s reputation as a liberal hero. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Listening to hour after hour of paeans to LBJ’s wonders, I almost wished that someone might put the 1968 versions of Tom Hayden and Stokeley Carmichael into a time machine, and transport them to the MSNBC set where they could denounce Lyndon Johnson as the morally bankrupt old fraud he was.

There was once a sort of bipartisan consensus about this: Left-wingers hated LBJ for fighting the Vietnam war; right-wingers hated him because he wouldn’t fight to win in Vietnam. Quite a few young anti-war radicals of the ’60s grew up to become conservative Republicans and Reagan voters; the one thing they never became, however, was the kind of liberals who supported LBJ. This past week’s weird carnival of liberal Lyndon-love was offensive to me. Left-winger Michael Kazin also had about as much of it as he could stand:

LBJ, wrote my friend E.J. Dionne, presided over “a consensual period when a large and confident majority believed that national action could expand opportunities and alleviate needless suffering. The earthily practical Johnson showed that finding realistic ways of creating a better world is what Americans are supposed to do.” Not a word about those countless people in Southeast Asia whose lives reached their unnatural limits when they encountered an American infantryman with an M-16 or a bomb dropped from a B-52.
Of course, to remember what the United States, during LBJ’s tenure, did to Vietnam and to the young Americans who served there does not cancel out his domestic achievements. But to portray him solely as a paragon of empathy, a liberal hero with a minor flaw or two, is not merely a feat of willful amnesia. It is deeply immoral.

You can read the whole thing at the New Republic. Of course, Kazin is a Commie-loving pinko traitor, but at least he has the intellectual integrity to tell the truth about Lyndon Johnson.

 

Category: Culture, History

Comments

44 Responses to “Sixties Flashback: ‘Hey, Hey, LBJ! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?’”

  1. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 1:58 pm

    The US military committed far more acts that could be considered terrorism in Vietnam than the NVA, the NLF, and every other paramilitary they had set ,.

    Be that as it may, in his recent memoir, Robert Mcnamra, the architect of the Vietnam war, said the Pentagon knew it was unwinnable in 1963, but yet fought it anyway.

  2. richard mcenroe
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:08 pm

    Now we need downchecks back.

  3. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:18 pm

    Tell me – this is just an observation – it seems you enjoy being an ignorant asshole – am I right?

  4. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:20 pm

    History revisionism at it’s worst. With a huge dollop of ignorance thrown in.

    Vietnam was unwinnable because the politicians wouldn’t let the military fight the war the way war should be fought: quick and decisively. Destroy the Viet Cong by destroying their logistical support, by invading North Vietnam and Cambodia.

    And LBJ set that policy. The blood of hundreds of thousands are on his hands.

  5. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:22 pm

    Stacy wrote: Anti-war protesters were not seeking “peace” in Vietnam, they were seeking Communist victory, and the reason they hated Lyndon Baines Johnson was because he was in favor of defeating the Communists.

    Also, many of them didn’t want to be drafted and they gladly became Dupes for the actual Communists who ran the movement. A side benefit/incentive for that majority was all the Free Love and drugs – Ewige Blumenkraft, indeed.

  6. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:23 pm

    And McNamara’s. And, despite his best efforts, that blood will never be washed away in the river of History.

  7. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:23 pm

    It is indeed refreshing to see a small amount of intellectual integrity amongst the left.

    With emphasis on small. Anyone who thinks Johnson had positive “domestic achievements” is not being honest by any means.

  8. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:25 pm

    Especially considering McNamara’s micromanagement, delusional analyzes, and social engineering.

  9. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:36 pm

    No, it was unwinnable, because we underestimated Vietnamese resolve. And if you’re saying we “held back” in Vietnam then you must be a crackpot. Short of genocide we threw everything we had at the NVA, and NLF, committed about as many war crimes as the Nazis, and still they kept fighting. And why? Because they refused to be colonized again by a western power. The Vietnam War was tantamount to our war for independence, making us the red coats. Right and left have come around to the idea that the Vietnam war was wrong, and a disaster, not to mention one of the USA’s darkest, most venal chapters, which for evermore has divided the country.

  10. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:37 pm

    I should ask that of you? I already know the answer though. History has already shown us that Vietnam was the wrong war. The only people still arguing otherwise are morons.

  11. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:38 pm

    Yeah, the USSR ran the anti-war movement. Ok, J. Edgar.

  12. Stupid Republic
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:40 pm

    The Apollo program was perhaps the greatest project ever executed by mankind. It had to be cut short in part because of the costs of the Vietnam War, which was escalated by LBJ’s conflation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident into a full blown war.

    Johnson lied, and NASA died.

  13. chrismalllory
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:53 pm

    Every American who died in Viet Nam or Korea died in vain and their blood was wasted. Nothing in either nation had any thing to do with defending America.

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  15. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:58 pm

    Really?

    If we didn’t “hold back”, where was the ground invasion of North Vietnam? We bombed the living hell out of it. Why not a full ground invasion? Wouldn’t that be the perfect ending to your communist fantasy, with the US rampaging through North Vietnam all the way up to China?

    Answer: because the politicians didn’t want to escalate the Vietnam war. That’s why it was officially a “police action”. Congress never declared war.

    You’re welcome.

  16. ZZZZZZZZ
    April 12th, 2014 @ 2:59 pm

    zzzzzz…….

  17. Anamika
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:01 pm

    At least the US had the option of declaring victory and pulling out of the Vietnam quagmire that they created almost single-handedly. Iraq, unfortunately, did not offer the same option, although Dubya and his handlers (Chaney and Rove) declared victory a little prematurely with that “Mission Accomplished” aircraft carrier landing bullshit.. Then again, since Jesus took the time to speak to Bush directly, and not go through his intermediary, Pat Robertson, “Operation Iraqi Freedom” just has to be divinely ordained. The problem is, nobody bothered to tell Allah to get on the same page as the Lord. The Democrats voted for the war, too. Generally speaking, the entire political apparatus in America has supported it. Even the press has been complicit in the war. We cannot lay the blame at Bush’s feet alone…There are vanishingly few clean hands among the politicians, but I see a clear distinction between those complicit after being deliberately (and unrelentingly) deceived and the inner circle of the deceiver-in-chief himself. Ymmv, of course.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:02 pm

    Reveling in your ignorance, son, is no way to go through Life.

  19. ZZZZZZZZ
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:19 pm

    zzzzzzzz……

  20. Bob Belvedere
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:29 pm

    Even my sleep apnea goes away when Anamika’s around.

  21. K-Bob
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:45 pm

    Mark Levin tore the bark off off barack for his idiotic hagiography of LBJ at the Democrat Voter Plantation Head Massa Library. Scoop has it.

    LBJ was a ruinous president. Detroit was a city when he took office. When he left it was a strange sort of refugee camp, where the actual refugees were able to leave.

    And a huge percentage of the Men who came home from Vietnam never really came home.

    If barack loves LBJ so much, he should ask to share his coffin when he dies.

  22. K-Bob
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:49 pm

    Hey McVlad, I thought I told you never to come in here.

  23. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:53 pm

    No, you’re just parroting nonsense. Perhaps KGB agents infiltrated the anti-war movement, but they certainly weren’t running it. it was Americans who knew the war was not only morally wrong, but a disaster on every other level, also.

  24. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:57 pm

    Yeah, great strategy. Instead of 58k dead Americans we could have had maybe 258k? Or maybe 358K? And instead of 3 million dead vietnamese, most of whom were civilians and hated the US more than the NLF, we could have had 10 million? Maybe we could have even stayed there until the mid 80’s? Look, Rambo, the war was unwinnable because we had no reason to be there, and our soldiers knew it, there was no support back home, and the Vietnamese were ready to fight until the last man for THEIR homeland. NOT OURS! Nothing could stop them short of nuclear war. We did everything we could of, including a large scale murder program called Phoenix and they kept coming.

    You’re welcome.

  25. Rubix's Cube
    April 12th, 2014 @ 3:58 pm

    I repeat – you haven’t the first clue where politics is concerned. Result: a tedious windbag proclaiming on matters that are outside her area of competence. Go back to your gender studies and your non-sequiturs. Leave the politics to the politicians…

  26. K-Bob
    April 12th, 2014 @ 4:20 pm

    You seem confused about the “anti-war” movement and the American People at large.

    Americans wanted an end to the War. The “anti-war” movement leaders wanted what they always want: power.

  27. Mm
    April 12th, 2014 @ 6:14 pm

    Except that Cheney and Rove had nothing to do with that aircraft carrier banner, which was put up by the crew because they had indeed accomplished their mission.

  28. Freddie Sykes
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:11 pm

    Remember that picture of a general blowing the brains out of a captured VC? The back story is he had just found out that all his family, friends and Hue city officials had been executed What he did was not right but understandable.

    Like most “national liberation” movements, the primary targets of the NFL was to execute any moderates in a position to form a compromise government. After the fall, over a million people were executed or sent to reeducation camps. Millions more were terrorized into fleeing into the sea, rather facing danger from pirates than their “liberators.”

  29. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:16 pm

    HAW! Nice try at moving the goal posts, troll.

    YOU said we didn’t hold back. I pointed out that history says otherwise.

    You’re just working for an emotional response to hijack the thread. Won’t work. LBJ and Obama have a lot in common, but holding office during any “consensual period” is not one of them.

    Now, having blood on their hands? Yep, they have that in common. In spades.

    No need to thank me; I do this as a public service,

  30. RS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 7:57 pm

    Lost in the LBJ love, is the fact that without Republicans, the various Civil Rights Acts would never have passed. Omitting that fact to the point where no one now knows or acknowledges it is one of the greatest Leftist propaganda successes of the 20th Century.

  31. Donny
    April 12th, 2014 @ 8:33 pm

    Yes, I said we stopped short of nuking them. Oh, boy! You got me douchebag! You’re a contemptible piece of shit, and in 2014 only the most arrogant, right wing, blockhead would be still be arguing 50 years later that we could have won the war if only!

  32. RS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 8:38 pm

    So much stupidity on display; so little time.

  33. Anamika
    April 12th, 2014 @ 8:54 pm

    The spin doctors had to work overtime trying to down-play that one.

    War is great business and its revenue is free global access to resources at the expense of both the taxpayers and the occupied natives. The war business party is one, rep or dem is but a facade to fool the illiterates that’s there’s democracy whereas the system has been plutocracy since its founding.
    “Mission accomplished” regarded the construction of the perpetuum mobile on war profiteering, racketeering and corruption: how to continue war related spending without enemies in the classical sense.

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  35. JeffS
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:30 pm

    Like I said, nice try. But no cigar.

  36. richard mcenroe
    April 12th, 2014 @ 10:57 pm

    If you want to recycle the slogan for Afghanistan, “Hey, Hey, O-BAM-MAY…” works pretty well, too.

  37. K-Bob
    April 13th, 2014 @ 1:36 am

    Comedy gold. Work that hinge a little more and you’ll be ready for your big debut.

  38. Quartermaster
    April 13th, 2014 @ 8:48 am

    It was part of a strategy of containment which worked. Only moronic ignoramus would argue otherwise.

  39. Quartermaster
    April 13th, 2014 @ 8:50 am

    It was completely winnable as was Korea. However, when you have people in political office willing to betray troops in the field, then you have a very serious problem. IN spite of that, the war was won in the field. It was only when Congressional Libtards who wanted the commies to win threw it away that South Vietnam was taken by the north.

  40. Quartermaster
    April 13th, 2014 @ 8:55 am

    If you take them with no context, as the left loves to do, you’re right.

  41. Fred Beloit
    April 13th, 2014 @ 11:56 am

    John “Purple Heart” Kerry taught Donny all he knows.

  42. Bob Belvedere
    April 13th, 2014 @ 6:11 pm

    JeffS wrote: Now, having blood on their hands? Yep, they have that in common. In spades.

    I denounce you, you raaaaacist!

  43. Bob Belvedere
    April 13th, 2014 @ 6:13 pm

    Well put, except I disagree on one point: the General was right – this was War.

  44. FOAF
    April 15th, 2014 @ 4:09 am

    From the point of view of the left you could say Johnson had “positive domestic achievements”. He was the biggest big-government Democrat between FDR and Obama.