The basic flaw of you thinking is that there was ever a “reason” the US entered that war.
There wasn’t one. There was just lots of justifications for why te US had to stay in it.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Part of me really thinks that our entry into Vietnam was partly because there wasn’t enough jobs for all the baby boomers that were coming of age, and they needed to call the numbers a bit.
IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day ago
Please don’t use the “US is evil” argument to justify not knowing history.
IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I am not using that justification and I am well aware of the history of the US involvement in the Vietnam war.
The war transcended five presidential administration and everyone of them inherited the shit show from the last.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day ago
The basic flaw of you thinking is that there was ever a “reason” the US entered that war.
There wasn’t one. There was just lots of justifications for why te US had to stay in it.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social 1 day ago
The reality is worse.
The US was almost totally focused on the Soviet threat after WW2. The US wanted France as a strong ally, so the French coerced the Americans to pick up the torch in Vietnam and help the South beat the North. Eisenhower and Kennedy gave the South ‘military advisors’ but didn’t want to fully commit. Then LBJ became President.
Johnson believed that he could win the War with a massive buildup. His plan backfired, and the US went from having a small force committed to a large force stuck in a quagmire. Johnson didn’t want to raise taxes for the War, so he printed money, which lead to inflation.
Nixon got elected as a ‘peace candidate.’ He then doubled down on LBJ’s policies of a big War paid for with paper money. Nixon knew the War was unwinnable; he planned on keeping it going until 1976 when he was out of office.
The inflationary spending was starting to hurt the US economy when the OPEC Oil Embargo hit. That made everything in the US much more expensive. It was so bad under Ford that families that used to be able to do well with one job needed Mom to get a job too.
Jimmy Carter’s man, Paul Volker, won the war on inflation, but people only saw results after Carter was out. Reagan got the credit for Volker’s plan, but Reagan had his own inflationary program ready to go.
In 1964, before the War ramped up, ‘middle class’ was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough money to send the kids to college and have some luxuries. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. By 1993, when George Bush Sr. was done, ‘middle class’ was two incomes to keep a household going. In 1993, $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
mech@feddit.org 1 day ago
Oh boy, am I glad those days are in the past…