Why We Can’t Erase Vietnam From LBJ’s Legacy

Last week, Lyndon Johnson’s clan drew four presidents to the Johnson Library for a three-day fête on the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act—what Martin Luther King Jr. is said to have called the “second Emancipation Proclamation.” The Johnsons are often concerned about control at the expense of others’ independence, as was also usually the way of their patriarch. For this anniversary, the plan “to protect the legacy,” a term used during an insiders’ session, was to control the agenda by explicitly putting aside Vietnam—which was mentioned only rarely, a passing rhetorical trip-up, a furrowing of a forehead. But that is quite a lot to rule out of order: the presence of 550,000 American troops at the high point of the war; more bombs dropped on North Vietnam than were dropped on Japan in World War II; Agent Orange; the Tet offensive; the My Lai massacre; millions of North and South Vietnamese dead; more than 58,000 Americans dead; uncountable wounded throughout the peninsula; the movement at home against the war, with about half a million draft evaders, 200,000 of whom were charged with draft evasion and 8,000 of whom were convicted; Johnson’s decision not to run for re-election. The… Read full this story

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