Liberal or Conservative Test

[Nintendarse]

[Vietnam]can be almost totally attributed to the stupidity of a single liberal president.

I'd agree that LBJ's actions were stupid, but I think it's more relevant to the present if we take a look at what was the view behind the Vietnam War. Why would we go into Vietnam? First, the leaders of our country let all of the "good and evil" rhetoric go to their heads. They did not separate the simple polar message they were giving to the public with the reality that the world is never that simple. As a result, the United States was willing to back a brutal, corrupt dictator in South Korea in the face of what we perceived to be a bigger threat: the spread of communism. Yet we made a big miscalculation: Ho Chi Minh, while Communist, was more about nationalism than anything else. So we put our power behind a crumbling government that held none of our values except the hatred of Communism...yet the people of Vietnam cared less about Communism and more about nationalism and the corruptness of the South Vietnamese government. The world was playing chess while we were playing checkers, and we lost because of it.

So what are the lessons that we have forgotten to learn in the present day? The saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," is not useful nor accurate. In the same vein, "If you're not with us, you're against us," is also inaccurate. While it is acceptable to simplify the world to convince the public, it is dangerous to take that rhetoric seriously.