Fascinating is the very last observation would make concerning this series. Revolting hardly describes my reactions. Osnos' writings, to me, are a living example of Lord Acton's conclusion that "Power tends to corrupt."
While our "boys" were slaughtering Vietnamese and being slaughtered by them in return, the men giving the orders headed by LBJ, who admitted that "I’m not temperamentally equipped to be Commander-in-Chief," and McNamara, who ignored evidence contrary to his advice while working on his memoirs, and Clark Clifford, though he new better, "As a litigator, he said, it was his role to make his argument, accept the outcome and move on," and further "Once he became secretary of defense he began to press for negotiated withdrawal and peace talks," And in retrospect only, "Bundy recounts his relative “passivity” as the argument progressed as his “worst failure.” Furthermore, "Goldstein adds that this was the essential irony of Bundy’s role in the Johnson White House: 'In response to the crisis in Vietnam, the administration’s preeminent intellectual demonstrated a fundamental lack of rigor in his analysis of the ends and means of American strategy.'” "Bundy had, if anything, a more limited view of his role in the process. By the spring of 1965, he said, he considered himself a ;staff officer who knows the big decision is made and is working to help in its execution.'”
They were all fiddling while Rome burned--very Nero-esque. No doubt, all these men, named and unnamed, were already corrupt, but when placed in positions of power, descended further into corruption, and drew America increasingly into their corruption. LBJ's Great Society, in contrast to the over-the-top-described Greatest Generation, was a mass-corruption from which we perhaps we will--or can--never recover. In a few months, half of us will vote in favor of continuing on this road, the other half will vote in favor of an elusive--and muddled--wish to MAGA. Neither platform has a prayer of a chance to deliver us from our nightmare.
Fascinating is the very last observation would make concerning this series. Revolting hardly describes my reactions. Osnos' writings, to me, are a living example of Lord Acton's conclusion that "Power tends to corrupt."
While our "boys" were slaughtering Vietnamese and being slaughtered by them in return, the men giving the orders headed by LBJ, who admitted that "I’m not temperamentally equipped to be Commander-in-Chief," and McNamara, who ignored evidence contrary to his advice while working on his memoirs, and Clark Clifford, though he new better, "As a litigator, he said, it was his role to make his argument, accept the outcome and move on," and further "Once he became secretary of defense he began to press for negotiated withdrawal and peace talks," And in retrospect only, "Bundy recounts his relative “passivity” as the argument progressed as his “worst failure.” Furthermore, "Goldstein adds that this was the essential irony of Bundy’s role in the Johnson White House: 'In response to the crisis in Vietnam, the administration’s preeminent intellectual demonstrated a fundamental lack of rigor in his analysis of the ends and means of American strategy.'” "Bundy had, if anything, a more limited view of his role in the process. By the spring of 1965, he said, he considered himself a ;staff officer who knows the big decision is made and is working to help in its execution.'”
They were all fiddling while Rome burned--very Nero-esque. No doubt, all these men, named and unnamed, were already corrupt, but when placed in positions of power, descended further into corruption, and drew America increasingly into their corruption. LBJ's Great Society, in contrast to the over-the-top-described Greatest Generation, was a mass-corruption from which we perhaps we will--or can--never recover. In a few months, half of us will vote in favor of continuing on this road, the other half will vote in favor of an elusive--and muddled--wish to MAGA. Neither platform has a prayer of a chance to deliver us from our nightmare.
Fascinating.