Long after Lyndon Johnson died, his biographers revealed that Johnson had known there was no way the U.S. could win in Vietnam.
In fact, he reportedly knew there was nothing at all to be gained there.
But during his five years and two months in the White House, he not only maintained our role in Southeast Asia, he greatly expanded it. And his successor, who was elected at least partly on his “secret plan” to end the war, kept us there will into his second term.
More than 58,000 Americans died in maybe the stupidest war our country was ever involved in, and the president who finally ended our involvement there lost his next election.
What lesson did we learn from the fall of Saigon?
I certainly wish we had at least learned the old lesson about never getting into a land war in Asia. We certainly ridiculed Russia enough for its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
What idiots, we said.
Don’t they know Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires?
We apparently forgot that too. When we invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, we were ostensibly going after Osama bin Laden, but as it turned out, Dubya been Lyin’ about that. Osama escaped our clutches, but the neocons wanted to turn Afghanistan and Iraq (remember, Saddam tried to kill Dubya’s daddy) into the 51st and 52nd states.
And of course, as Country Joe McDonald (who did not have a farm) sang in the late ’60s, there was plenty of good money to be made supplying the army with the tools of the trade.
After more than seven years of Dubya, eight of Obama and four of Trump, we were still in Afghanistan. Because if there’s one thing true about the folks who make the guns and bullets, they never believe they have enough money. To be fair to Trump — how novel — he said he wanted to end the war in Afghanistan, but as is true about most things with him, we’ll believe that when we see it.
But Joe Biden said we would end the Forever War and damned if he didn’t do it.
Of course, the folks who make their money from wars are attacking him, and some are even demanding he resign.
What Biden did is probably the most courageous act taken by any president in my lifetime. Will it cost him control of Congress next year or re-election in 2024?
Who knows?
No matter what happens, though, Biden ended a war that folks on the far right thought might last 50 years.
And that’s a good thing.