The Sixties Called. They Want Their Quagmire Back.
Posted on | May 25, 2007
Here’s a prescient transcript of a 1964 telephone conversation between President Johnson and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy:
Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I don’t know what in the hell, it looks like to me that we’re getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don’t see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we’re committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don’t think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don’t think it’s worth fighting for and I don’t think we can get out. And it’s just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.
Bundy: It is an awful mess.
Johnson: And we just got to think about it. I’m looking at this Sergeant of mine this morning and he’s got 6 little old kids over there, and he’s getting out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We’ve got a treaty but hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they’re not doing a thing about it.
Bundy: Yeah, yeah.
Johnson: Of course, if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen.
Bundy: Yeah, that’s the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That’s the dilemma, that’s exactly the dilemma.
Iraq, of course, is Nothing Like Vietnam. Totally different continents.
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