A Lesson of Vietnam: Getting in Is Easier than Getting Out

  

 "From the beginning, in other words, a paramount American interest in Vietnam was “face.” The important thing was not to lose. “I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved,” Johnson told Doris Kearns Goodwin. “If I left the woman I really loved—the Great Society—in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. . . . If I left that war and let the communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would both find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.”

Johnson had to do it to show that he could do it. Much like Vietnam, only a lot faster, the American war in Iran has reduced itself to saving face. Within two weeks, the United States was trying to figure out how to end the war without losing it. Meanwhile, people were being killed"

READ ESSAY by  Louis Menand