The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

By October 1967, when nearly half of all Americans had concluded that getting into Vietnam was a mistake,2 young men on one campus after another were burning draft cards and street battles were occurring in front of the Selective Service induction center in Oakland, California, between riot police swinging truncheons and thousands of “Stop the Draft” protesters.3 On October 21, a hundred thousand antiwar protesters gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and marched on the Pentagon. Wherever Johnson and his appointees appeared in public, they were greeted by protesters. Some brandished signs such as “Lee Harvey Oswald, where are you now?” and “LBJ’s father should have pulled out.”4 Vice President Humphrey was mobbed at Stanford University by antiwar protesters shrieking, “War criminal,” “Murderer,” and “Burn, baby, burn.”