What was the political meaning of the Vietnam War?

[White 6]

Blame Ike for Vietnam? That's a new one.

Sorry. He gets a share, though a small one, but perhaps the most critical one for sending the advisors. He was a military man, yet he lacked the vision to see where this would go, but go it did, and every president after moved more troops in for the needless slaughter. His military vision, a trait or talent you are trained to seek and develop, failed him. It failed Kennedy. He had been a military man and supposedly a visionary in his own right, and look where it got him. Johnson was never a visionary, but I think haunted by the visions of what he had seen, what he had done. It did not take vision for Nixon to see, it was time to quit fighting a war over there for the people over here, that did not want it, and bring our people back over here.

I cut nobody slack for a misguided effort that ends in failure. Not in Vietnam and certainly not in the Middle East and southwest Asia, except for George H.W. Bush, who went in with a limited mission, accomplished the mission, destroying the attacker, degraded the threat, established the no-fly policy and got the troops out, without mission creep. Every other president involved sucked almost from the word go. Only one with a positive was Obama, but that was before he decided to stay after mission accomplishment. Then, he sucked too. Biden get some points for getting us out, but loses style points for how State managed the withdrawal.