Published on August 6th, 2014 | http://www.lobelog.com/lessons-from-tonkin/

Lessons from Tonkin

by Robert E. Hunter
What have we learned in the last half-century about America’s role in the world, and especially about going to war? A neat question, and one that is framed from my own experience, if readers will indulge me.
Exactly 50 years ago today, I was working in the Lyndon Johnson White House, on the domestic side — mostly on education and other aspects of the Great Society, as deputy to Douglass Cater, one of the giants of the trade. I was 24, though with two years of foreign policy under my belt, as a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics. I cite my tyro status only as partial exculpation for not foretelling the tragedy that was about to ensue for the United States as it became more deeply embroiled in a conflict, to borrow from Neville Chamberlain, “in a far-away country between peoples of whom we know nothing.”