Walter Lippmann and the American Century — 44 An End and a Beginning

1. 1. Lippmann declared that making the artificial and ramshackle debris of old empires permanent and committing American lives to its maintenance meant unending war in Asia.
2. 2. Lippmann argued that the almost total inability of Americans to decline an appointment or resign a post is a flaw in democracy, as it prevents principled opposition.
3. 3. Lippmann felt betrayed by McGeorge Bundy, who he discovered was much more pro-war than he had known, and described Bundy as cagey and not open about his stance.
4. 4. Lippmann charged that LBJ's conduct of foreign policy was willful, personal, arbitrary, and self-opinionated, risking a war with China that would be a historic mistake like Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
5. 5. Lippmann argued that the Vietnam War forced the U.S. to sacrifice domestic reforms for the poor, many of them black, because voters resist higher taxes for public good not immediately to their personal advantage.
6. 6. Lippmann noted that truthful reporting from Vietnam was hampered because American journalists could only photograph one side of the moon, unable to see the war from North Vietnam.
7. 7. Lippmann defended Harrison Salisbury's reporting on civilian casualties in North Vietnam, reminding critics that in war, what is said on the enemy's side is always propaganda, and on our side truth and righteousness.
8. 8. Lippmann wrote that Johnson could not swallow the bitter pill of recognizing he was in a war he could not win, and that it would take a man of noble stature and moral courage to do so.
9. 9. Lippmann charged that Johnson's America was no longer the historic America but a bastard empire relying on superior force, betraying the American promise.
10. 10. Lippmann accused Johnson of being pathologically secretive and manipulating the news in his own political interest.
11. 11. Lippmann had actually supported aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947, but opposed the vague language of the Truman Doctrine, which he warned would lead to global intervention like in Vietnam.
12. 12. Lippmann wrote to Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that the cold war revisionists neglected how the search for security and the assembling of an empire are two sides of the same coin.