read the instructions

During the past weekend surfing in Robert Dallek's second book on Lyndon Johnson, Flawed Giant:  Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1961 - 1973...
it's almost difficult / painful to read, at times, because it's like reliving the unremitting
controversy
frustration
rudderlessness
indecision
and
other tensions related to the Thing known as
Vietnam.

It's like -- it's interesting, and I'm curious, and I want to read it and yet, after you read some paragraphs --
Dean Rusk, Bob McNamara, Mac Bundy, Hubert Humphrey, Bobby Kennedy, riots in the cities, escalation, get the South Vietnamese to fight their own war... you feel like, "Hey I need a break I can't wait for the weekend."
And then realize -- Wait a minute, this is the weekend.
I need a break from the break. ...

Read about Somebody-or-other whom LBJ believed "couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel"...

and a central point that we can see now --
the book says what the North Vietnamese / Soviets did was, however many troops we sent in, they put in same amount.
25,000 U.S. troops in;
25,000 pro-communist Northern forces in;
40,000 U.S. in;
40,000 communists in --

and reading that made me remember a scene in the movie Charlie Wilson's War, where the CIA guy tells Congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) that in Afghanistan (late 70s) America was supporting the Afghans' struggle against the invading Soviets only as much as necessary to keep the Soviets engaged, and frustrated, not enough for the Afghans to actually win. 

The CIA guy says, "...so that they [the Soviets] keep sendin' in guns and men and money, and guns and men and money, until they go out of their f----n' minds the way we did...to pay 'em back for Vietnam."

Charlie Wilson:  "You mean to tell me, the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is to have the Afghans keep walkin' into machine-gun fire until the Soviets run outta bullets...."

--------------------------------
In a sense you could say it wasn't the phrase that we heard a billion times at the time:

"the Vietnam war"
-- what it was, was a battle between the United States of America and the U.S.S.R, fought in Vietnam.

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