Obsession with seeming unequivocal and immovable has been frequent in the Oval Office. During the Vietnam War, such fixations were indifferent to the fact that the war was losing the U.S. government moral credibility around the world. But from the outset, Lyndon Johnson invoked credibility as an argument for staying the course. "If we are driven from the field in Vietnam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promises, or in American protection," President Johnson said on July 28, 1965...
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