Political Quotes

“I yield myself 2 minutes. Vietnam is the same thing. I believed in my mission in Vietnam. All of us believed in it, but in 1967 when I came back from Vietnam, they had an election. President Lyndon Johnson said everything's all right. Matter of fact, I have a bullet that they gave me, that the first Marines gave to us when we left there that said everything's all right. We all believed in our mission. That did not mean we were going to win the war. That is the problem. At times we have to change direction. When we look at the Vietnam War, there was an election right after I came back in 1967, and President Lyndon Johnson said, now it is all over, they will be able to do this themselves. 37,000 Americans killed after that, and you know the results. It was not because of the public. It was because the enemy kept forcing us into the type of war they were fighting. It was the kind of war we cannot fight. We could have gone all out and obviously destroyed Hanoi, but we had to worry about the Russians and the Chinese. This is a real problem. It is guerrilla-type war, and when we fight, we have to use overwhelming force. When we use overwhelming force, you make enemies, and when you make enemies, you lose the hearts and minds. I am saying the same thing you are. We want to win some kind of, I do not say victory. We want to win stability in the Middle East. That is the key because it is important to the free world. That is what is so important.…”