> liberals supported the war in vietnam
Carl Oglesby in '65 at the first big anti-war demo, about 30,000 in D.C., "The original commitment in Vietnam was made by President Truman, a mainstream liberal. It was seconded by President Eisenhower, a moderate liberal. It was intensified by the late President Kennedy, a flaming liberal. Think of the men who now engineer that war — those who study the maps, give the commands, push the buttons, and tally the dead: Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Lodge, Goldberg, the President himself. They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals."
(JFK recoiled at being called a liberal according to Richard Reeves, btw.)
It was the combined actions of radicals in the streets, many not of the Kumbaya type (Scanlans in '70 in an issue of the magazine that had to be printed in Canada, enumerated thousands of acts of property destruction and other militant action against the war in the U.S.) w/liberals in Congress that had turned against the war, plus, of coarse, the NLF, NVA, PRC, USSR and anti-war movements worldwide, that won the war of national liberation for the Vietnamese. The left needed liberals inside the system just as they needed mass pressure in the street generated by the radical left.
-- Michael Pugliese