Quote

My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they've got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the stone age.

'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation.

Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

The conclusion that many uniformed military came away from Vietnam with was that political interference, dominance of strategy and even tactics were a very bad way to conduct a war, and that indeed, if that was going to be our practice, that we shouldn't wage conflict again.

We didn't lose Vietnam. We quit Vietnam.