DBWI: Johnson gets the US involved in Vietnam

Following JFK’s assassination, Johnson decided to withdraw virtually all US military presence from SE Asiato focus on his domestic agenda and the Space Race, resulting in the Fall of Indo-China. Does the Conservative backlash and activism that dominated the 60s and 70s still happen? Would we have had as many pro-War films and the dominance of country music? When the military was flooded by too many volunteers, would paranoid student groups have formed anti-Communist militias in protest? Would Universities have allowed The Pill to be used on campus?

OOC: This sounds wildly implausible, but I just think the idea of the Counter Culture movement protesting the exact opposite issues would be funny.
 
What do you define as "involved"? Does Johnson keep "advisors" in South Vietnam or does he fully commit to South Vietnam with combat troops and airpower? If the latter, then I have not doubt that North Vietnam would have been crushed within less than a year and the country would today be united under Saigon. With that said, it wasn't in the interests of the U.S. to support a regime that was so corrupt that it actively oppressed 50% of the population.

In his memoirs, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote about advising Johnson to support South Vietnam militarily. Johnson replied: "God damnit Bob. If I can't find it on a map, then why would I send American boys to die for it?"

In hindsight, Johnson made the right decision. North Vietnam took over South Vietnam during the Popular People's Uprising in 1967 and remained content with fixing the country. Yes the Republicans were able to make political hay of it and make gains in the Senate and House in 1966 but it didn't stop Johnson from crushing Nixon in the 1968 election. Just before passing away in 1978, Johnson would tell a reporter that "Vietnam would have been an albatross on the country's neck, and would have, personally, put me in an early grave."
 
Not going into Vietnam was the best decision Johnson made imho. Some say it would’ve been easy to win or that at worst America can’t be defeated but it’s the political capital and cost that was saved. Johnson rightly goes down of one of America’s greatest Presidents for his domestic reforms and civil rights work but Vietnam could’ve changed all that. Why risk endangering all that and your reputation for somewhere he couldn’t find on a map
 
I do think that it might have prevented the pro-war backlash (which, contra the OP, was really more a creation of the '70s than the '60s - certainly there were groups like Students for a Democratic Planet on the interventionist left and the Minutemen on the right in the 1960s, but they didn't really get off the ground until the McGovern presidency), and thus things like the riots at the 1976 DNC (fun fact - I know one of the delegates there, who still swears up and down that McGovern actually won, but the DNC didn't count votes for him on the last ballot because they were worried that if Scoop Jackson lost, his supporters would burn down St. Louis, which, yeah, probably) and the interventions in Greece, Angola, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and so many other places under Agnew and Finch (and Kirkpatrick and Dornan).

Really, as popular as Johnson is now, that's mostly a product of post-World War III historiography. When your country caused, through a toxic cocktail of malice and incompetence, thirty million deaths directly and probably twice as many indirectly through famine, disruption, and the actions of "emergency governments", and has itself lost a few major cities and seen a generation plunged into shellshock and guilt, it's natural to hold up the one president who really did beat swords into plowshares, and who managed to convince the American people to go along with it (unlike McGovern, who for all his good reputation really was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and made a number of unforced errors). But the thing is, not much of his original legacy survived - Medicare and Medicaid were gutted by Finch and not re-established until the Richards era, Agnew ate civil rights law for breakfast (despite Dornan's well-deserved legacy, he did actually make a lot of progress there), Kirkpatrick (herself a fellow Democrat!) turned the peaceful Space Race into the military space weapons program, and so on. Politically, it was easier for postwar leaders to ascribe their projects to Johnson rather than say "hey, here's a brand-new idea I came up with" - even when, as with the University of the United States or the Family Aid Acts, they really didn't have much to do with LBJ.
 
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I like the OPs premise regarding the possible paradoxes innate to being a counter culture, but I doubt any of that happens because VN gets abandoned. VN was there to be dumped, we just kept missing the opportunities. '45, '56, '65, '68 were all possible dump dates. The jeopardy attached grew with each passing decade.

Of course if LBJ took such action the GOP would seek to make gain of if, but VN at the time was politically insignificant, and then when you add in this scenario amplifying its insignificance as LBJ decides to to abandoned it, the abandonment of VN gets nothing more than a short run news cycle. The GOP would have had to fight to keep it on TV. Maybe a couple of years later when Saigon finally does fall, it gets another short news cycle. But that's all it gets.

Johnson was very powerful at that point and VN very insignificant.

(In the OTL Universities across the country, in 1965 were holding 'teach-ins' because nobody could find Vietnam on a map.)

Now on the other hand, if there is any truth to the 'Domino Theory' and we watch communism quickly tumble through Laos and Cambodia as well, and Thailand comes under a more serious threat than it did in the OTL, then the loss of South East Asia might very well force LBJ to act internationally or lose the White House.

But this scenario has an amusing possible irony to it, one that plays out to LBJ's advantage. This 'domino theory' scenario would likely force Johnson to finally draw a line against communism, say in late '67, but this time that line in the sand would be Thailand, not VN. Much better 'ground' to fight on; much better chance of victory!

LBJ could give up Southeast Asia, and then find himself successfully crushing a communist insurgency in Thailand, and coming out of it looking like a Cold War Hawk.
 
Really, given how the USSR f*cked up in Afghanistan, we were right not to go into Vietnam.

The so-called counter culture of prowar was reactionary policies and no real veterans had a part in it.
 
The mass migration of Hoa, Hmong, and Catholics from the country might have been avoided.

It's kind of weird how the Portuguese pretty much let any Vietnamese Catholic settle in Portuguese Africa.
The Hoa were a big boon for Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Macau, and Hong Kong.

If the US ended up in an Afghanistan-style situation in Vietnam, it perhaps may not have gotten involved in the Colombian Narcos Insurgency. Mountains and Jungle and drugs and communists oh my.
 
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