Other Notes
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If President Johnson had decided in January 1964 that the U.S. would not win the war in Viet Nam and should withdraw it's troops and let the chips fall where they may, what would have been different?
About 45,000 American men would be alive today instead of buried in graveyards all over America. Most of them would have married. They would have had children-- another 100,000 citizens-- who would, by now, be having children of their own.
Johnson would have run again in 1968 and he probably would have won, being credited with the Civil Rights Act, and his anti-poverty programs and the general prosperity of the expanding consumer society. The war protests, of course, would have ended. The younger generation would have lost their identity. No Chicago riots, no Kent State. One great song "Ohio" by Neil Young, would not have been written or sung. We would have never learned who Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin were, or cared. Nixon would probably never have been elected and U.S. relations with China might today be a lot worse.
Who knows-- maybe Reagan would have won in 1972. Maybe Hubert Humphrey. There are threads that can never be traced because everything else would have been different.
The inflation of the 1970's would have been stopped dead in it's tracks because, don't you know, the Viet Nam war ate up a HUGE chunk of American government spending and purchasing. Maybe there would not have been a budget deficit. Or-- even better-- perhaps that deficit would have been run up by spending on social programs and infrastructure instead, which would actually have improved the economy even more.
U.S. credibility abroad would have been immeasurably higher. Except for the fact that they had engineered coups in other Third World countries like The Congo and Iran and El Savador. Well, imagine, if you will, that they hadn't. Imagine the U.S. as an emblem of freedom and democracy and justice, in the 1970's, instead of a cynical, manipulative, oil-mad behemoth?
Viet Nam would still have gone communist, of course, just as the Republicans feared, and just as they did anyway, but with a less extreme leadership. The moderates were all driven out by the war. Significantly, Cambodia would not have been destabilized by U.S. bombing likely sparing the world one of the great atrocities of the 20th Century.
I'm saying all this because, in 40 years, we may be asking ourselves what would have happened if the U.S. had just walked away from Iraq in 2014.