ABSTRACT
Lyndon Baines Johnson had a burning ambition. He wanted to be remembered as a great president and for his name to rank alongside those of Lincoln and Roosevelt. He hoped to achieve this by legislating into existence a far more caring and liberal society. This aim was of fundamental importance to the way in which his administration conducted the Vietnam War. Tragically, both for LBJ and the American and Vietnamese peoples, the conflict simply overwhelmed his ‘Great Society’. The crumbling of his vision of a new America, the failure of the US military to win in South East Asia and the domestic furore that the war caused left Johnson an embittered man. For Vietnam and for thousands of US servicemen, the costs were incalculable.
