Whatever the reason, he had a tremendous ego, and did not want to go down in history "as the first president to lose a war." That is why he did not seek re-election (he served less than two years of Kennedy's term, so he theoretically could have been president for a little more than nine years if he had run again).
Sometimes I wish people who harbor many strong feelings about that war, would read Robt. S. MacNamara's memoirs, the Pentagon Papers and the accounts of others like dustoff posted. It wasn't the hippies, it wasn't the media, it was the leadership of our own .gov that sealed the US fate. The hippies, the anti-war media were simply an effect, Lyndon Johnson and his henchmen were the real cause. In many ways MacNamara was a lot like Donald Rumsfeld.
The same sort of thing is happening now. The pres who ran on a platform of ending the wars is taking his sweet ass time so as to not seem weak, meanwhile we burn money, waste resources, and discard American lives to the same end we'd get if we just left tomorrow (or at this point years ago). We didn't lose Afghanistan per se, but winning requires our indefinite presence as a police force which obviously is impossible. Our individual missions are successful, the overall objective is resource limited and can't be held when we leave, now or in 2014. They knew this hundreds of lives ago, and it will remain a reality as hundreds more Americans are killed and thousands maimed.
I didn't lose shit, politicians once again are self serving dickheads.
Godspeed to all of you who served in Vietnam.
Mike
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