President Johnson campaigned in the 1964 election with the pledge not to escalate the Vietnam War. On August 5, 1964, he promised the American people, “We seek no wider war.” LBJ later reassured voters by pledging, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys should be doing for themselves.”
But President Johnson was being DISINGENUOUS. Shortly after winning the election, he began the fateful step of ordering a massive escalation of American forces in South Vietnam. Our picture shows the first US Marines landing at Da Nang on March 8,1965. By the end of the year, 180,000 additional combat soldiers poured into South Vietnam.
Presidential DISINGENUOUSNESS is not limited to President Johnson. On May 11, 1846, President James K. Polk declared that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil.” Polk’s DISINGENUOUS statement justified the start of the Mexican-American War. In fact, the military skirmish occurred in a disputed area between the Rio Grande and the Nueces River.
DISINGENUOUS – falsely sincere; misleading; not candid