LBJ has to go down as one of the worst.
Aside from Vietnam (lol), he is probably one of the greatest. Also Nixon committed treason to keep the war going under his watch, so I almost give him a pass in a weird way.
Maybe Hayes because his election is rumored to have been leveraged with the removal of Federal troops from the south. I'd also have to put Andrew Jackson in the running because of his all out illegal assault on Native Americans in Georgia as President.
So because you think Nixon committed treason to "keep the war going" you'd almost give LBJ a pass. Yet it was LBJ who rolled a half a million troops into Vietnam based upon a false flag incident, and then handed over what would be billions of dollars worth of contracts today to his political creators who would eventually become part of Halliburton (sound familiar?). A war that nearly started a civil war in the United States, ripped the country to shreds politically and killed over 50K Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, and destabilized the region for years upon years to come killing millions more. Fascinating.
There are also some who would argue Nixon was one of our greatest presidents except for, you know, that whole secret bombing and break-in issue.
I said I would almost give him a pass, not that I would, ultimately he made the decisions as C&C. Its an interesting counterfactual to contemplate how the war would have run, and ultimately how it would be viewed if we actually had 'peace with honor' and 20k more service people coming home whole.
Also it really makes you look silly when you call the Tonkin incident a false flag operation. For starters its not a false flag operation because US forces did not act or impersonate NVA forces in the 2nd attack on the Maddox. So just by the basic operation of the phrase you're off. In reality though there was an attack on the first day, that is pretty much without dispute. Now the 'good' history now points to a failure of systems and a political machine chomping at the bit to exploit those failures into their own justification for armed conflict.
You make an interesting point about the expansion of the military industrial complex. I don't remember if it was NPR or BBC had piece some months back about the history of the MIC, where they did a great job of explaining that the military wasn't necessarily the driver of the system but rather politicians in congress looking for every kind of program for defense contractors in their home districts and bases to be opened which really caused a lot of bloating in the armed forces.
LBJ tapes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21768668
