During the Vietnam War era, Americans were presented two choices regarding the conduct of the war: Maintain the status quo, which meant fighting a long, protracted, costly conflict with victory an elusive goal; or cut and run.

There was, however, a third alternative that Congress and the mainstream media largely ignored. That alternative was to win the war quickly and then get out. Robert Welch, the founder of The John Birch Society, expressed this position in the conclusion of a widely distributed essay entitled “The Truth About Vietnam”: “In this writer’s opinion, we should never have become involved in Vietnam at all. But … we are too deeply involved today to have any honorable way out except through victory. It should be our determination not to escalate this war, nor to prolong it, nor to muddle through it, but to win it.” (Emphasis in original.)

Written in early 1967, that article contained important insights about the Vietnam War that are all the more amazing when read 58 years later. The following material is excerpted from this extraordinary piece. (The full text is available at jbs.org/vietnam/the-truth-about-vietnam.)

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