Shortly following his presidency, Lyndon Johnson wrote, “As for nation-building, … I thought the Vietnamese, Thai, and other peoples of Asia knew far better than we did what sort of nations they wanted to build. We should not be too critical if they did not become thriving, modern, twentieth century democracies in a week.” This statement sounds very much like those of others in the government whose faith in the project in Vietnam waxed and waned over the years. Lyndon Johnson was no different, given his penchant for involving government in reforming and transforming the lives of ordinary people within the United States. The statement is also, however, somewhat disingenuous. If Lyndon Johnson had truly believed what he later wrote, he would not have chosen to wage war in Vietnam in 1965. The fact is Johnson, like a number of others before him, had grown weary and disenchanted with the effort to build the new Vietnam. As he discovered during his tenure as president, bringing the heavy hand of the federal government to bear on remaking traditional and former colonial societies often met with less than total triumph. Finding little success in piecing together a developed state, American policy makers had much earlier begun to rely less and less on economic development and modernization initiatives and more on the tried-and-true use of military force.