It’s a commonplace among many Vietnam veterans to despise Lyndon Johnson, not only for his escalation of the American war in Viet Nam, but because he allegedly insisted on running the war by himself, to the extent of choosing targets for aerial bombardment of the North.
Lo and behold comes a new book in which it is revealed that Johnson relied on former President Eisenhower for military advice in the running of the war. To the extent that Ike planned a lot of the stuff for which LBJ has gotten the credit/blame. Could the old Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe have been losing his stuff? Of course it was Johnson’s decision to escalate in the first place.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
But I thought your opinion was that losing Vietnam wasn’t a military issue. So how could Eisenhower be blamed?
Two authors, beloved of Time magazine & Chicago Tribune, make such a claim after 50 years, trying to shift more blame off of a Democrat & onto a Republican (what blame they can’t already try to assign to “Nixon’s War”).
I would suggest the reader bounce this against H R McMaster’s ‘Dereliction of Duty’ — perhaps the definitive work on the subject.
You guys need to follow the links, particularly the second one.
Snoopy: They aren’t blaming him for losing the war, only reporting that LBJ asked Ike’s advice and he gave it. They don’t even say what the advice was, probably because they don’t know, just that Ike enthusiastically helped out, as one president to another, which is the point of their book, the club of current and former presidents and how the current ones seek advice from their predecessors. They do say they all pretty much despise Carter, however, including Clinton and, presumably, Obama.
As for whether the military lost the war or the politicians did, I think both contributed to the loss. The military for, essentially, trying to beat guerrillas (and conventional forces fighting as guerrillas) with conventional, big-unit tactics, aided, of course, by the feckless South Vietnamese, and our pols by their abrupt withdrawal of aid at the end of it.
Darkwater: It’s only a small part of the book, but perhaps your point is well taken. I didn’t see it that way, because in context it makes sense that LBJ, who never fought, would ask help from a man who did. I never read McMaster, but it’s not likely he knew about Ike’s involvement.
And it was Eisenhower, after all, who invented the “domino theory” that a Vietnamese turn to communism would doom all of Southeast Asia.