[abe]

This is Amazing News!

Kissinger Papers: U.S. OK With Takeover

- By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

Friday, May 26, 2006

(05-26) 17:45 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops — even as the war to drive back the communists dragged on with mounting deaths.

President Nixon's envoy told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."

Kissinger's blunt remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released Friday by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the government's National Archives and obtained through the research group's declassification requests.

Kissinger's comments appear to lend credence to the "decent interval" theory posed by some historians who say the United States was prepared to see communists take over Saigon as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. troop departure to save face.

But Kissinger cautioned in an interview Friday against reaching easy conclusions from his words of more than three decades ago. "One of my objectives had to be to get Chinese acquiescence in our policy," he told The Associated Press.

"We succeeded in it, and then when we had achieved our goal, our domestic situation made it impossible to sustain it," he said, explaining that he meant Watergate and its consequences.

The papers consist of some 2,100 memoranda of Kissinger's secret conversations with senior officials abroad and at home from 1969 to 1977 while he served under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as national security adviser, secretary or state and both. The collection contains more than 28,000 pages.

The meeting with Zhou took place in Beijing on June 22, 1972, during stepped-up U.S. bombing and the mining of harbors meant to stall a North Vietnam offensive that began in the spring. China, Vietnam's ally, objected to the U.S. course but was engaged in a historic thaw of relations with Washington.

Kissinger told Zhou the United States respected its Hanoi enemy as a "permanent factor" and probably the "strongest entity" in the region. "And we have had no interest in destroying it or even defeating it," he insisted.

He complained that Hanoi had made one demand in negotiations that he could never accept — that the U.S. force out the Saigon government.

"This isn't because of any particular personal liking for any of the individuals concerned," he said. "It is because a country cannot be asked to engage in major acts of betrayal as a basis of its foreign policy."

However, Kissinger sketched out scenarios under which communists might come to power.

While American cannot make that happen, he said, "if, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."

Pressed by Zhou, Kissinger further acknowledged that a communist takeover by force might be tolerated if it happened long enough after a U.S. withdrawal.

He said that if civil war broke out a month after a peace deal led to U.S. withdrawal and an exchange of prisoners, Washington would probably consider that a trick and have to step back in.

"If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese, and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely."

The envoy foresaw saw the possibility of friendly relations with adversaries after a war that, by June 1972, had killed more than 45,000 Americans. "What has Hanoi done to us that would make it impossible to, say in 10 years, establish a new relationship?"

Almost 2,000 more Americans would be killed in action before the last U.S. combat death in January 1973, the month the Paris Peace Accords officially halted U.S. action, left North Vietnamese in the South and preserved the Saigon government until it fell in April 1975.

Whether by design or circumstance, the United States achieved an interval between its pullout and the loss of South Vietnam but not enough of one to avoid history's judgment that America had suffered defeat.

Kissinger said in the interview he was consistent in trying to separate the military and political outcomes in Vietnam — indeed, a point he made at the time. "If they agreed to a democratic outcome, we would let it evolve according to its own processes," he said Friday, adding that to tolerate a communist rise to power was not to wish for it.

William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said the papers are the most extensive published record of Kissinger's work, in many cases offering insight into matters that the diplomat only touched on in his prolific memoirs.

For example, he said Kissinger devoted scant space in one book to his expansive meetings with Zhou on that visit to Beijing, during which the Chinese official said he wished Kissinger could run for president himself.

At the time, Chinese-Soviet tensions were sharp and the United States was playing one communist state against the other while seeking detente with its main rival, Moscow. Kissinger hinted to Zhou that the United States would consider a nuclear response if the Soviets were to overrun Asia with conventional forces.

But when the Japanese separately recognized communist China with what Kissinger called "indecent haste," he branded them "treacherous."

___

On the Net:

National Security Archive, offering access to 20 of the documents:

Kissinger-Zhou transcript:

www.nsarchive.org

http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/NSAEBB/N...%206-20-72.pdf

©2006 Associated Press

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...w174505D72.DTL

[ironknee]

and you believed in him

[abe]

Originally Posted by ironknee

and you believed in him

And he did what the peace movement demanded even though the war was being won at the end.

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by abe

And he did what the peace movement demanded even though the war was being won at the end.

The ends DO justify the means for you, don't they?

Kinda like with your invading-Iraq-was-the-right-thing-to-do rants. If Iraq does wind up becoming a stable deomcracy someday--I give it 20-30 years before that's even a possibility--you will think it was all worth it. I for one will not. Too much blood will have been shed to try and force people to embrace democracy. And all that blood will be on our hands as a nation. That makes me very sad.

[spauldingg]

Eh... communists. Neocons. same old same old...

[Spliff]

Christopher Hitchens has done quite an aggressive vivisection of Kissinger, arguing that he deserves to be tried for war crimes.

Kissinger Declassified by Christopher Hitchens

Interview with Hitchens re: Kissinger's Crimes

Kissinger, In Deed

[Spliff]

An indictment of Henry Kissinger for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes would include (but not be confined to) the following.

VIETNAM: Kissinger scuttled peace talks in 1968, paving the way for Richard Nixon's victory in the presidential race. Half the battle deaths in Vietnam took place between 1968 and 1972, not to mention the millions of civilians throughout Indochina who were killed.

CAMBODIA: Kissinger persuaded Nixon to widen the war with massive bombing of Cambodia and Laos. No one had suggested we go to war with either of these countries. By conservative estimates, the U.S. killed 600,000 civilians in Cambodia and another 350,000 in Laos.

BANGLADESH: Using weapons supplied by the U.S., General Yahya Khan overthrew the democratically elected government and murdered at least half a million civilians in 1971. In the White House, the National Security Council wanted to condemn these actions. Kissinger refused. Amid the killing, Kissinger thanked Khan for his "delicacy and tact."

CHILE: Kissinger helped to plan the 1973 U.S.-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende and the assassination of General René Schneider. Right-wing general Augusto Pinochet then took over. Moderates fled for their lives. Hit men, financed by the CIA, tracked down Allende supporters and killed them. These attacks included the car bombing of Allende's foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, and an aide, Ronni Moffitt, at Sheridan Circle in downtown Washington.

EAST TIMOR: In 1975 President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with Indonesia's corrupt strongman Suharto. Kissinger told reporters the U.S. wouldn't recognize the tiny country of East Timor, which had recently won independence from the Dutch. Within hours Suharto launched an invasion, killing, by some estimates, 200,000 civilians.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/013...y,27288,1.html

[abe]

Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy

The ends DO justify the means for you, don't they?

Kinda like with your invading-Iraq-was-the-right-thing-to-do rants. If Iraq does wind up becoming a stable deomcracy someday--I give it 20-30 years before that's even a possibility--you will think it was all worth it. I for one will not. Too much blood will have been shed to try and force people to embrace democracy. And all that blood will be on our hands as a nation. That makes me very sad.

Too much blood, huh?

So, SOME blood was alright? But when it reached the amount you deemed TOO MUCH then you dug in your heels and said, 'nope, that's too much blood?'

The truth is you are using your EMOTIONS to try to veto an issue that GOD already decided.

Man is born free.

We are there to return him to that original state.

For being so high minded you (and not just you, but ALL of the supposed progressive 'thinkers' here) are surprisingly willing to deny freedom to others less fortunate than yourselves.

Hell, you cry and whine when someone threatens to get a list of the people you call.

I am soooooooo proud of you all.

[spauldingg]

Originally Posted by abe

The truth is you are using your EMOTIONS to try to veto an issue that GOD already decided.

Man is born free.

We are there to return him to that original state.

This has got to be the most bizarre, irrelevant post that I have ever seen on this forum. But it's your thread, you can derail it with nonsense all you want, I guess.

[besson3c]

Go Kansas City Royals!

[ironknee]

first he says it's shocking, then turns around and defends it...what a dork

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by spauldingg

Eh... communists. Neocons. same old same old...

What a moronic statement!

Communists are for the most part. Leftist.

Sounds like certain people don't like what this new information has shown.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by abe

And he did what the peace movement demanded even though the war was being won at the end.

He didn't do what the "peace movement" demanded. He did what the American electorate demanded. Voters cannot stomach their boys coming home in body bags and less-so when they're coming home maimed. The North Vietnamese realized this and adjusted their strategy so that even if the American military was slowly wining the military war, they would lose the PR war at home. The US pulled out of Vietnam because the war no longer had the support of the people and that support was lost because of the length of the war, the returning dead and wounded, and the growing perception that all that was being lost for very little gain to the US. The peace movement actually had very little impact, if any.

The achilles heel of a democratic country's military is democracy. If the voters lose interest in the war, the war is over, even if the military is winning.

[Taliesin]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

The achilles heel of a democratic country's military is democracy. If the voters lose interest in the war, the war is over, even if the military is winning.

Yes, democracies' militaries have such an achilles heel, that's why they are a target of terrorism. Terrorism usually works only on democratic societies.

But ironically democracy is also the military's strength. A democracy and a rather free society generates the dynamics needed for its most clever and creative members to be productive, creative and inventive, which leads in the long term to a technologically much better equipped military, but also to better tactics and strategies.. and the military members from the lieutenant up to the general have usually a much more patriotic, idealistic and loyal attitude to its nation...

Taliesin

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Spliff

Christopher Hitchens has done quite an aggressive vivisection of Kissinger, arguing that he deserves to be tried for war crimes.

Kissinger Declassified by Christopher Hitchens

Interview with Hitchens re: Kissinger's Crimes

Kissinger, In Deed

Training and arming guerillas, providing weapons of mass destruction to dictators, engaging in wars that result in more civilian deaths than enemy deaths, manipulating information to better your chances at election time; these charges could be leveled at almost any leader (elected or otherwise) in a democratic country with the world's most powerful military that must answer to uninformed voters with short attention spans.

[Wiskedjak]

Originally Posted by Taliesin

Yes, democracies' militaries have such an achilles heel, that's why they are a target of terrorism. Terrorism usually works only on democratic societies.

One could argue that the North Vietnamese strategy was terrorism. It didn't directly target the civilian population of the US, but it's intent was most certainly to influence their decisions by using the terror of more dead or maimed boys.

Originally Posted by Taliesin

But ironically democracy is also the military's strength. A democracy and a rather free society generates the dynamics needed for its most clever and creative members to be productive, creative and inventive, which leads in the long term to a technologically much better equipped military, but also to better tactics and strategies.. and the military members from the lieutenant up to the general have usually a much more patriotic, idealistic and loyal attitude to its nation...

Taliesin

Agreed. I think Rumsfeld's "Shock and Awe" strategy was an attempt to achieve exactly that. He realized that Iraq had the potential to turn into another Vietnam and tried to avoid that. Unfortunately for his strategy, I think he focussed too much on Awe, not enough on Shock and didn't even consider what he was going to do after everyone was sufficiently shocked and awed.

I'm not trying to slam democracy. Just saying that the good guys usually have to work harder simply by virtue of the fact that it's harder to fight a war and be good at the same time.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Kevin

What a moronic statement!

Communists are for the most part. Leftist.

Not moronic at all

[FONT=Verdana]Attack of the Trotsky-cons![/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana] The ideological framework of neoconservative ideology is deeply rooted in the Marxist tradition.[/FONT] . . . [FONT=Verdana] The neocons retain the methods as well as the ideology of the left: party-line politics, periodic purges, and the nasty habit of smearing their opponents rather than engaging them in debate. The neocon method echoes that of its leftist progenitors: Once the party line is established—Israel must be unconditionally defended, Iraq must be utterly destroyed, Pat Buchanan must be smeared into silence—anyone who deviates is demonized.[/FONT]

What Is a Neoconservative? -- & Does It Matter?

Authentic neocons descend from the Communist and socialist movements, with the most prominent leaders being Trotskyites (that is, ultra-Left Communists). When Stalin took over the Soviet Union, the Trotskyites were severely persecuted, and ultimately Trotsky himself was assassinated in Mexico. Stalin was a gentile (indeed, an ex-seminarian) and Trotsky was a Jew, and the divide between the Stalinists and Trotskyites pretty much followed the same divide (with significant exceptions, especially in the early years of the Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, before many of the Jews in those satellite states were purged from the Party, even executed).

Stalin became increasingly anti-Semitic, and the Jewish Trotskyites had another reason to hate Stalin. After World War II when Israel was established, the Soviet Union sided with the Arabs against Israel, and the Soviet Union basically did not allow Jews to emigrate to Israel. Another reason to hate Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Many Jewish Trotskyites -- and other Jewish Leftists (but not most of them) -- became increasingly and indeed vehemently anti-Communist. Many supported the Vietnam War and were extremely hostile to the détente policies pursued by Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. These ex-Leftist Jews perceived the Left, even liberals (rightly or wrongly), as being pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian. These ex-Leftist Jews evolved into what they themselves called "neoconservatives." As Benjamin Ginsberg said in his book The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University of Chicago Press), "One major factor that drew them [ex-Leftist Jewish neocons] inexorably to the right was their attachment to Israel...."

The Jewish neocons' primary goal -- though not their exclusive goal -- has been to protect Israel (which, we suppose, is their right), and they see an American Empire as the best way to do that. Yes, we know you're not supposed to say that, but we have a bad habit of telling the naked truth.

So the neocons want an American Empire, and Jewish neocon Jonah Goldberg put their view at its most blunt when he said: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business."

[Kevin]

AAAAHahaha man the people who wrote that are great at the spin.

What a load of propaganda.

The very epitome of "Fuzzy Thinking"



I hope when you post <-- you did so showing sarcasm.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

Training and arming guerillas, providing weapons of mass destruction to dictators, engaging in wars that result in more civilian deaths than enemy deaths, manipulating information to better your chances at election time; these charges could be leveled at almost any leader (elected or otherwise) in a democratic country with the world's most powerful military that must answer to uninformed voters with short attention spans.

Here's what Hitchen's has to say about that.

RB: And then there is also the rebuttal that says, "Kissinger is not the only practitioner of such things, realpolitik. These are things that have taken place under many administrations, under many circumstances."

CH: Yes, there is no reason not to say that that's true. Though there are some reasons why mentioning in that way is a means of trying to change the subject. I would say that there are two considerations. One, we now know for an extraordinary number of reasons, with an amazing amount of evidence, that the Nixon Presidency had the US as a rogue state. The US was a rogue state. Some people say it's a rogue state all the time. You can argue that for and against. But you can't argue that it wasn't a rogue state during the Nixon Administration. In every possible definition of the term. An unstable corrupt leader, using violence overseas to try to solve his domestic problems and using coercion against dissent in both cases. And willing to go to the brink with it. Well, Henry Kissinger, partly because of the implosion of that regime, was for its closing years, the president as far as foreign and defense and security policy was concerned. Thus, the opportunities he had to commit crimes on the international stage and of an international global scale was very great. I don't believe there's ever been a Secretary of State or National Security Advisor with the scope of that sort. Not Dulles, not McNamara (who was, of course, not Secretary of State, but you know what I mean).

RB: And sat on the 40 Committee [the semi-clandestine body of which Kissinger was the chairman from 1969-1976]...

CH: And chaired all the covert action committees, as well. So there was a long period of a one-man-sponsored, rolling, international crime wave, which also violated the US Constitution, the letter and the spirit of congressional resolutions, and all the rest of it. There is no parallel or comparable case as far as I know. That's the first point. The second is, most of the other guys are dead; he's alive. And the third point is, we have all the evidence in this case. We have an extraordinary dossier of evidence. Of course, it is true that for every person arrested for burglary or mugging or white-collar crime, there are a thousand others who could be arrested, that's the one who did get arrested. When some one is shouting at the top of his voice, "Hey watch me. I'm doing white-collar crime." Then if he's not arrested you begin to wonder if there isn't something rotten in the system of law and order. You also begin to wonder about the motives of people who say, "Why pick on him?" Because they invite the answer, "Well why not?" Given that he did do it, we have the evidence, and he is available. So I have to return to the obvious, I'm afraid.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Kevin

AAAAHahaha man the people who wrote that are great at the spin.

What a load of propaganda.

The very epitome of "Fuzzy Thinking"



I hope when you post <-- you did so showing sarcasm.

Yes, partly. The definition of a political label is dependent on the political leanings of the person doing the defining.

Christopher Hitchens was (is?) a Trotskyist. But now he is considered by many to be a neo-con. Which is he? Did his early leftist ideals pre-dispose him to support the current neo-con environment? He's clearly a supporter of Israel and opposed to Islamic fascism. That seems to fit with the origins of Neoconservatism as outlined in the articles above.

As you said, spin, spin, spin.

Francis Fukuyama, a neoconservative, wrote the following in the New York Times:

The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930's and early 1940's, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The story of this group has been told in a number of places, most notably in a documentary film by Joseph Dorman called "Arguing the World." The most important inheritance from the C.C.N.Y. group was an idealistic belief in social progress and the universality of rights, coupled with intense anti-Communism.

It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930's and 1940's came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group.

Source

All this means is that they became disillusioned with a movement that seemed promising at first. In the same way, the Romantic poets like Wordsworth were initially enamoured with the French Revolution and the possiblity of positive change. They soon became disgusted with it once they witnessed what had Napolean wrought.

And finally, the left loves to emphasis or exagerrate the "communist" origins of Neoconservatism because they can laugh and point and say, "Isn't that ironic? You're actually a communist."

[Kevin]

No, not communist. It's a spin.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Kevin

No, not communist. It's a spin.

What part is spin? Are you denying that the original neocons were previously Trotskyists who believed in and admired communist ideals but then changed their views once they saw the reality of communist (or Marxist, if you prefer) idealogy in practice?

[Kevin]

I am saying any connection with the US gov now, and Communism is a SPIN.

[spauldingg]

Very interesting history, (no, really, I had no idea: all info is good info.)

But I was referring to these nutjobs

And from Neocon 101

What does a neoconservative dream world look like?

Neocons envision a world in which the United States is the unchallenged superpower, immune to threats. They believe that the US has a responsibility to act as a "benevolent global hegemon." In this capacity, the US would maintain an empire of sorts by helping to create democratic, economically liberal governments in place of "failed states" or oppressive regimes they deem threatening to the US or its interests. In the neocon dream world the entire Middle East would be democratized in the belief that this would eliminate a prime breeding ground for terrorists. This approach, they claim, is not only best for the US; it is best for the world. In their view, the world can only achieve peace through strong US leadership backed with credible force, not weak treaties to be disrespected by tyrants.

Any regime that is outwardly hostile to the US and could pose a threat would be confronted aggressively, not "appeased" or merely contained. The US military would be reconfigured around the world to allow for greater flexibility and quicker deployment to hot spots in the Middle East, as well as Central and Southeast Asia. The US would spend more on defense, particularly for high-tech, precision weaponry that could be used in preemptive strikes. It would work through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations when possible, but must never be constrained from acting in its best interests whenever necessary.

Meanwhile:

[abe]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Go Kansas City Royals!

11 - 22

[abe]

Originally Posted by ironknee

first he says it's shocking, then turns around and defends it...what a dork

Dork. hasn't posted in this thread...yet.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

He didn't do what the "peace movement" demanded. He did what the American electorate demanded. Voters cannot stomach their boys coming home in body bags and less-so when they're coming home maimed. The North Vietnamese realized this and adjusted their strategy so that even if the American military was slowly wining the military war, they would lose the PR war at home. The US pulled out of Vietnam because the war no longer had the support of the people and that support was lost because of the length of the war, the returning dead and wounded, and the growing perception that all that was being lost for very little gain to the US. The peace movement actually had very little impact, if any.

The achilles heel of a democratic country's military is democracy. If the voters lose interest in the war, the war is over, even if the military is winning.

I note how skillfully you are able to throw in just a telltale little 'pot stirrer' when you find a topic you like and want it to continue.

After all that you end your post with "The peace movement actually had very little impact, if any."

You KNOW what I'm going to say.

[ghporter]

spauldingg, thanks for a cover I haven't seen in far too many years!

Anyone who thinks that the highest levels of government-ANY government-can work with kid gloves and kind thoughts (like Star Trek: The Next Generation, with "oh well, that civilization fell, but at least we can sleep at night") is in a dream world. Let's go back a few years and see who it was that engineered "regime change" in South Vietnam in 1963... JFK wanted the CIA to help remove Diem, who was seen as weak and immobile. The South Vietnamese generals capitalized on the CIA's help and (going farther than the CIA thought they would) assasinated him. Read it here. Good old JFK was really behind that criminal act.

Nice, grandfatherly President Eisenhower [url=http://www.dlynnwaldron.com/Lumumba.html]precipitated the Congo Crisis in 1960 by (despite Lamumba's protestation that he was ANTI-communist) having Patrice Lamumba assasinated. Bad move, Ike.

I don't think Truman had too much time on his hands to get into too much trouble because of Korea, but he was a smart and pragmatic man, and may have decided some things the way he did in spite of the way it might harm relations.

Sorry, but I never held Kissinger in too much regard in the first place (and I remember him as Secretary of State under both Nixon and Ford). He was a realist and a political operative, not an idealist. Note that his statements in this subject are meant to get China to back off and allow Hanoi to make its own decisions, which indeed worked. We were willing, he said, to allow the South to fall. But it was my personal impression that the condition was that the South had to fall genuinely, not simply because we stepped out of the picture. As corrupt as it was, there was little chance that Saigon could hold anything together without a lot of outside help, so Kissinger's actions were simply an affirmation of that fact.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak

One could argue that the North Vietnamese strategy was terrorism. It didn't directly target the civilian population of the US, but it's intent was most certainly to influence their decisions by using the terror of more dead or maimed boys.


Agreed. I think Rumsfeld's "Shock and Awe" strategy was an attempt to achieve exactly that. He realized that Iraq had the potential to turn into another Vietnam and tried to avoid that. Unfortunately for his strategy, I think he focussed too much on Awe, not enough on Shock and didn't even consider what he was going to do after everyone was sufficiently shocked and awed.

I'm not trying to slam democracy. Just saying that the good guys usually have to work harder simply by virtue of the fact that it's harder to fight a war and be good at the same time.

I think you have it wrong, again. Viet Nam wasn't lost until we reneged on our obligation to the South Vietnamese. For two years, 1973 - 1975 they fought, essentially alone, and held their own and was pushing back the North Vietnamese. But when Congress denied even the minimal amount of $297 million/yr. funding to support our valiant comrades, they soon fell.

The VietNam you are thinking of does not and never did exist. It was only lost when we withdrew funding.

Summary: During Richard Nixon's first term, when I served as secretary of defense, we withdrew most U.S. forces from Vietnam while building up the South's ability to defend itself. The result was a success -- until Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a similar strategy now, but this time finish the job properly.

MELVIN R. LAIRD was Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973, Counselor to the President for Domestic Affairs from 1973 to 1974, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1952 to 1969. He currently serves as Senior Counselor for National and International Affairs at the Reader's Digest Association.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200511...f-vietnam.html

Today, we deserve a view of history that is based on facts rather than emotional distortions and the party line of tired politicians who play on emotions. Mine is not a rosy view of the Vietnam War. I didn't miss the fact that it was an ugly, mismanaged, tragic episode in U.S. history, with devastating loss of life for all sides. But there are those in our nation who would prefer to pick at that scab rather than let it heal. They wait for opportunities to trot out the Vietnam demons whenever another armed intervention is threatened. For them, Vietnam is an insurance policy that pretends to guarantee peace at home as long as we never again venture abroad. Certain misconceptions about that conflict, therefore, need to be exposed and abandoned in order to restore confidence in the United States' nation-building ability.

STAYING THE COURSE

The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. Over the four years of Nixon's first term, I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself. My colleague and friend Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated a viable agreement between North and South Vietnam, which was signed in January 1973. It allowed for the United States to withdraw completely its few remaining troops and for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue funding their respective allies in the war at a specified level. Each superpower was permitted to pay for replacement arms and equipment. Documents released from North Vietnamese historical files in recent years have proved that the Soviets violated the treaty from the moment the ink was dry, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi. The United States barely stuck to the allowed amount of military aid for two years, and that was a mere fraction of the Soviet contribution.

Yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973.

I believed then and still believe today that given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe Iraq can do the same now. From the Tet offensive in 1968 up to the fall of Saigon in 1975, South Vietnam never lost a major battle. The Tet offensive itself was a victory for South Vietnam and devastated the North Vietnamese army, which lost 289,000 men in 1968 alone. Yet the overriding media portrayal of the Tet offensive and the war thereafter was that of defeat for the United States and the Saigon government. Just so, the overriding media portrayal of the Iraq war is one of failure and futility.

Vietnam gave the United States the reputation for not supporting its allies. The shame of Vietnam is not that we were there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end. It was Congress that turned its back on the promises of the Paris accord. The president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense must share the blame. In the end, they did not stand up for the commitments our nation had made to South Vietnam. Any president or cabinet officer who is turned down by Congress when he asks for funding for a matter of national security or defense simply has not tried hard enough. There is no excuse for that failure. In my four years at the Pentagon, when public support for the Vietnam War was at its nadir, Congress never turned down any requests for the war effort or Defense Department programs.

[Dork.]

Originally Posted by abe

Dork. hasn't posted in this thread...yet.

Don't be so worried, abe. I simply spent most of my day today away from the Internet, that's all.

As for Mr. Kissinger, he's a little before my time, I'm afraid, and he's not one of my recent research topics, so I'll let you all figure out what to do with him....

[abe]

Originally Posted by Dork.

Don't be so worried, abe. I simply spent most of my day today away from the Internet, that's all.

As for Mr. Kissinger, he's a little before my time, I'm afraid, and he's not one of my recent research topics, so I'll let you all figure out what to do with him....

Wow! You are starting to write in a style that seems strangely familiar to me.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I am saying any connection with the US gov now, and Communism is a SPIN.

No disagreements there.

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by ghporter

spauldingg, thanks for a cover I haven't seen in far too many years!

Anyone who thinks that the highest levels of government-ANY government-can work with kid gloves and kind thoughts (like Star Trek: The Next Generation, with "oh well, that civilization fell, but at least we can sleep at night") is in a dream world. Let's go back a few years and see who it was that engineered "regime change" in South Vietnam in 1963... JFK wanted the CIA to help remove Diem, who was seen as weak and immobile. The South Vietnamese generals capitalized on the CIA's help and (going farther than the CIA thought they would) assasinated him. Read it here. Good old JFK was really behind that criminal act.

Yes, governments of powerful countries do bad things in the name of ideology or expediency or "self-defence," but Hitchen's argues that Kissinger is an unusual case:

So there was a long period of a one-man-sponsored, rolling, international crime wave, which also violated the US Constitution, the letter and the spirit of congressional resolutions, and all the rest of it. There is no parallel or comparable case as far as I know.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Spliff

No disagreements there.

And the US gov is "run" by "neoncons" right now.

And the poster I replied to claiming they were the same thing.

I disagreed. You seem to be agreeing with me.

What's the problem?

Or where you just wanting to argue?

[Spliff]

Originally Posted by Kevin

And the US gov is "run" by "neoncons" right now.

And the poster I replied to claiming they were the same thing.

I disagreed. You seem to be agreeing with me.

What's the problem?

Or where you just wanting to argue?

No, I thought you were denying the historical links between some neocons and their early dalliances with communism/trotskyism. That's all.

e.g., I posted a couple of excerpts and you wrote "AAAAHahaha man the people who wrote that are great at the spin."

[Kevin]

Yes I was referring to his comment about the US wanting to be a Empire .

[Monique]

Why are Kissinger's comments shocking??

And the communists from the West are more like Socialists and not very dangerous. Contrary to the communists of the USSR and China and Asian countries which are repressive and more like dictatorship.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Monique

Why are Kissinger's comments shocking??

And the communists from the West are more like Socialists and not very dangerous. Contrary to the communists of the USSR and China and Asian countries which are repressive and more like dictatorship.

After North Korea had gone Communist in the early 1950's. And Cuba had gone Communist in the late 1950's and the Congo was feared to be Communist in 1960 Communism was on the march.

When it threatened to swallow up VietNam the US couldn't easily ignore this.

The fact that you can NOW say the Vietnamese brand of Communism wasn't all that threatening is a case of 20/20 hindsight.

AT THE TIME it was a big worry and not an unreasonable assumption that the idea of the domino theory was real!

It may ALSO be argued that our involvement helped change the direction of the Communism to being more benign than it would have been had we NOT gone to war.

[Monique]

There were no real strategic value to Vietnam; it was the place the U.S. decided to say no to. But, they should have learned their lesson from the French, it was an impossible place to be in just like Afghanistan, and Irak. You ask the previous owner if it is really worth it. In Vietnam it was not worth it, 65,000 dead soldiers, an almost entire military generation affected by it, prisonners tortured and marked for life; the North won; why because they were fighting for their survival, the Americans were fighting for domination and the soldiers in the end did not see the point of doing it.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Monique

There were no real strategic value to Vietnam; it was the place the U.S. decided to say no to. But, they should have learned their lesson from the French, it was an impossible place to be in just like Afghanistan, and Irak. You ask the previous owner if it is really worth it. In Vietnam it was not worth it, 65,000 dead soldiers, an almost entire military generation affected by it, prisonners tortured and marked for life; the North won; why because they were fighting for their survival, the Americans were fighting for domination and the soldiers in the end did not see the point of doing it.

If we had kept our promises and invested the relatively small sum of $297 million (compared to our past expenditures and compared to the price of having a non Communist Vietnam) we would have won.

When we pulled out in 1973, with only minimal support from US the ARVN forces were beating the NVA and Viet Cong. When we stopped even minor support, they fell completely.

You can keep believing the leftist script to make themselves feel good about snatching defeat from the mouth of victory. But it is not true.

We were winning at the end and we could have had a democratic Viet Nam now. But noooooooooooooo!

All of the major battles had been fought and won. We had already lost all those lives and we had victory to show for it. Until the politicians did in the halls of Congress and in the negotiations what the enemy couldn't do in the field...defeat the USA.

[Monique]

You are dreaming Abe; there is no way the Americans were winning Vietnam.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Monique

You are dreaming Abe; there is no way the Americans were winning Vietnam.

This is one of the things I absolutely LOVE about MacNN's P/L...when I am able to learn something new that turns everything I THOUGHT I knew on it's ear.

OR, when I can help dispel a popular myth.

Get ready, Monique. I am about to rock your world!

But the real story in A Better War is how Abrams waged a classic "do more with less" struggle. Sorley reminds us that Abrams assumed command in 1968 when 500,000 American military were in Vietnam, yet the Vietnamese countryside remained dangerous--a testament to the bankruptcy of the strategy of attrition. Four years later, when Abrams departed MACV to become Army Chief of Staff, only 50,000 Americans remained in country, but well over 90 percent of the countryside was secure. Pacification had worked, and although South Vietnam's imperfect democracy and military forces had vulnerabilities, Hanoi's go-for-broke 1972 Easter Offensive had failed, North Vietnam's army was in disarray, and it was our war to lose from that point forward.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...am#post2951022

[Monique]

Let's just get a definition of winning shall we! Winning means that the South side would have had dinner in Hanoi not in Saigon.

Like in many cases it was not a war for the Americans to win or lose it was a civil war between the North and the South.

Now Vietnam has been over for 33 years and how is the world doing polically, not bad isn't it; and communism is over in many countries.

And it is not like in the movies, one battle is never decisive. Let's just say I humour you, and it was true in that little part of the country the North Vietnamese troops were in dissaray, why didn't they have dinner in Hanoi. The answer is that kind of jungle war cannot be won after one battle, it takes years and after 10 years it is obvious that even the large American war machine could not win it.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Monique

Let's just get a definition of winning shall we! Winning means that the South side would have had dinner in Hanoi not in Saigon.

Like in many cases it was not a war for the Americans to win or lose it was a civil war between the North and the South.

Now Vietnam has been over for 33 years and how is the world doing polically, not bad isn't it; and communism is over in many countries.

And it is not like in the movies, one battle is never decisive. Let's just say I humour you, and it was true in that little part of the country the North Vietnamese troops were in dissaray, why didn't they have dinner in Hanoi. The answer is that kind of jungle war cannot be won after one battle, it takes years and after 10 years it is obvious that even the large American war machine could not win it.

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this!

Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam
By Melvin R. Laird
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005

Summary: During Richard Nixon's first term, when I served as secretary of defense, we withdrew most U.S. forces from Vietnam while building up the South's ability to defend itself. The result was a success -- until Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a similar strategy now, but this time finish the job properly.

MELVIN R. LAIRD was Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973, Counselor to the President for Domestic Affairs from 1973 to 1974, and a member of the House of Representatives from 1952 to 1969. He currently serves as Senior Counselor for National and International Affairs at the Reader's Digest Association.


SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the assumption that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. He didn't have any such plan, and my job as his first secretary of defense was to remedy that -- quickly. The only stated plan was wording I had suggested for the 1968 Republican platform, saying it was time to de-Americanize the war. Today, nearly 37 years after Nixon took office as president and I left Congress to join his cabinet, getting out of a war is still dicier than getting into one, as President George W. Bush can attest.

There were two things in my office that first day that gave my mission clarity. The first was a multivolume set of binders in my closet safe that contained a top-secret history of the creeping U.S. entry into the war that had occurred on the watch of my predecessor, Robert McNamara. The report didn't remain a secret for long: it was soon leaked to The New York Times, which nicknamed it "the Pentagon Papers." I always referred to the study as "the McNamara Papers," to give credit where credit belonged. I didn't read the full report when I moved into the office. I had already spent seven years on the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee listening to McNamara justify the escalation of the war. How we got into Vietnam was no longer my concern. (Although, in retrospect, those papers offered a textbook example of how not to commit American military might.)

The second item was another secret document, this one shorter and infinitely more troubling. It was a one-year-old request from General William Westmoreland to raise the U.S. troop commitment in Vietnam from 500,000 to 700,000. At the time he had made the request, Westmoreland was the commander of U.S. forces there. As soon as the idea had reached the ears of President Lyndon Johnson, Westmoreland's days in Saigon were numbered. Johnson bumped him upstairs to be army chief of staff, so that the Pentagon bureaucracy could dilute his more-is-better philosophy during the coming presidential campaign.

The memo had remained in limbo in the defense secretary's desk, neither approved nor rejected. As my symbolic first act in office, it gave me great satisfaction to turn down that request formally. It was the beginning of a four-year withdrawal from Vietnam that, in retrospect, became the textbook description of how the U.S. military should decamp.

Others who were not there may differ with this description. But they have been misinformed by more than 30 years of spin about the Vietnam War. The resulting legacy of that misinformation has left the United States timorous about war, deeply averse to intervening in even a just cause, and dubious of its ability to get out of a war once it is in one. All one need whisper is "another Vietnam," and palms begin to sweat. I have kept silent for those 30 years because I never believed that the old guard should meddle in the business of new administrations, especially during a time of war. But the renewed vilification of our role in Vietnam in light of the war in Iraq has prompted me to speak out.

Some who should know better have made our current intervention in Iraq the most recent in a string of bogeymen peeking out from under the bed, spawned by the nightmares of Vietnam that still haunt us. The ranks of the misinformed include seasoned politicians, reporters, and even veterans who earned their stripes in Vietnam but who have since used that war as their bully pulpit to mold an isolationist American foreign policy. This camp of doomsayers includes Senator Edward Kennedy, who has called Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam." Those who wallow in such Vietnam angst would have us be not only reticent to help the rest of the world, but ashamed of our ability to do so and doubtful of the value of spreading democracy and of the superiority of freedom itself. They join their voices with those who claim that the current war is "all about oil," as though the loss of that oil were not enough of a global security threat to merit any U.S. military intervention and especially not "another Vietnam."

The Vietnam War that I saw, first from my seat in Congress and then as secretary of defense, cannot be wrapped in a tidy package and tagged "bad idea." It was far more complex than that: a mixture of good and evil from which there are many valuable lessons to be learned. Yet the only lesson that seems to have endured is the one that begins and ends with "Don't go there." The war in Iraq is not "another Vietnam." But it could become one if we continue to use Vietnam as a sound bite while ignoring its true lessons.

I acknowledge and respect the raw emotions of those who fought in Vietnam, those who lost loved ones, and those who protested, and I also respect the sacrifice of those who died following orders of people such as myself, half a world away. Those raw emotions are once again being felt as our young men and women die in Iraq and Afghanistan. I cannot speak for the dead or the angry. My voice is that of a policymaker, one who once decided which causes were worth fighting for, how long the fight should last, and when it was time to go home. The president, as our commander-in-chief, has the overall responsibility for making these life-or-death decisions, in consultation with Congress. The secretary of defense must be supportive of those decisions, or else he must leave.

It is time for a reasonable look at both Vietnam and Iraq -- and at what the former can teach us about the latter. My perspective comes from military service in the Pacific in World War II (I still carry shrapnel in my body from a kamikaze attack on my destroyer, the U.S.S. Maddox), nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and four years as secretary of defense to Nixon.

Today, we deserve a view of history that is based on facts rather than emotional distortions and the party line of tired politicians who play on emotions. Mine is not a rosy view of the Vietnam War. I didn't miss the fact that it was an ugly, mismanaged, tragic episode in U.S. history, with devastating loss of life for all sides. But there are those in our nation who would prefer to pick at that scab rather than let it heal. They wait for opportunities to trot out the Vietnam demons whenever another armed intervention is threatened. For them, Vietnam is an insurance policy that pretends to guarantee peace at home as long as we never again venture abroad. Certain misconceptions about that conflict, therefore, need to be exposed and abandoned in order to restore confidence in the United States' nation-building ability.

STAYING THE COURSE

The truth about Vietnam that revisionist historians conveniently forget is that the United States had not lost when we withdrew in 1973. In fact, we grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory two years later when Congress cut off the funding for South Vietnam that had allowed it to continue to fight on its own. Over the four years of Nixon's first term, I had cautiously engineered the withdrawal of the majority of our forces while building up South Vietnam's ability to defend itself. My colleague and friend Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, had negotiated a viable agreement between North and South Vietnam, which was signed in January 1973. It allowed for the United States to withdraw completely its few remaining troops and for the United States and the Soviet Union to continue funding their respective allies in the war at a specified level. Each superpower was permitted to pay for replacement arms and equipment. Documents released from North Vietnamese historical files in recent years have proved that the Soviets violated the treaty from the moment the ink was dry, continuing to send more than $1 billion a year to Hanoi. The United States barely stuck to the allowed amount of military aid for two years, and that was a mere fraction of the Soviet contribution.

Yet during those two years, South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973.

I believed then and still believe today that given enough outside resources, South Vietnam was capable of defending itself, just as I believe Iraq can do the same now. From the Tet offensive in 1968 up to the fall of Saigon in 1975, South Vietnam never lost a major battle. The Tet offensive itself was a victory for South Vietnam and devastated the North Vietnamese army, which lost 289,000 men in 1968 alone. Yet the overriding media portrayal of the Tet offensive and the war thereafter was that of defeat for the United States and the Saigon government. Just so, the overriding media portrayal of the Iraq war is one of failure and futility.

Vietnam gave the United States the reputation for not supporting its allies. The shame of Vietnam is not that we were there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end. It was Congress that turned its back on the promises of the Paris accord. The president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense must share the blame. In the end, they did not stand up for the commitments our nation had made to South Vietnam. Any president or cabinet officer who is turned down by Congress when he asks for funding for a matter of national security or defense simply has not tried hard enough. There is no excuse for that failure. In my four years at the Pentagon, when public support for the Vietnam War was at its nadir, Congress never turned down any requests for the war effort or Defense Department programs. These were tense moments, but I got the votes and the appropriations. A defense secretary's relationship with Congress is second only to his relationship with the men and women in uniform. Both must be able to trust him, and both must know that he respects them. If not, Congress will not fund, and the soldiers, sailors, and air personnel will not follow.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200511...f-vietnam.html

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by abe

This is one of the things I absolutely LOVE about MacNN's P/L...when I am able to learn something new that turns everything I THOUGHT I knew on it's ear.

OR, when I can help dispel a popular myth.

Get ready, Monique. I am about to rock your world!

Originally Posted by abe

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this!

Congratulations You won an argument with Monique. Good job.

Oh, and one more thing . . .

[abe]

Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy

Congratulations You won an argument with Monique. Good job.

Oh, and one more thing . . .

You have absolutely no sense of natural decency?

In a previous post where you wantonly paraded your depraved insensitivity I suggested you should be called not "dcMACdaddy," but dc"muck"daddy.

You REALLY ARE the lowest of the low that I've ever seen on these pages. And the interesting thing is that you either DON'T KNOW that you are depraved or you DON'T CARE!

The suggestion often used here as a default expression of criticism or ridicule is earnestly meant in this case with you.

Seek help.

Really.

[abe]

Originally Posted by Monique

Let's just get a definition of winning shall we! Winning means that the South side would have had dinner in Hanoi not in Saigon.

Like in many cases it was not a war for the Americans to win or lose it was a civil war between the North and the South.

Now Vietnam has been over for 33 years and how is the world doing polically, not bad isn't it; and communism is over in many countries.

And it is not like in the movies, one battle is never decisive. Let's just say I humour you, and it was true in that little part of the country the North Vietnamese troops were in dissaray, why didn't they have dinner in Hanoi. The answer is that kind of jungle war cannot be won after one battle, it takes years and after 10 years it is obvious that even the large American war machine could not win it.

Originally Posted by dcmuckdaddy

Congratulations (abe) You won an argument with Monique. Good job.

Dear Monique,

I know you understand that I shared the information about the US potential victory in Vietnam in the spirit of gleeful academic enthusiasm. There was no sense of 'triumph' over you, but there was and IS as sense of joy in helping to spread the truth about this era in history.

You don't need to comment on any of MUCK daddy's comments. But, as always, you are a capable woman and quite able to to speak for yourself and I want you to do whatever you believe will make you happy.

Just as I wish ALL of our posters...within reason, of course.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy

Oh, and one more thing . . .

I'll remember that next time you get into one of your tizzies.

And DC, don't worry about Monique. I just had a gal from Canada that just informed me that the US lost the Gulf War too.

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I'll remember that next time you get into one of your tizzies.

Please do. At times we all need a reminder that nothing matters on the InterWeb.
Some of us need that reminder more often than others, though.

[abe]

Originally Posted by dcmacdaddy

Please do. At times we all need a reminder that nothing matters on the InterWeb.
Some of us need that reminder more often than others, though.

The difficulty I sense your having with that lead balloon is that it won't float in your own mind.

And the reason it won't float in your mind is because you don't believe it.

And with good reason.

It's not true.

Thoughts do matter.

Thoughts are THINGS.