Three months before the 1972 presidential election, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger huddled together in the Oval Office to discuss when and how to get out of Vietnam. Despite a massive bombing campaign during the spring and summer in the north, the Republican president had concluded that U.S.-backed "South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway."
"We also have to realize, Henry, that winning an election is terribly important," Nixon told his national security adviser. "It's terribly important this year, but can we have a viable foreign policy if a year from now or two years from now, North Vietnam gobbles up South Vietnam? That's the real question."
Stanley Karnow had considered that both the North Vietnamese and the Nixon administraiton missed an opportunity to settle the war before 1972 as noted in his gold-standard history on the war in Vietnam: A History.
But now it looks like the real reason Americans and Vietnamese died after November, 1972 had more to do with re-election politics.
No comments:
Post a Comment