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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNixons Vietnam Treachery
Richard M. Nixon always denied it: to David Frost, to historians and to Lyndon B. Johnson, who had the strongest suspicions and the most cause for outrage at his successors rumored treachery. To them all, Nixon insisted that he had not sabotaged Johnsons 1968 peace initiative to bring the war in Vietnam to an early conclusion. My God. I would never do anything to encourage South Vietnam not to come to the table, Nixon told Johnson, in a conversation captured on the White House taping system.
Now we know Nixon lied. A newfound cache of notes left by H. R. Haldeman, his closest aide, shows that Nixon directed his campaigns efforts to scuttle the peace talks, which he feared could give his opponent, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, an edge in the 1968 election. On Oct. 22, 1968, he ordered Haldeman to monkey wrench the initiative.
The 37th president has been enjoying a bit of a revival recently, as his achievements in foreign policy and the landmark domestic legislation he signed into law draw favorable comparisons to the presidents (and president-elect) that followed. A new, $15 million face-lift at the Nixon presidential library, while not burying the Watergate scandals, spotlights his considerable record of accomplishments.
Haldemans notes return us to the dark side. Amid the reappraisals, we must now weigh apparently criminal behavior that, given the human lives at stake and the decade of carnage that followed in Southeast Asia, may be more reprehensible than anything Nixon did in Watergate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Like another president who came along a few years later and sold us a story.
byronius
(7,395 posts)For instance: the seven million dollars in gold the Republicans took from Adolf Hitler to keep America out of the war, according to William L. Shirer.
That happened.
NBachers
(17,122 posts)HoneyBadger
(2,297 posts)The low point in American history. So sad to think of all those lives lost.