tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post115971972107417858..comments2024-03-19T11:28:58.168-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Kissinger then and nowDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-1161020589797563642006-10-16T13:43:00.000-04:002006-10-16T13:43:00.000-04:00I'm less certain of how prescient Kissinger was in...I'm less certain of how prescient Kissinger was in his 1969 memo. You state that North Vietnam emerged from the 1972 Easter Offensive "in a much stronger position than before." I seriously doubt this -- Hanoi suffered huge troop and equipment losses, and was clearly exhausted. As the historian Ronald Spector notes (in his book "After Tet") after the failure of the Easter Offensive the North Vietnamese leadership concluded that they had to get the Americans out of the war at any cost. Therefore they signed a peace agreement recognizing the continued existence of the Saigon government -- something they had been unwilling to entertain in previous peace negotiations as far back as 1968. <BR/><BR/>Also, you credit Kissinger with correctly predicting that North Vietnam would "successfully wait the United States out." This is easy to conclude in retrospect only, but only if you ignore the devastating impact of Watergate on the Nixon presidency, which Kissinger could hardly have foreseen in 1969. Nixon won a landslide reelection victory over an explicitly antiwar candidate in 1972, and shortly thereafter he gave South Vietnam a "secret promise" that he would reengage with US airpower if Hanoi violated the Paris Accords. But only a few months later, in mid-1973, Watergate had become front-page news and the Nixon presidency was already fatally weakened. I think it's worth considering the counterfactual argument that in the absence of the Watergate conspiracy Nixon would have remained a strong, popular president far more likely to keep his commitment to South Vietnam, and Hanoi would not have risked moving against Saigon until after he had retired from office.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-1159798025289271602006-10-02T10:07:00.000-04:002006-10-02T10:07:00.000-04:00Prof. Kaiser's citation and analysis document my p...Prof. Kaiser's citation and analysis document my previous suspicions cast by Bush's public remarks months ago about the next US president having to deal with the war Bush started in Iraq. <BR/> The difference between Iraq and Vietnam - which underscores the extraordinary inapplicability of Kissinger's advice - is that Vietnam was a nationalist, not a religious/tribal, civil war - nor were the Vietnamese host to a theologically driven group of xenophobes intent on bringing the war to the West. That is to say no one ever postulated that letting loose North Vietnam on south Vietnam might very well lead to a covert nucelar attack upon the continental US.<BR/> The same cannot be said for the current situation. The current situation exists because Bush starved the real fight in Afghanistan in favor of a "quck and easy" victory against a completely unrelated foe who had not declared war on the US, and without further thought for the consequences; the political equivalent of jumping out the 96th storey window to avoid a fire (and yes that image is less metaphor than intentional historical parallel, as nauseous as it makes me to mention it).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-1159766866759162522006-10-02T01:27:00.000-04:002006-10-02T01:27:00.000-04:00It looks as if Bush believes that he can keep that...It looks as if Bush believes that he can keep that big US military base in the middle of the country despite the chaos, to which, moreover, he thinks he can be indifferent.<BR/><BR/>Good point about Rumsfeld--he's there just to keep a muzzle on the brass.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com