Posted on 05/26/2006 5:48:12 PM PDT by neverdem
Always keep your enemies guessing. Don't give them anything more than the usual BS. After the clashes between the Soviets and Chicoms in 1969 on the Ussuri River, there was no need for Kissinger to try to ingratiate himself with his predictions about the possible future.
Kissinger was a globalist. Never trusted the man.
He was just expressing US policy at the time...what the hell else was he supposed to say?
Common Sense is one sourse. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Vietnam has lost its security blanket...its protection from any possible invasion from the North (China). Now, without the USSR, there is no balance of power in Asia. China is IT! So, where else would Vietnam go?
There are several sources out there. I've also read in a few places that the US has been allowed to reopen an old base in Vietnam but mostly to store equipment for any possible war with China (if they were to try to invade Vietnam). This base is used more for storage than it is for actual US military personel.
Another concern of Vietnam is Al Qaeda and the Islamic Radicals in Indochina. US and Vietnam are also training together to fight the WOT in the region.
Further, the peace talks didn't even start for a protracted period thereafter, over a dispute on the shape of the table and who would get to sit where - meaning the N Viets would not allow S Viet to attend as an equal. Nixon escalated and expanded the attacks in SoutEast Asia as we withdrew in constant effort to bring the N Viets to an agreement.
It was Johnson who launced a "Christmas Bombing". Nixon finally won teh peace by mining the N Viet harbors and choking off their supplies.
I lived through it and I don't know where you got the fantasy that Nixon delayed getting a peace treaty deliberately for 4 years. That is pure nonsense. And Nixon got a treaty that would never have been violated if he remained as president. It was the democrats in Congress who gave N Viet a pass on a giant tank attack after Nixon resigned (once again the honorable approach versus scumbag Clinton and his puppet Albright).
But then I can't take you seriously after you just said that moron Albright and scoundrel Clinton were more "true" to our nation than Nixon and Kissinger. It was Clinton who TOOK THE CHICOM'S ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CASH, sold them advanced computers for their nuclear missile program, and embraced them as "strategic partners" as they were emerging as our greatest threat.
>>>In Vietnam, the Americans were never able to match the willpower of the North Vietnamese.
In Vietnam, the Americans never allowed themselves the option of bombing North Vietnam -- particularly Hanoi -- back to the pre-Cambrian era.
He probably stalled the peace talks in 1968 so as to give Nixon time to fight his secret war in Cambodia. We all remember John Kerry's recollections of Christmas 1968, which he spent in Cambodia after being ordered there by President Nixon.
LBJ launched Rolling Thunder.
ping
Either that or be appointed UN General Secretary.
Sound a bit like 'I voted for it before I voted against it'??
WE did good...everyone else, well, didn't.
(Or; we succeeded before we fell on our ass)
"It is because a country cannot be asked to engage in major acts of betrayal as a basis of its foreign policy."
SINCE WHEN?
I'd give up all claims on Carter and Clinton I just to be able to drop the trap on Kissinger.
Anyone who lived through that era, with high casualties and millions in the streets protesting, knows that Nixon would have given anything for an honorable peace at the earliest possible date.
Been there and done that on this issue long ago during the time the US Military ship went up the river in vn and these aricles were posted from different sources including the BBC. If you doubt me, GOOGLE it. I already posted you one article URL. What the US and VN are doing now is too much off-topic for me to go so deep as start posting URLs in this thread which deals with Kissenger and what he told China in the 1970s...THAT would be a disservice to FR.
On several ocasions, such as the Battle of An Loc, perhaps the Stalingrad of the Vietnam War, the South Vietnamese showed that they did, indeed, have the will to fight and defeat their North Vietnamese adversaries. I believe they would have been able to hold on indefinitely had they not been allowed to run out of ammunition.
God Bless America.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.