Posted on 03/28/2023 9:09:41 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Anew documentary about demonstrations against the Vietnam war in late 1969 argues that the hundreds of thousands who filled the streets in Washington and almost every major US city convinced Richard Nixon to abandon a plan to sharply escalate the war, including the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.
The Movement and The “Madman” will air on PBS on Tuesday. Produced and directed by the veteran documentarian Stephen Talbot, it evokes a peak moment of 1960s activism – and the “absolute disconnection” between what Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, were “deciding to do and the human costs of it, whether it’s to our own soldiers or [Vietnamese] civilians”.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Total absolute nonsense.
“When the hell did Nixon say he would do such a thing???”
I doubt very much he ever did.
I think what they are telling us is that Joe wants to nuke Russia, and that, somehow, we should blame the Republicans.
This is just BS. Consider the source.
what the protests did along with the radicalized Democrat party, after they got Nixon;
Was to kill literally millions, abandon our allies to concentration camps, and to lose the vast naval bases we so desperately need against China.
All in the name of “peace” and “love”.
Vietnam is the original sin (of the left) America is still paying for.
For some reason, the Left really needs to keep alive their ridiculous, straw-man caricature of Nixon.
I suspect its key to the moral and psychological well-being of aging leftist hippies.
No one wants to be close to death and be told one has been believing and living a lie one’s whole life.
Maybe this is the stooge press attempt to lay the groundwork for the DC warmonger’s potential use of nukes to save their Uke money machine.
These leftists’ drivel is corny asphalt.
Baloney. Nixon did “sharply escalate the war” in 1970 by going into Cambodia to root out the NVA sanctuaries, and by bombing and mining Haiphong harbor in N Vietnam. Nukes were never on the agenda. This revisionist history is designed only to make leftover peaceniks feel grandiose and revive the old anti-Nixon paranoia.
As Stephen Bull, a former Nixon aide, explains in the film, his boss wanted the Russians to “think that he was a madman. However, my personal observation was, it was a bluff. He was never going to use nuclear weapons, but he wanted the threat to be out there to force them to the table.”
I suppose the guardian had a wild hair to smack around Nixon, who is no longer around to defend himself. And all of the Right by extension, of course.
theguardian...flush
BTTT
Pure BS. Nuclear weapons were never seriously considered. Neither was invasion and occupation of North Vietnam. He didn’t even lift Johnson’s bombing halt (of North Vietnam) for 3 years. Even then it was only after a massive and obvious invasion, e.g. the 1972 Easter Offensive.
Hey now.
The Guardian is excellent for lining bird cages.
In an emergency, it can be used for fish wrap but don’t let the fish read any part of it.
Supposing (bear with me) that Nixon (or LBJ don't forget him) really did consider nuclear weapons at some point, it was mutual assured destruction that deterred him.
I do not know whether or not Nixon said such things. However, I do remember hearing Senator Barry Goldwater say, in a video, “ I think we should nuke them, ( North Vietnam. )” He was right.
I can remember at least six times, without even doing any research, since 1945 when nukes should have been used by the U.S.A. but there are always unqualified, unintelligent wusses who become politicians because they simply cannot do anything else and do not know how to win wars.
There was also talk in the Johnson administration of moving nuclear weapons to South Vietnam so that they could be quickly deployed against the North.
In war — in politics — all kinds of things are on the table and under consideration. It’s the things that get off the table and put into effect that matter.
To get a better idea what was actually being accomplished, there needs to be a little clarity on actions.
The first U.S. military advisers were sent to help the French battle the communists of Northern Vietnam in 1950. That same year, the Korean War began, pitting Communist North Korean and Chinese forces against the U.S. and its UN allies.
The French were fighting in Vietnam to maintain their colonial power and to regain their national pride after the humiliation of World War II. The U.S. government had an interest in the conflict in Indochina from the end of World War II until the mid-1950s when France found itself fighting against a communist insurgency led by Ho Chi Minh.
Throughout the early 1950s, the Viet Minh forces made significant gains. In May 1954, the French suffered a military defeat at Dien Bien Phu and negotiations began to end the conflict. So what did the French do? They bailed. It ended up establishing a communist government in North Vietnam and a democratic government in South Vietnam. And the US was in the news fighting communism.
The Kennedy (1960) foreign policy was rooted, of course, in the Cold War, and the increase of American advisers reflected Kennedy’s rhetoric of standing up to communism wherever it might be found.
Following Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, the administration of Lyndon Johnson continued the same general policies of putting American advisers in the field beside South Vietnamese troops. But things changed with an incident in the summer of 1964 when American naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin, on the coast of Vietnam, reported being fired upon by North Vietnamese gunboats. The Johnson administration used the incident to justify a military escalation. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by both houses of Congress within days of the naval confrontation. It gave the president broad authority to defend American troops in the region. Remember, it was not a war, it was a protective action for the American bases in the country.
The Johnson administration began a series of airstrikes against targets in North Vietnam. It was assumed by Johnson’s advisers that air attacks alone would cause the North Vietnamese to negotiate an end to armed conflict. That did not happen.
In March 1965, President Johnson ordered U.S. Marine battalions to defend the American airbase at Da Nang, Vietnam. It marked the first time combat troops were inserted into the war. The escalation continued throughout 1965, and by the end of that year, 184,000 American troops were in Vietnam. In 1966, the troop totals rose again to 385,000. By the end of 1967, American troop totals peaked in Vietnam at 490,000.
And now we get to the Nixon administration that handed him this mess by the Dems and had been rapidly losing support from the citizens as the validity was being questioned by the voters over costs and lives. So Nixon took action to try to appease both sides. The levels of combat troops were reduced from 1969 onward. But there was still considerable support for the war, and Nixon had campaigned in 1968 pledging to bring an “honorable end” to the war, so he couldn’t just bail.
And the left poured it on. An example is a televised Capitol Hill testimony by a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, future Massachusetts senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state, John Kerry. On April 22, 1971, speaking of losses in Vietnam and the desire to remain in the war, Kerry asked, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” So, as Nixon was trying to get out of the quagmire, the libs were trying desperately to not look stupid by trashing Nixon for their failed efforts in the scenario.
Nixon did threaten nuclear with Operation Giant Lance. But that was no more than an incentive to try to get the north into diplomacy to end the war. They ignored it so it was cancelled.
So to answer the original question, with the mistake of entering the action at all with a perceived need to stop communism and bale out the French, the left struck us in the mud. So when the public turned against them, they handed it to Nixon and he started pulling out troops until we could no longer support the south and they fell in 1975.
The heightened fear of nuclear warfare brought upon a shared parity of nuclear avoidance across all participants of the war. None of the participant willed a military confrontation that would escalate to that level, exemplifying the significance and extreme measures of Nixon’s actions in social perceptions at the time. So it never was a real threat to be used and was not a concern for anyone playing at the time.
wy69
The military contingency plans probably included Nuclear attack as well as if china or Russia entered the war. The military makes detailed plans for anything that might happen. Wasn’t it Kissinger that made plans that started the WEF? Didn’t the CIA plan the Kennedy assignation?
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