Monday, January 25, 2016

It could have turned out different in Vietnam

Via David

 


Yesterday in 1973, President Nixon announced a ceasefire in Vietnam.  It came about after the famous Christmas bombing of 1972, when President Nixon reminded North Vietnam that he had a lot of B-52s and was willing to use them.  In simple terms, the bombing was so intense that the North came back begging Secretary Kissinger for the paper to sign!

Two months later, the POWs came home, including John McCain.   

Twenty-seven months later, the North walked into Saigon, and we've known it as Ho Chi Minh City ever since.

Did it have to turn out that way?    

President Nixon did not think so.  He wrote about it in No More Vietnams, a book that gets better with age.  The point is that we choose to win wars or lose them, the latter of which we did in Vietnam.  To win would not have required a single soldier – just a few B-52s to remind the North that we meant to enforce the ceasefire.  We should remember that North Vietnam was devastated in 1973.

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