Posted on 04/09/2016 7:58:42 PM PDT by astrat7
In my previous post (for the Lowy Interpreter) I labeled the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, a 'Nixon-Kissinger realist'. Since then, Trump has provided a detailed account of his worldview in an interview with David Sanger and Maggie Haberman from the New York Times.
It affirms my previous description and here I expand on what I mean.
Nixon became president in the shadow of Vietnam; the 'domino theory' had been discredited, the anti-war movement was gathering momentum, and the costs of becoming embroiled in wars that did not affect core American interests was keenly felt. In 1969, Nixon delivered a speech in Guam, and during the Q&A summarized what became known as 'the Nixon Doctrine':
I want to be sure that our policies in the future, all over the world, in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the rest, reduce American involvement. One of assistance, yes, assistance in helping them solve their own problems, but not going in and just doing the job ourselves simply because that is the easier way to do it.
This sent shockwaves through America's allies. Here in Australia, Nixon's speech, combined with Britain's retreat from east of the Suez, forced a maturation in strategic thinking and led to the development of 'self-reliance' as an Australian defense concept.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
-— “Nixon was a fairly decent president IMO. Yes he did some things that were Leftist in nature.”
Yes, for example, do you remember Nixon’s “Wage & Price Controls???”
OMG, that was so un-conservative!! So much for free markets!
But as a kid reading the news back then, I didn’t have a strong conviction about things like free market economies as I do now.
So true! People say the corruption and vicious tactics today are “the way it’s always been” but I believe it’s worse now. There has always been fighting, but do people like Sanders and the Clintons have any shred of goodness at all?
We’ve come a long way since then.
I was young too. I voted for him the second time. Couldn’t the first.
I was deeply offended by the hippie anti-war movement and their absolute hatred for the troops they were supposedly fighting for.
It was just a Black Lives Matter movement with another name.
It was a Leftist aggression against the nation.
I won’t go into it all now, but I agree Nixon was problematic at times, but him playing off China against Russia was a great idea.
What we decided to do with the open relations was terrible.
I think Sanders is a dufus commie. I still think he means well. When Hillary was cheating, he just took it. He’s not an angry vindictive man.
There’s no doubt he is unfit to lead, but I wouldn’t lump him in with the likes of the Clinton crime family.
The Left has gotten very coarse. BLM and other movements are just vile. Soros should be in prison for his unAmerican activities.
He was paying rioters. ANY justice department worth it’s salt would have arrested him and frozen his assets a long time ago.
He’s a crook. He’s screwed with four nations from what I’ve heard. Why he gets a pass I don’t know, and he was vile under Bush too.
Bush was such a clueless .......
I see this article much more simplistically. I see it as equating Trump with Nixon in order to smear Trump. Using their names in the same headline, and then comparing them in the article ought to do the trick. That vile Nixon, that vile Trump. One and the same.
“I was surprised to find out that Ho Chi Minh tried to approach Wilson at Versailles. “
Ho Chi Minh was already a committed Socialist by that time and in 1920 would be a founding member of the French Communist party. Far from being some sort of Vietnamese patriot he routinely turned in Vietnamese independence activists to the French, because the only sort of independence he was interested in was one controlled by the Communist Party.
My CO in Desert Storm.
“I don’t take Kennedy to task on that, because although he got us in a bit, Johnson was Mr. Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and then a micro manager from the Oval Office.”
Kennedy is as responsible as McNamara and Johnson for the war. It was Kennedy who dismantled the two national security committees that he inherited from Eisenhower. These committees included the JCS, so when Kennedy abolished them he got no direct input from the Joint Chiefs. And that’s exactly how he wanted it, the senior military were not his kind of people. He didn’t want their advice. McNamara was Kennedy’s kind of people. An immensely arrogant character who regarded the senior military with contempt.
The first result of Kennedy abolishing the national security apparatus was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Had he remained in contact with the JCS they could have warned him that his decision to withdraw air cover and naval gunships was going to result in a disaster.
Kennedy figured, without consulting the military, that he could wage the war in Vietnam just by using special forces to fight an insurgency. Had he listened to the JCS he would have drawn the red line in Laos, which would have saved South Vietnam from being the center of the conflict. And he set the stage for future disaster by encouraging the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem, which left South Vietnam rudderless for years. It wasn’t just one bad decision that guaranteed that Vietnam was headed for disaster, there was a whole series and Kennedy made many of them.
Of course three weeks after Kennedy helped get Diem assassinated the same thing happened to him, and then we had Johnson and McNamara running the show. Johnson was as contemptuous of the JCS as Kennedy and McNamara, if not more so. He routinely misled and lied to the military when he wasn’t simply ignoring them. McNamara was a truly vile individual, but then so was LBJ, and the unnecessary deaths of thousands of GIs belong on their heads. They had no plan to win the war. Today’s generation think that Obama has no equal as a horrible President, but then they are too young to remember Johnson.
Dubya had something just as bad. A utopian belief in the ability to reconstruct the Middle East that would have made Woodrow Wilson and Thaddeus Stevens blush.
Were you in 73 Easting? There’s some great videos on youtube about that battle and Eagle Troop’s role in it.
And there’s quite a few other videos featuring interviews with McMaster. He was a Major when he wrote the book, and probably a Captain when he was your CO. He’s now a Lieutenant General, which if memory serves makes him a Four Star.
McMaster is an impressive individual. He is the sort that ought to be President, but he seems like has integrity, a fatal flaw in a politician.
LBJ did almost as much damage to this country as Obummer. why is it that just about all damage to USA comes from Democrats? Woodrow Wilson, FDR. LBJ Carter Obummer.
I was very concerned about the Vietnam war as my brothers were potential draft bait. Given the people I was among I was not sure whether to be for or against carrying this war forward as the results began to look really iffy. Then I read a history of Vietnam and discovered that North and South Vietnam had been at war for 700 years, and that sometimes central Vietnam had been an independent kingdom during that period. I also saw that North Vietnam forged an alliance with far away Russia, while Albania forged its alliance with far away China. So I came to the conclusion that Communism and dominoes was not a real issue, but was being used as a scare issue that was out of all proportions to the reality of the situation. When I read about the $billion contracts to develop Cam Ran Bay and enriching Texas millionaires, and the possibility of off shore oil near Vietnam, I decided our best move was to get out of there as quickly and gracefully as possible.
Now we have reasonable relations with Vietnam, and they are joined with other Asians in struggles to keep China from taking over the South China Sea with militarized islands created over reefs. And how many thousands of lives were lost to achieve this result?
It’s because the Left captured the Democrats first. IT became overwhelming as the southern conservatives abandoned the party post-LBJ
Nixon indeed domestic spied extra constitutionally on Americans including some we didn’t like such as yippies but nonetheless not good in my view
Including for some for political reasons ....yes that too
And his wage and price controls
And EPA founder
And campaign scandals like ITT bribe and CREEP shenanigans
This was my coming of age era......
Nixon would have done better in INDOCHINA than LBJ I think...more skillful but Nixon was corrupted I hate to say
He’s got his defenders though
and “conservative” Michael Medved was one of those Leftists giving aid and comfort to Hanoi in that era.
“Nixon would have done better in INDOCHINA than LBJ I think...more skillful but Nixon was corrupted I hate to say”
I dunno. The Peace Treaty that he signed was shameful, it left an entire NVA army inside of South Vietnam. Nixon’s big interest was in ‘Vietnamizing’ war, ending our combat role there. Which, if he wasn’t willing to completely destroy the North’s ability to wage war on the South is about the only option. That’s essentially what the JCS were saying well before LBJ committed ground combat troops after the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964. If you weren’t going to go in heavy and end it that way then leave.
He bombed them to the peace table well
More of that to begin with and there might have been a surrender table
LBJ just thought he was Von Runstedt
Whenever anyone asks me to name something good that Nixon did, I always tell them he made us forget how much we hated Lyndon...
Nixon was a true patriot who took the heat that wasn't his to take - history will soon be changed enough that nobody in the future will ever realize it.
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