Posted on 05/05/2018 8:52:15 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
Great advice, and I set out to find out about the Pentagon Papers, which I should have done long ago.
Turned off by the prospect of watching long panel discussions by lefty reporters patting themselves on the back, I found this brief explanation of the Pentagon Papers by a young female named Jennani Jayaram. I think you will like it:
The Pentagon Papers: The Shocking Truth of the Lies, by Jennani Jayaram.
The Civil War doc was sorta ok, a bit maudlin with the mournful fiddle every 5 minutes. I give him credit on the baseball one for highlighting the black leagues as much as he did - a bit overdue attention for them, IMHO.
The WWII one was where he lost me - kept showing Allied failures, vets crying over having to kill people, etc. A little of that would have been ok, but it seemed relentless.
My view on the Pentagon Papers is that, since their chronicle stopped before Nixon’s election, he should’ve just blown them off as a black mark on the Democrats.
I believe that was Nixon’s original take on it. But he got whipped up into a snit about their release (by Kissinger I think), and that started the whole Plumbers vs. Daniel Ellsburg business.
Ted Kennedy was the man responsible for seeing that no further aid was sent to South Vietnam, after US withdrawal. He actually stated a Senate committee hearing that nothing bad would happen after the North re United the county!!!! I guess Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge weren’t on the radar.
Then Col. Singlaub was Chief MACVSOG in 68 when I volunteered.
He was the best I recall in that position. Ellsberg never saw
combat in Vietnam during his USMC time in a platoon and company. These writers are mostly idiots. I recall one of ours became a journalist. He told the Congress about the secret bombings in Cambodia. Yes, he spoke in detail that bombing COSVN was like poking a hole in a hornet’s nest. TS INFO is TS until DECLASSIFIED.
Ellsberg was in Vietnam for a couple of years as a civilian adviser working for Ed Lansdale around 1965-66 and did go out into the countryside, and I believe had some close calls.
In his mind.
Exactly. We let them down. And that Domino thing wasn’t just a theory. Look at Laos and Cambodia after we left, and what a horror THAT was. Thanks to angry hippies and a spineless democrat congress and a nation wanting to bury its head in the sand from the war, Watergate and Nixon.
“From the very beginning, The Vietnam War has a sense of impending doom.”
I watched a documentary filmed right after the battle of Ia Drang Valley - in which we lost a lot of men, but were victorious. Our first main battle in the war.
At the end, some famous young broadcaster (Rather? Brokaw? Cronkite was the guy back in the studio that introduced it.) Anyway - the reporter is speaking as the flag draped caskets are loaded onto the plane.
“So while this may have been a victory, it remains to be seen how long the mothers and fathers and the American public will hold out support as this is only the beginning of the number of their sons returning home in a casket.” (Or something to that effect). The leftist media knew right from the beginning how they were going to report on the war. I bet even then they had figured “Hey - as soon as the number of dead reach 1,000 - we’ll start putting the total deaths up in the corner of each news broadcast!”
I was just 13 when we left Vietnam - but I remember those numbers. I think it might have been left on for the entire news cast - but maybe not.
“I believe that was Nixon’s original take on it [to blame it on the democrats]. But he got whipped up into a snit about their release (by Kissinger I think), and that started the whole Plumbers vs. Daniel Ellsburg business.”
I would be interested if you have anything more about that by Kissinger. I could see that. I always thought that Nixon was thinking about the greater good of the country. Of course I may be naive too! But I don’t think so.
He did not want the Pentagon Papers released as it showed poorly on our leadership, military and our country.
In the Watergate tapes he talks about not being worried about the third-rate break-in. But then says something like “it could bring up the whole Cuban thing.” Then a few minutes later is the 7.5 minute gap.
I always thought that Cuban thing was in reference to Kennedy’s failed Bay of Pigs operation. Two(?) of the plumbers were Cubans involved in that. [I think later on it was Halderman that wrote that was his impression as well]. (So the Pentagon Papers protected Johnson, Watergate protected Kennedy - but they both were an effort to protect America.
And Nixon also wanted to fight his impeachment, but then realized it would be best for America to resign instead.
Maybe I need to put away my rose-colored glasses! But in the few books that I’ve read by Nixon after he was president, they all seem to talk about America as a whole - and not a bunch of political party type angles to things.
Of course the tapes show that Nixon was very much a political animal as well.
Don’t forget the Buddhist they were very fired up over the war
Not at all! Nixon was dealt a hard hand upon entering office in 1969, and he handled it well IMO.
Re Kissinger inciting Nixon on the Pentagon Papers -- A.J. Langguth, former Saigon bureau chief for the NY Times, discusses it in his book "Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975." pp 587 onward:
"Kissinger knew that Nixon considered his young aides avid leakers of questionable loyalty. ... [Kissinger] must prove his fealty by becoming even more implacable than his president. At the 7:30 a.m. staff meeting on Monday [following Sunday NY Times first publication of excerpts from the Pentagon Papers], Haldeman, Ehrlichmann and the others watched a volcanic performance as Kissinger shouted, waved his arms, pounded his fist and cried for vengeance.
"'No foreign country will ever trust us again,' he declaimed. 'We might just as well turn it all over to the Soviets and get it over with.'
"Kissinger took his fury to the Oval Office and prodded Nixon by pushing a reliable button. If he did nothing, Kissinger warned him, 'it shows that you're weak, Mr. President.' ... By the time the rant had ended, Nixon was boiling."
I like Langguth's book.
Walter Cronkite even reported the Tet offensive as a great North Vietnamese victory.
Bunch of poopyheads.
The anti-war movement was really an anti-draft movement. Most potential draftees didn’t think Vietnam was worth dying over. Once the draft disappeared so did the anti-war movement. That’s why some on the left occasionally suggest reinstating the draft. It was a great recruiting tool for them.
“’No foreign country will ever trust us again,’ he declaimed.
And Kissinger was right to an extent. When the south was finally overrun due to our lack of support - a lasting image on how the world viewed America was a helicopter on a roof with a long line of people waiting to get on and flee.
Terrific article by Mark Moyar.
There is a great big flaw in your thinking. You can't whistle past the graveyard and expect nothing can happen. Communism had to be stopped in any way possible including force of arms. Christianity is stronger than Islam, yet 1.57 billion people are Muslims, all prosthelytized by the sword.
In the Sixties and Seventies Global Communism was taking over country-after-country and Nikita Khrushchev told the West that "we will bury you! It was happening as they claimed until President Reagan gained his office with the understanding that he could bankrupt its benefactor, the Soviet Union.
With the fall of South Viet Nam, the Pathet Lao took over Laos, The the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. Myanmar (Burma) became the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma with Soviet-style nationalisation and central planning. A Communist insurrection was ongoing in Thailand and the Philippines.
Several sub-Saharan African states formally embraced communism, including Burkina Faso (Upper Volta), the People's Republic of Benin (French West Africa), the People's Republic of Mozambique, the People's Republic of the Congo, the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and the People's Republic of Angola.
In Central America , the Sandinista's (FSLN) overthrew the government in Nicaragua. El Salvador was fighting the "Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front" (FMLN). The Marxist URNG was fighting the Guatemalan government.
In South America The Shining Path was active in Peru. There was a Marxist–Leninist coup in Grenada.
In 1979 the Soviets Invaded Afghanistan.
Nations were actually falling like dominoes and it wasn't a stretch to understand Communism would reach critical mass within only a few years. It mattered not that their communist system is weak if the USA had become the last bastion of freedom struggling against the communist slave labor of the whole world.
| History of communist states |
| Previous communist states |
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| Post-Soviet states |
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Dinesh D'Souza in [D'Souza, 1999] sums up the 1980s revolution.Now, with Islam we are facing the same sort of domino threat if we don't stand up and stop it dead!In Chapter One: Why Reagan Gets No Respect he summarises how Reagan reversed the downward trend of the 1970s for human freedom:
"During the Reagan administration, all this changed. No more nations fell into the clutches of the Soviet bear. Capitalism and democracy began to advance around the world. On Reagan's watch, dictatorships collapsed in Chile, Haiti, and Panama, and nine more countries moved toward democracy: Bolivia (1982), Honduras (1982), Argentina (1983), Grenada (1983), El Salvador (1984), Uruguay (1984), Brazil (1985), Guatemala (1985), and the Philippines (1986). Fewer than one-third of the countries in Latin America were democratic in 1981; more than 90 percent of the region was democratic by 1989. In Nicaragua, shortly after Reagan's second term ended, free elections were held, and the Sandinista government was ousted from power. Apartheid ended in South Africa, and a black-majority government was elected. All these changes occurred relatively peacefully."
Kissinger and Ellsberg went way back, and I think Kissinger was so aggressive about the Pentagon Papers because he wanted to remove any suspicion that he might sympathize or be involved with Ellsberg. Kissinger was an office politics expert as well as a foreign policy expert!
Seems to me that Nixon left S. Vietnam in as good a shape as he possibly could’ve while still getting the US troops out. The defeat in 1975 was due to the cut off of aid by Congress. But what would’ve happened long-term if Congress had not cut off the aid, I don’t know.
Loved his book, what a great American; and thanks for your service!
Thanks for the ping. Mark Moyer is right on.
I remember Walter Cronkite starting each evening news broadcast by saying, “Today, (insert number here) Americans were killed in Vietnam.”
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