Nixon and the Legacy of the War

Nixon and the Legacy of the War in Vietnam

Nixon & Vietnam

Nixon Doctrine

President Richard Nixon set out policy goals for the conflict in Vietnam in a speech to the nation on November 3, 1969. At the time the country was deeply divided over the question of our presence in the region. In this speech Nixon claimed a nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and down its friends and that a unilateral withdrawal of all United States forces would humiliate our nation and promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest and spark violence wherever the nations commitments helped to keep the peace. A withdrawal of American forces would in the final analysis cost more lives and not bring peace, but more war. Nixon asserted that for these reasons he would not end the war immediately, but would change American policy on both the negotiating and battle fronts.

The President then articulated what he called the Nixon Doctrine. This policy was met to end the war in Vietnam and prevent future similar entanglements. The policy declared the United States would keep all treaty commitments, provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation to which we are allied or of a nation whose survival was considered vital to security, and in cases involving other types of aggression the country will furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with treaty commitments, however the nation whose security is directly threatened will assume the primary responsibility of providing manpower for its defense. In accordance with this policy Nixon announced his administration's efforts to Vietnamize the search for peace by striving to strengthen South Vietnam so they could assume the full responsibility for their security.

Peace with Honor

A little over three years later, on January 23, 1973, President Nixon announced the end of the conflict in Vietnam and the achievement of peace with honor. The agreement called for a cease-fire to take effect on January 24, 1973. Nixon announced that all the conditions that had been insisted upon had been met in order to ensure peace with honor. The cease-fire would be internationally supervised. Within 60 days all Americans held prisoner of war throughout Indochina would be released. During the same period all American forces would be withdrawn from South Vietnam. Additionally, the people of South Vietnam were guaranteed the right to determine their own future with no outside interference.

The President also thanked the American people for their steadfastness in supporting the administration's insistence on peace with honor, saying the important thing was to get the right kind of peace, which had been done. Nixon described the peace as one that did not betray allies, did not abandon prisoners of war, and did not end the war for the United States only to continue the conflict for the 50 million people of Indochina. He called upon the nation to be proud of the two and one-half million young Americans who served in Vietnam so the people of Vietnam might live in freedom and the world might live in peace.

Testimony of John Kerry

Between these two speeches, in the spring of 1971, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator William Fulbright began to hear the testimony of the actual soldiers who had served in Vietnam. One of these was John Kerry, at the time a leader of a veteran's organization opposing the continuation of the war. Kerry spoke of his opinion of some of the "honorable" activities of our soldiers and our government in association with the war.

Kerry testified of the results of an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged men, some highly decorated, had related stories of war crimes committed by American soldiers in Southeast Asia on a regular basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. The investigation revealed accounts of rape, the cutting off of human ears and heads, the tapping of wires from portable telephones to human genitals and then powered, as well as civilians shot as randomly, razed villages, cattle and dogs shot for fun, and poisoned food stocks.

Kerry also testified that there was nothing in South Vietnam that realistically threatened the security of the United States and any effort to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom is the height of criminal hypocrisy.

Kerry characterized the conflict as a civil war by a people who were seeking liberation from any colonial influence. The Vietnamese people were reluctant to engage in combat against the threat that we were supposedly saving them from. Most people did not know the difference between communism and democracy and only wanted to live in peace. They survived by siding with whichever military force was present at the time. American troops were lacking support from their allies. Vietnamization was a failure.

In fact Kerry found the concept of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese incredibly arrogant. He called the daily process by which the United States was washing its hands of the conflict so it wouldn't have to admit that it had made a mistake and/or lose a war for the first time offensive.

Kerry believed that the claim that the country was fighting in Vietnam to stop the spread of communism was a rationalization intended to avoid having to admit we had made a mistake in Vietnam. The people of Vietnam were not free any more under our protection than they may have been under another form of government.

Kerry contended that the United States involvement in Vietnam was a direct reaction to the perceived threat of Communism that was prevalent soon after 1945 and sustained in the ensuing cold war and these cold-war precepts were no longer applicable. This was because both sides have the capacity to destroy the human race and to respond to the types of threat presented in Vietnam is reckless.