Nixonland 9

On page 656 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein quotes a conversation between President Richard Nixon and John Connally.  Connally is urging Nixon not to worry about killing civilians in Vietnam.  People already thought that Nixon was doing so, Connally argued, so Nixon had might as well do so.  Nixon’s response was “That’s right.”  Earlier in the book, on page 649, Perlstein quotes a similar conversation between Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  Nixon said that he thought it was time to “take out the dikes” and asked if that would “drown people”, and Kissinger replied that it would drown approximately 200,000 people.  Nixon then said he’d prefer to use a nuclear bomb, and Kissinger retorted that this would be “Too much.”  Nixon then said that he wanted Kissinger to “think big".

Perlstein draws both conversations from the Nixon Library Tapes, and Perlstein is the one transcribing them.  They appear to me to differ from what Nixon says in his memoirs and in No More Vietnams.  In his writings, Nixon affirms that he did not deliberately bomb dikes, and that America bent over backwards to avoid killing civilians, which was why American soldiers were taken as POWs: in their attempts to avoid killing civilians, they left themselves more vulnerable than they would be if they did not care.

Perhaps one could argue that the tapes do not contradict Nixon’s books, that the tapes present Nixon talking big about what he could or should do, whereas the books are about what he actually did as President.  Perhaps.  I can see Nixon’s point in his memoirs that, had he wanted to kill innocent civilians, he would have waged the Vietnam War much more aggressively than he did; still, one cannot deny that many civilians died in the Vietnam War.

(UPDATE: Later in the book, Perlstein talks about the American bombing of Vietnamese dikes.)

Even if Nixon’s words on the tapes contradicted his actions, his words are really cold.  It is one thing to wage a war that one thinks is necessary and that may entail the deaths of civilians; it is another thing not to have second thoughts about this, or not to think about how horrible civilians’ death is—-these are people trying to live their lives, many of whom have families.  Of course, one could argue that these two things are not significantly different in terms of the civilians themselves, that they are still getting killed.  That would be a fair point, but it would be part of a broader conversation about if and when war is necessary.

Should Nixon’s character be judged on the basis of these sorts of statements on the tapes?  Well, I would hate for my entire character to be judged on the basis of things that I have said here and there.  I have been more compassionate than I have sounded to others, and perhaps that was the case with Nixon, too.  Jesus said that out of the heart the mouth speaks, but I have a problem going from there to saying that everything I say manifests the sum total of my character.  At the same time, I do believe that what I say reveals elements of my character, some of them bad.

No More Vietnams, by Richard Nixon

I finished Richard Nixon’s No More Vietnams.  In this book, Nixon defends the Vietnam War as a noble cause.  He critiques how his presidential predecessors conducted the war, defends his own approach, and blames the Democratic U.S. Congress’ failure to continue providing support for South Vietnam for Communist North Vietnam’s takeover of that country.  Nixon in later years would express regret for the title of this book, No More Vietnams, saying that he should have entitled it A Noble Cause.  Nixon’s argument in the book was not that the United States should be paralyzed from intervening in other countries out of a fear of another war like Vietnam, but rather that, if the U.S. had to intervene, it would do what it takes to win—-that it would not lose, as it did in Vietnam.

I was initially hesitant to read No More Vietnams because I had already read other books that discussed Nixon’s stances and strategies regarding the Vietnam War.  I read his memoirs, and his criticisms of President Johnson as well as his own approach to the war were significant elements in the narratives of some of the biographies about Nixon that I had read.  But I am glad that I read No More Vietnams because, overall, Nixon goes into more detail in that book in terms of defending his own point-of-view.  I wouldn’t say that this is the case regarding his explanation for why the United States entered the war, for, on this, he simply states that “The United States intervened in the Vietnam War to prevent North Vietnam from imposing its totalitarian government on South Vietnam through military conquest, both because a Communist victory would lead to massive human suffering for the people of Vietnam and because it would damage American strategic interests and pose a threat to our allies and friends in other non-Communist nations” (page 152, in an edition in which No More Vietnams is attached to another book by Nixon, Real Peace).  Nixon believes that the answer to why the U.S. was in Vietnam is “simple” and “apparent.”

But Nixon does go into detail when he defends his point-of-view on relevant issues: why he believed that Ho Chi Minh was a Communist rather than merely a Vietnamese nationalist; how we can know that Nixon’s military strategy was not targeting civilians; why Nixon did not believed that most young people were against him; and the list goes on.  When defending his decision to intervene in Cambodia, where North Vietnam supposedly had bases from which it was channeling supplies to the Communists in Vietnam, Nixon responds to the charge that he was violating Cambodia’s neutrality under a Geneva agreement by quoting the agreement itself: it said that the U.S. did not have to honor a country’s neutrality if its enemy was using that country as a base.  Nixon also argues that, under President Lyndon Johnson, there actually was a Gulf of Tonkin incident, contrary to the claims of some that the U.S. made that up as a pretense to escalate its involvement in the Vietnam War, for Nixon states that the North Vietnamese account of the war assumes that the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred.  And, while Nixon seems to acknowledge that the Tet offensive was on some level a loss for the U.S., he also notes that it severely damaged the Communist forces in Vietnam and set them back significantly. There were often times when I wished that Nixon would document his claims, either through footnotes, or by referring to sources within his text.  There were times when he did, but I wished that he had done so more.  Overall, however, I found his arguments to be detailed and thoughtful.

Something that interested me in reading No More Vietnams was that Nixon, although he criticized his predecessors for not being tough enough in their prosecution of the war, acknowledged that he himself was limited in terms of his ability or willingness to be aggressive.  Nixon said that President Johnson was reluctant to be too tough because that could anger the Soviets and the Chinese, but Nixon indicated that he himself had similar concerns when he was President.  Another factor was the lack of popular support for the war, which Nixon apparently found to be constrictive.  Overall, I found Nixon’s discussion of the Vietnam War in No More Vietnams to be open and honest about its challenges, at least in comparison to what he wrote in his memoirs.  Nixon, in both his memoirs and No More Vietnams, portrays the South Vietnamese army as brave and heroic, against detractors who considered it to be a lost cause.  But Nixon in No More Vietnams acknowledges that his policy of Vietnamization (which is having the South Vietnamese army take up more of the slack of fighting the war) took a while to be effective.

There is a lot more in No More Vietnams than what I mention in this blog, but I will stop here.  I found a lot of what Nixon said to be persuasive, but I should probably read a source that is more critical of his policy on Vietnam.  I’m hoping that Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland can be that source.  I have already read some critiques of Nixon’s policies: Jerry Voorhis had his criticisms in The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon, Joan Hoff was rather critical, and, in biographies about Nixon, there is often a summary of the arguments that certain Nixon aides were making when they were suggesting that the President not attack Cambodia.  But, overall, I have not found their arguments to be persuasive, for, if Cambodia was being used by North Vietnam as a base for supplies, then it makes sense for the U.S. to attack the North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia.  The only anti-Nixon or anti-Vietnam War argument that makes sense to me is that the war was taking the lives of many innocent civilians, and that makes me second-guess whether the war was worth the effort, even if I can understand the rationale for it.  Consequently, while I accept Nixon’s portrayal of North Vietnam as a brutal Communist country, I am open to hearing whatever pacifist arguments there may be as to what alternatives there were to war: was there a way to stop Communist North Vietnam’s expansion, without military force?  I am skeptical, but I am open.  The issue is relevant even today, as the U.S. continues to debate military interventions, whether in the form of drones, troops, or bombs.

President Nixon: Alone in the White House 18

On page 572 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves says the following:

"What America did not seem to want was the aid Nixon had pledged to Vietnam, both South and North, in the peace agreement...[E]ven J. William Fulbright said aid should not be considered until after impounded domestic funding was released by the President...[Newsweek] quoted a Republican leader in the Senate as saying privately: 'It won't wash.  How can a senator support cuts in hospital, flood and education spending at home and then vote money for the same thing in Hanoi?'"

The conflict between domestic and foreign policy has perplexed more than one Administration.  That Republican Senator wondered how a Senator could support cuts in government spending for hospital, flood, and education, while voting to increase spending on those very same things in Vietnam.  Well, more than one person asked during Hurricane Katrina how our government could get supplies so quickly and efficiently to Afghanistan, but not to people suffering from the effects of Katrina.  More than one person has asked how the U.S. Government under President George W. Bush could spend money on universal health care in Iraq (see here), while opposing the notion that health care is a right here in the U.S.  And Richard Nixon, in No More Vietnams, argues that President Lyndon Johnson held back from waging the Vietnam War aggressively because he was trying to safeguard his Great Society legacy.

Those who support spending money on programs abroad, while not supporting the spending of more money on similar programs at home, could perhaps argue that they're not supporting foreign aid programs just because they are nice people.  Rather, they're doing so because those other countries that they want to support have a strategic importance.  I'm not certain that they argue this, but I can imagine it.  Perhaps they would have a point about those countries' strategic or geopolitical significance, and yet I still can't help but ask: Why are certain programs acceptable for people in foreign countries, but not for people in the United States?

The thing is, do we have to choose between foreign aid and domestic programs?  There are times when we do feel that we have to choose.  I remember watching the West Wing, and President Jed Bartlet told Zoey's French boyfriend that the reason the U.S. does not spend as much money as France on domestic programs is because the U.S. is spending money protecting Europe!  Do we have to choose?  Well, if universal health care actually saves money, as some progressives like to argue, maybe we can have our cake and eat it, too.  I don't know.

President Nixon: Alone in the White House 16

On page 371 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves talks about President Richard Nixon's belief that the U.S. Government under President John F. Kennedy was complicit in the overthrow of President Diem of South Vietnam, and that this deepened American involvement in Vietnam.  President Nixon in a press conference said that this was why he would not use any leverage to get rid of President Thieu of South Vietnam, stating that the overthrow of Thieu would result in coup after coup (and, based on what Nixon says in No More Vietnams, this is because Nixon feared that Thieu would be replaced by weaker leaders, as Diem was after his assassination).  Reeves goes on to narrate:

"The President thought he had raised the question and could sit back and let the press do the investigating.  But nothing happened outside the White House.  Inside, Hunt, on orders from Colson, had collected 240 cables between Washington and Saigon in October and November of 1963----Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were killed by officers of their own army on November 1, 1963----but was unable to find one showing any kind of direct order from Kennedy.  So, using a razor blade to cut out words, and some paste, then photocopying his handiwork, he fabricated a cable, dated October 29, 1963, to the American embassy in Saigon.  The phony cable read: 'At highest level meeting today, decision reluctantly made that neither you nor Harkin should intervene in behalf of Diem or Nhu in event they seek asylum."

In his 1980 book, The Real War, Nixon stated on page 113, when discussing the coup that ended Diem’s life, that “Charges that the U.S. government was directly involved may be untrue and unfair.”  Nixon goes on to say, however, that the Kennedy Administration “greased the skids for Diem’s downfall and did nothing to prevent his murder.”

In his 1985 book, No More Vietnams, however, Nixon manifests a stronger belief that the evidence shows U.S. Government complicity in the overthrow of Diem (though Nixon says that Kennedy was surprised that Diem was murdered, as if a coup would not lead to a murder).  Nixon makes this argument on pages 175-179.  Here are some documents that Nixon quotes:

August 24, 1983 telegram (approved by President Kennedy) from Averell Harriman, Roger Hillsman, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Undersecretary of State George Ball to U.S. ambassador in South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge (who, in the 1960 Presidential election, was Richard Nixon's running mate): "We wish [to] give Diem reasonable opportunity to remove [his brother] Nhu, but if he remains obdurate, then we are prepared to accept the obvious implication that we can no longer support Diem.  You may tell appropriate military commanders we will give them direct support in any interim period of breakdown [of the] central government mechanism."  The telegram recommended that Lodge "urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary."

Nixon quotes a cable from Lodge to Rusk saying: "We are launched on a course from which there is no turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government...The chance of bringing off a Generals' coup depends on them to some extent; but it depends at least as much on us."  Nixon goes on to say that Rusk told Lodge to cut off aid to Diem when Lodge chose and to do what he could to "enhance the chances of a successful coup" (Rusk's alleged words), and that Rusk instructed the leader of the American military mission in Saigon to form a liaison with leaders of the coup.

Nixon quotes Nguyen Huu Tho of the National Liberation Front saying about the coup, "The Americans have managed to do what we couldn't do for nine years."

Nixon also talks about snubs that the Kennedy Administration made against Diem, the CIA cutting off support for special forces in South Vietnam, and Kennedy's statement in a televised interview that South Vietnam "needed changes in policy and 'perhaps' in personnel" (Nixon's words).

Unfortunately, Nixon does not provide footnotes----he just narrates.  Moreover, a question that I have is why Hunt felt a need to fabricate a document linking elements of the Kennedy Administration with the coup that overthrew Diem, when Nixon claims to be referring to a telegram and a cable demonstrating that such was the case.  Did Hunt miss that documentation when he was accessing and looking at the 240 cables that Reeves talks about?  Perhaps one could argue that Hunt did not find anything linking Kennedy personally with the coup, and, yes, the stuff Nixon quotes largely appears to be from high-ranking people in Kennedy's Administration, rather than Kennedy himself.  But, if what Nixon says is correct, Kennedy approved the telegram to Lodge and implied his desire for a change in South Vietnamese leadership in a television interview.