No More Vietnams
Page 27
I believe the American people are ready to accept this challenge. Defeatism, indifference, and malaise are not American characteristics. Optimism, compassion, and high-spiritedness are. We are a people who are never satisfied with the status quo. Americans are always striving for something better. We must put those qualities to work beyond our borders. We must be as impatient with the status quo in the Third World as we are at home.
The best way to slow down and eventually halt the locomotive that propels the Communist offensive in the Third World war is to deny it fuel. If a program for progress gives people in target countries the promise of a peaceful revolution, those who are trying to incite violent revolution will run out of gas.
In the past, being against Communist aggression has been reason enough to mobilize public opinion in support of American foreign policy. Our self-interest in this great initiative is obvious. But Americans will respond even more enthusiastically if the case is presented in idealistic terms.
In World War I, being against the Kaiser and German militarism was a powerful incentive for our war effort. But Woodrow Wilson’s greatest contribution to our eventual victory was that he presented our effort in idealistic terms. We were fighting “a war to end wars,” a war “to make the world safe for democracy.”
In World War II, Hitler and Hirohito made very convenient enemies to be against. But Roosevelt and Churchill inspired the people of the free world by presenting in idealistic terms not just what we were fighting against but what we were fighting for—for the Four Freedoms and eventually a new world organization that would initiate an era of peace.
Throughout our history our greatest Presidents have called upon Americans to participate in great causes—causes that were bigger than themselves, bigger than America, as big as the whole world itself. Thomas Jefferson said, “We act not for ourselves alone but for the whole human race.” Lincoln proclaimed, “We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.” Theodore Roosevelt declared, “Our first duty as citizens of the nation is owed to the United States, but if we are true to our principles we must also think of serving the interests of mankind at large.” Speaking at Independence Hall on July 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson said, “A patriotic American is never so proud of the flag under which he lives as when it comes to mean to others as well as to himself a symbol of hope and liberty.”
Appeals to our highest ideals have never failed to move Americans to support great causes. To make the world safe not only for ourselves but for others is a great cause. Even greater is the challenge to give millions of people in poor nations a chance to share the blessings of freedom and progress we enjoy.
Our defeat in Vietnam was only a temporary setback after a series of victories. It is vital that we learn the right lessons from that defeat. In Vietnam, we tried and failed in a just cause. “No more Vietnams” can mean that we will not try again. It should mean that we will not fail again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Winston Churchill once remarked that history would treat him kindly because he intended to write the history. This book was not written to preempt historians. It was written because both during and after the war, as President and private citizen, I found that television and newspaper coverage of the Vietnam War described a different war from the one I knew, and that the resulting misimpressions formed in the public’s mind were continuing to haunt our foreign policy. In these pages, I have set down the story of the war as I saw it, with the advantages and disadvantages that follow from this perspective.
This is the sixth book I have written, and the fifth that I have written since leaving the presidency. It is a book about which I have especially keen feelings. Its roots go back more than thirty years, to my first visit to Vietnam in 1953. But the intensity of my feeling about it stems from having been the President who inherited the Vietnam War at its peak and had to end it, and having then seen the peace that was won at such cost thrown away so cavalierly. The lessons of Vietnam are, to me, very personal ones. The analysis of events that I have given here is, of course, my own, derived from my own experience, study, and observation. Those who may disagree with its conclusions should direct their disagreements at me. However, there are others whose contributions I particularly want to acknowledge.
In the preparation of this book, I have drawn not only on my own experience, but also on scholarly and archival sources. In addition to the memoirs of the principal actors, among the most useful of these have been John Barron and Anthony Paul’s Murder of a Gentle Land: The Untold Story of Communist Genocide in Cambodia; Larry Berman’s Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam; Peter Braestrup’s Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington; Michael Charlton and Anthony Moncrieff’s Many Reasons Why: The American Involvement in Vietnam; Hoang Van Chi’s From Colonialism to Communism: A Case History of North Vietnam; Louis A. Fanning’s Betrayal in Vietnam; Marguerite Higgins’s Our Vietnam Nightmare; Colonel William E. Le Gro’s Vietnam from Ceasefire to Capitulation; Guenter Lewy’s America in Vietnam; Stephen J. Morris’s “Human Rights in Vietnam Under Two Regimes”; Douglas Pike’s Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam; Norman Podhoretz’s Why We Were in Vietnam; Francois Ponchaud’s Cambodia: Year Zero; Sir Robert Thompson’s Peace Is Not at Hand; Robert F. Turner’s Vietnamese Communism: Its Origins and Development; and General Cao Van Vien’s The Final Collapse.
For their contributions to my thinking on the issues involved in the Vietnam struggle, I want to thank the many members of my administration, and others, with whom the effort to deal with the war and its aftermath were shared. Many friends and associates offered information and counsel as I wrote this book, but I would especially like to express my appreciation for their advice to the late Ellsworth Bunker, who served as United States ambassador to Saigon from 1967 to 1973; General Edward G. Lansdale, who spent many years as an adviser to our allies in South Vietnam; and Stephen B. Young, who worked in our pacification program and now serves as dean of Hamline Law School. For their specific help with this book, I also want to thank four people in particular: Dolores Dynes, for her devoted work in preparing the manuscript; Carlos Narvaez, for his diligence in searching out research materials; and, for their exceptionally able, astute, and dedicated assistance, Marin Strmecki—who served as principal research and editorial coordinator—and John H. Taylor, my administrative assistant.
—R.N.
Saddle River, New Jersey
December 31, 1984
Also by Richard Nixon
Beyond Peace
Seize the Moment
In the Arena
1999: Victory Without War
Real Peace
Leaders
The Real War
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
Six Crises
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