Quote:
Originally Posted by t walgamuth
Nixon was elected on the bogus premise that he had a plan to get us out of Vietnam that was secret.
His secret was turned out to be to expand the war by bombing cambodia etc. He was pres and re elected in 72 only after George Wallace was assassinated (unsuccessfully) and taken out of the race.
We finally pulled out of Vietnam in I believe 73 and he resigned in disgrace in I believe 74, so to lay the war on anybody other than Nixon seems a little lame since he presided over six years of it, a year more than Johnson after being elected on the secret plan to get us out of it.
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Revisionist liberal pretzel logic! If it only was the way I want to remember it now!
LBJ took the US involvement from an advisory role and committed US ground combat eventually to over 500,000 troops after using the incident on August 2, 1964 and August 4, 1964 in the Gulf Of Tonkin with the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy to persuade Congress to pass the Southeast Asia Resolution, Public Law 88-408, commonly refered to as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on August 7, 1964. LBJ ordered and began the bombing of Laos in 1964
"Within hours, President Johnson ordered the launching of retaliatory air strikes (Operation Pierce Arrow) on the bases of the North Vietnamese boats and announced, in a television address to the American public that same evening, that U.S. naval forces had been attacked. Johnson requested approval of a resolution "expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia". He said that the resolution should express support "for all necessary action to protect our Armed Forces"– but repeated previous assurances that "the United States... seeks no wider war". As the nation entered the final three months of political campaigning for the 1964 elections (in which Johnson was standing for election), the president contended that the resolution would help "hostile nations... understand" that the United States was unified in its determination "to continue to protect its national interests."["
Nixon's policy of "Vietnamization" began in early 1969 and was characterised by disengagement and withdrawal of US troops and the accelerated training and arming of the ARVN. On August 12, 1972 the last American ground combat division left the country. On January 15, 1973, citing progress in peace negotiations, Nixon announced the suspension of all offensive actions against North Vietnam, to be followed by a unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops. The Paris Peace Accords on "Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed on January 27, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
In fact it was that other Nobel Peace Prize winning democrat US President Woodrow Wilson; who when, Ho Chi Min under the name of Nguyễn Ái Quốc (Nguyen the Patriot), he petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Quốc petitioned U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for help to remove the French from Vietnam and replace it with a new, nationalist government. His request was ignored.