Word: less
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...look at the anguished debates and bitter wrangling within the Nixon Administration that accompanied every military move in Indochina, the efforts to end the war and how they were thwarted by Hanoi's rigid refusal for nearly four years to accept a settlement that would amount to anything less than a sellout of Saigon, the rationale behind the mining of North Viet Nam's ports and the Christmas bombing of 1972, why he declared "peace is at hand" on the eve of Nixon's reelection, his attempts to build bridges to dissident students and professors, the acid...
...more unjustly treated. It was not a barbarous act of revenge. It did not cause exorbitant casualties by Hanoi's own figures; certainly it cost much less than the continuation of the war, which was the alternative. A decade of frustration with Viet Nam, a generation of hostility to Nixon, and-let me be frank-exasperation over his electoral triumph, coalesced to produce a unanimity of editorial outrage that suppressed all judgment in an emotional orgy. Nixon chose the only weapon he had available. His decision speeded the end of the war; I can think of no other measure...
...Lyndon Johnson had died that day. He was himself a casualty of the Viet Nam War, which he had inherited and then expanded in striving to fulfill his conception of our nation's duty and of his obligation to his fallen predecessor. There was nothing he had wanted less than to be a war President, and this no doubt contributed to his inconclusive conduct of the struggle. It was symbolic that this hulking, imperious, vulnerable...
...meeting was nearly aborted by a technical malfunction. Because the pilots did not know whether Avord had the equipment for repairs, the plane had to go to Germany, but no one there knew of our impending arrival, much less of our mission or predicament. Fortunately, we established contact from the airplane with General Vernon Walters, our defense attache in Paris, in a radio hookup through Washington. Walters went to the Elysee Palace, where President Pompidou himself authorized his jet to meet my plane in Frankfurt...
...Nixon hated anything more than being presented with a plan he had not considered, it was to be shown up in a group as being less tough than his advisers. I have no doubt that Agnew's intervention accelerated Nixon's ultimate decision to order an attack on all the sanctuaries and use American forces. Agnew was right; we should either neutralize all of the sanctuaries or abandon the project. We were in danger of combining the disadvantages of every course of action. We would be castigated for intervention in Cambodia without accomplishing any strategic purpose...