Word: nixons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Nixon's political comeback...
Since he took over the presidency, Richard Nixon has operated on the assumption that Hanoi expects to win the Viet Nam War in Washington, as it won an earlier phase against the French in Paris. Last week, in announcing that the U.S. would withdraw 50,000 more troops by April 15, the President took another step to force North Viet Nam to re-examine that basic premise...
...Nixon's announcement brought to 110,000 the number of troops scheduled to be removed by next spring. A few critics said that his pace was too slow, others that it was entirely too fast-but there were not too many complaints from either side. The new withdrawal left Nixon slightly behind the timetable he had hoped to beat-former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford's estimate that 100,000 men could be pulled out by no later than the end of 1969. But in Nixon's view, the move served a more important purpose. It helped...
That proved to be a high point. Until recently, says an Administration official, "the home front was running in the French pattern." No longer. Says another Nixon lieutenant: "The steam has gone out of the protest movement." Sam Brown, coordinator of the Viet Nam Moratorium Committee, grudgingly agrees. The President, Brown admits, scored "a tremendous political coup by managing to identify himself with the cause of peace." The antiwar movement, he adds, is suffering a "short-term kind of lethargy...
Whether the Nixon plan will really work depends on two elements. The first is whether Hanoi resumes all-out offensive tactics, which could set back pacification, increase U.S. casualties and force Nixon to slow the withdrawals. The second is whether the South Vietnamese prove capable of handling the Communists and willing to persevere. "As a nation, they are young, uneducated, poor and very tired," Clark concludes. "But unless the Communists start improving their situation on the battlefield and in the hamlets, we may be surprised to discover the fact of an independent, anti-Communist and quite impertinent South Viet...