Word: nlf
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...that no American policy precipitate the collapse of the South Vietnamese regime. For that would impugn their honor and damage their credibility, and those were concepts that did not come cheap to them. And in the absence of the regime's guaranteed survival-a guarantee which Hanoi and the NLF adamantly refused to extend-the only American recourse would be the use of sheer physical might, coupled with the threat of additional force if their opponents did not give...
...creed, negotiation is merely another tool to enforce one's will, a tool to which overtures, threats, and finally the use of force itself are all fixed as perpetual adjuncts. Kissinger's early advocacy of negotiations, his expressed belief that a compromise could be reached with Hanoi and the NLF, were rooted in the assumption that the overpowering weight of the U. S. military stood behind America's negotiators at every step of the way. And in a situation of fixed objectives-that of the NLF and Hanoi, to bring about a revolution in their country, and that of Washington...
...FACT, Kissinger has constantly underestimated the resistance power of Hanoi and the NLF by failing to take account of their politics and ideology. His calculation of the opponent's strength has long assumed a willingness on the opponent's part to accept a compromise solution and forsake deeply-held, legitimate political and social goals. But if the roots of his failure lie in his application of great power diplomacy in a situation that consistently repudiates it, Kissinger has also been intimately involved in the physical escalation...
...airy speculation, cynical game plans, and cold-blooded technical recommendations as to how the U. S. an win in Indochina. He showed no sympathy for the victims of our bombs-although he managed to express some concern as to what might happen to poor Marshal Ky if the NLF ever got hold...
...expansion of the U.S. civilian bureaucracy in Vietnam and it did urge that this process be reversed and that the effort to extend the Saigon government's authority into the countryside be drastically reduced or totally abandoned. The report argued that the U.S. government should accept VC-NLF control of the areas they then dominated. This proposal directly challenged the official orthodoxy of the time. As the principal White House specialist on Vietnam told me: "If what you say is right, everything we are doing in Vietnam is wrong." Some other bureaucrats reacted in a similarly negative fashion...