Word: thieu
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...peace roller coaster seemed to be moving again. Henry Kissinger in Paris, elusive black limousines, suburban hideaways, no hard news but tantalizing intimations of "rapid progress." Twice Kissinger extended his stay 24 hours, inevitably heightening the speculation that the dealing had indeed grown serious. In Saigon President Nguyen Van Thieu contributed his bit by vehemently asserting in a speech that he would never agree to a coalition government-which naturally enough suggested that his future was front and center in the Paris bargaining...
...released the 539 American P.O.W.s and helped to account for the 1,143 servicemen listed as missing in action. McGovern would join in a postwar reconstruction effort (as Nixon has also proposed to do), but he would take no part in organizing Saigon's future, save to condemn Thieu harshly as a dictator progressively usurping South Viet Nam's democratic forms...
...could be, of course, that Nixon risks recriminations of quite another sort. If the U.S. will ultimately have to sacrifice Thieu to get a settlement, Americans might justifiably feel that the war could have been settled and the killing ended much sooner. In that case, the U.S. might have avoided its appalling commitment to bombing...
...course there is a strong argument that the South Vietnamese government is not morally defensible. But supporters of the NLF notwithstanding, the argument that Thieu's regime is worse than its enemy from the north is highly questionable. Even conceding that the United States should never support such an immoral government (which policy would save money now going to totalitarian regimes in Russia and China), there are serious problems in McGovern's plans for Vietnam. After unilateral American withdrawal, it is hard to see why the North Vietnamese would have to release their prisoners of war. They might; but McGovern...
Moreover, it is simplistic though common to confuse the end of American involvement with the end of the war. The Thieu regime controls over half of the land area of the south and the vast majority of the people. After almost a decade of training and armament, the South Vietnamese army is a real match for the north. The war will go on after the United States leaves, and it will be particularly bloody if the north gets the upper hand, as is still likely. The North Vietnamese program of deliberate killing of civilians, especially village leaders and their families...