Word: vietnams
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Woodside cut himself short. "I know it's sort of banal to end by calling for more learning," he apologized, but he went on to do just that, asserting that Vietnamese studies are still primitive, but that studying Vietnam's history, and the history of American involvement there, still has a purpose. "Confucius said that one must look for faults to emphasize goodness," he explained...
...week after the new Revolutionary Government in Chi Minh City began the arduous task of rebuilding and reunifying a nation ravaged by decades of anti-colonial and civil wars. President Ford held a press conference, where UPI reporter Helen Thomas asked him to discuss the lessons of Vietnam. Ford seemed miffed by the question. "It was sad and tragic in many respects," he responded, with no apparent sense of understatement. "I think it would be unfortunate for us to rehash allegations as to individuals that might be to blame, or administrations that might be at fault...
Unsatisfied with the president's evasion. Thomas asked Ford if he thought that we couldn't learn from the past. "Miss Thomas, I think the lessons of the past in Vietnam have already been learned," Ford said, becoming openly hostile to the line of questioning. "We should have our focus on the future, and as far as I'm concerned that's where we will concentrate...
Vance Hartke, a U.S. Senator from Indiana who describes himself as one of the first members of Congress to break with the government's Indochina policy, was less reluctant to discuss the lessons of Vietnam. Speaking on the Senate floor the same week that Ford fended off Helen Thomas's requests for conscious reflection on a war that spanned the administrations of six American presidents, Hartks said he had once felt outrage at the men who committed the United States to a war policy he said was "without political, military or moral justification." But these feelings of outrage, be said...
...wanted to beat back the advance of communism in Southeast Asia, are humiliated by America's defeat and resentful toward those who forced restraint upon the war effort. In a different political climate the hawks might be clamoring for recriminations against those who caused the United States to "lose Vietnam," but for now they are satisfied to forgive if everyone else will forget. And the liberals are willing to play along. Men like Hartke still get up to say that they were right all along about Vietnam, that we didn't belong there and that we couldn...