Dr. Forbush Thinks

In a discussion that is buried in the basement of the blogs I suggested that politicians lie to get elected. I used the example of Richard Nixon lying about his secret plan to end the Vietnam War. People throughout the US were sick and tired of this war and many of them thought that perhaps this “secret plan” would bring our solders home. As history tells us Richard Nixon won this election and the Vietnam War did not end until April 30, 1975 when the US pulled its troops out of Saigon.

The Nutty part of this is that one Right Wing supporter of Richard Nixon’s secret plan tells us that the plan worked, because Nixon was president at the end of the Vietnam War. But, history tells us that Nixon actually resigned August 28, 1974, before the end of the war. This means that Gerald Ford was actually president at the end of the war.

Most people would think that the discussion would be over here, but some people just won’t give up. Somehow they must find a way to be right even when they are clearly wrong.

So, the next nutty thing this guy did was to suggest that the war actually ended when the Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 23, 1973. If this is actually what this guys believes, then all of the solders that died after the Peace Accords were signed didn’t die in the Vietnam War. I don’t know what conflict they died in, but they should have their names removed from the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. I am fairly certain that veterans would not be happy with this idea. So, it comes down to admitting that you are wrong, or living up to the statement that you are making. To what ends are the right wing nuts willing to go to to prove that they are right?

Well, since its thirty years later and we have quite a bit of information that we didn’t have during the 1968 election we certainly know now what Nixon’s secret plan was.

This was Nixon’s secret plan:
“Nixon's secret plan, it turned out, was borrowing from a strategic move from Lyndon Johnson's last year in office. The new president continued a process called "Vietnamization", an awful term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia. This strategy brought American troops home while increasing the air war over the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) and relying more on the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) for ground attacks.”

So, Nixon’s secret plan was to continue using Lyndon Johnson’s strategy of increasing the air war over North Vietnam. I suppose that you should judge for yourself whether this was a lie or not. But, the way that Nixon presented this secret plan made voters think that there was something more than just continuation of the current policy in Vietnam. And, the secret plan did not work. The secret plan was not the Paris Peace accords, those were an after thought. Not only that, but Nixon even lied to Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) by telling them that they would not abandon them if they signed the Peace accord. This guy couldn’t stop himself from telling lies.