Nixon´s Influence on the Vietnam War

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In the latter days of the Johnson administration it seemed that peace with the North Vietnamese was becoming a little more of a reality than in the recent past. Johnson “acknowledged that a limit to the American commitment had been reached.” A complete bombing halt over North Vietnam was implemented in the fall of 1968 and there was there were beginning peace talks in Paris. Events were beginning to unfold to at least to foreshadow a glimpse of peace. The situation however, took a dramatic change as Richard Nixon’s legacy began to unfold. Nixon ran on a peace ticket for the 1968 U.S. presidential election. Nixon had a secret plan for peace. Peace however, was far from Nixon’s mind. Rather than deescalate the Vietnam War, Nixon escalated it.
Before Nixon was even president of the United States he was able to persuade the president of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu to cooperate with him. The peace meeting in Paris was sabotaged. Thieu mislead Johnson in making him believe that the South Vietnamese government was ready to participate in the Paris talks. Four days before the presidential election Thieu stood before the South Vietnamese National Assembly and “declared his implacable opposition to the peace talks; his government would never agree to sit down with Viet Cong.” The peace talks were then stalled. Johnson refused to do the peace talks with Thieu absent.
Richard Nixon went on to win the 1968 presidential election beating Democrat Hubert Humphrey’s by a narrow margin. Nixon had a new strategy to end the war in Vietnam. Nixon believed, “that the way to end the war in Vietnam was to expand it.” Nixon began to conduct B-52 raids on Vietnamese base camps on the Cambodian border. Nixon’s air raids began on the border of the...

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...oming next and evacuated Haiphong and Hanoi. On December 17th Nixon authorized bombing missions on Hanoi and Haiphong. This operation became known as the Christmas bombing. The reaction to the decision to renew bombing North Vietnam was immense. The American public reaction was negative. Congress voted to “cut off all funding for the war as soon as U.S. troop withdrawal and the repatriation of prisoners of war could be arranged.” The Air Force even began to protest.
A month after the Christmas bombing, the original nine-point proposal was signed. There were no changes to the proposal to justify the attack. Nixon and his staff savagely bombed the north for no gain. Rather than accept the original proposal, the United States savagely retreated by killing innocent people in the Christmas bombing. The United States wanted the bloodbath and sadly that is what they got.

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