Rudy Giuliani is Curtis LeMay without the experience:That's one way to look at Rudy's
statement that:
"Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South."
And there's Giuliani's advocacy of an even larger military (additional 10 brigades, newer submarines and bombers). But ponder the LeMay congruence referred to in this post's title. Giuliani is running a George Wallace -like campaign. He has to. He needs to get in tight with the Republicans that are the party of the Confederacy. He's from New York.
He roots for the Yankees, no less. So the way to win in the primaries, especially the many in the south, is to be tough like Wallace. Giuliani promises to crack down on criminals and be law-and-order just like Wallace. Giuliani take Wallace's anti-black rhetoric and turns it in the direction of Arabs. He has very nasty things to say about liberals (although not unique among Republicans, he's the most strident).
If Rudy does succeed in snagging the George Wallace contingent (at least its 21st century version) look for an anybody-but-Rudy movement to throw its support behind somebody more sensible, like Romney.
posted by Quiddity at 8/16/2007 02:31:00 PM
Guiliani is a malevolent idiot about many things these days, including the history of the American war against Vietnam (North and South). Yes, the South Vietnamese VietCong were being killed in great numbers under Nixon--along with many civilians in various hamlets and villages throughout South Vietnam through 1972.
But, the G- man doesn't seem to realize one thing: The Ho Chi Minh Trail was working well for the Vietnamese and far more North Vietnamese troops (reenforcements) infiltrated the South by 1972, making it easier for the North to eventually defeat the South by 1975. This is what, ironically, made Nixon/Kissinger's "Peace with Honor" in 1973 (essentially the same peace they would likely have been able to achieve in 1969) so devastating to the South Vietnamese government:
The 1973 Peace Accords recognized only "one" Vietnam (reaffirming the Geneva Accords of 1954) and expressly allowed North Vietnamese troops to remain in the South--and again, in a position to keep fighting as S. Viet President Thieu was himself violating the accords (he never liked the 1973 accords, which he said were forced on him by the US).
South Vietnam could perhaps have survived--but only with a coalition with the Viet Cong, which Nixon made impossible by the end of his first term.
True the Ho Trail worked well enough in spite of our interdiction efforts, but the bombing did in fact bring about a suspension of the war in 1973. This particular statement of Guiliani's is not a misuse of history. The most useful citation I prefer is that of Ronald Spector in his book "After Tet," noting that the immense losses suffered during the repulse of the 1972 Easter Offensive by US airpower (and the concurrent LINEBACKER bombing campaign) convinced the North Vietnamese leadership that they had to get the Americans out of the war at any price. Nixon had won reelection against an explicitly antiwar candidate, and his "secret" promise to reengage with airpower if the Paris Accords were violated served a deterrent purpose. It wasn't until after his administration unravelled as a result of the Watergate affair that Hanoi resumed its campaign against the south.
