"Mark Test" wrote in message
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"Your Name Here" wrote in message
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On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 15:07:18 -0600, "Mark Test"
wrote:

(Snip)

Hmmm IIRC, in 1973 Nixon had brought the N. Vietnamese to the
table, (Paris peace accords), so victory was close. Then the democrats
used watergate to get Nixon out of office and then they cut and run.

My answer: we should have stayed and won the war, not cut and run.

Your chronology is a little faulty. The war ended for us in March of 1973, and
the Congressional investigation of Watergate didn't even start until May of that
year. You need to remember that Kennedy and Johnson, both Democrats, started
and expanded the war and that in spite of it escalating, Johnson couldn't find a
way to get out of it short of turning it into a nuclear war. Johnson tried his
best to get it won but, although we had continued to win battle after battle,
they just kept coming and kept throwing people at us regardless of how many of
them we wiped out. Anyway, having lived through it, I don't recall that the
decision to negotiate the end of the war was one of those Democrat v. Republican
political things that seem to be so common today. Even if it was, it would have
been a case of the Republicans wanting to bail out of a Democratic war.....they
were the ones who did the cutting and running, if that's what you want to call
it.

BTW, when Kissinger went to Paris to negotiate the end of the war, it was hardly
going to be a victory. In fact, what actually happened was that we pulled out
and left the South Vietnamese to continue the fight on their own. I think they
only lasted a couple of months after our last troops left.

George Z.