How long it took us to get out of Vietnam, and Why

Both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon promised to stop the bloody war in Vietnam we were caught up in back in 1968, and the election that year was heavily based on who would do it better, and faster we hoped. But it was 1973 before we could agree to a cease-fire and withdrew almost all our troops, and it was only in 1975, a whole seven years later before we finally left, in defeat -- as we could have done in 1968 and not lose 20,763 more U.S. drafted soldiers.

This Week magazine had an enlightening summary of what took so long in its Feb.7, 2007 issue, which I condense here, since I hope it will help us to avoid the tricky Dick and Kissinger underhanded maneuvers this time:

March 1968 - Johnson announces he was stopping bombing of North Vietnam, was starting negotiations for an end to the war, and he was not going to run for re-election. We had 540,000 troops there. The public outcry for getting out of Vietnam had persuaded LBJ finally, after many years.

May 1968 - negotiations began in Paris, and Johnson resumed bombing to persuade the North Vietnamese to speed up the talks. They came back to the table in October, but the South Vietnamese derailed the talks, with an assist from Richard Nixon during the last weeks of his very tight race against Hubert Humphrey for president.

October 1968 - Nixon sends his secret envoy, Anna Chennault, to tell the South Vietnamese president that he would offer them a better deal than the Democrats then in the White House would in the peace treaty.

Nov. 2, three days before the election, South Vietnam's president Thieu announced that they were pulling out of the peace negotiations, killing the prospects of peace being successfully accomplished by the Democrats. LBJ phoned Nixon, threatening to blame him, but never was able to pull together enough proof. Nixon's aids joined him in laughter after that phone call. Weeping went on for years across the country


It took him five more years before Nixon and Kissinger managed to get a "deal" that did not look like a total defeat, with the result that Vietnamese on both sides, and our soldiers as well, died by the tens of thousands so Nixon could win his election.

It took the approaching re-election campaign of 1972 and Nixon's secret bombings of Laos and Cambodia Viet Cong hideouts to speed up the negotiations, and even then the agreement was not signed until March, after a cease fire in January 1973. We brought thousands of refugees from that war to our shores, but left even more thousands behind who wanted to escape revenge by the Viet Cong.

We have not done that well in our war in Iraq, where millions are refugees, and we have taken only some hundreds so far. Can we learn something from this history? May God help us and the Iraqis to do so. We now count Communist VietNam as a friend and trading partner, along with China, whom we feared would pose a terrible threat. How long before we trade and talk with Iran and a working government of Iraq? and poor old Afghanistan which produces most of the opium poppies in the planet as their only trade now. And the Taliban have come back to oppress women and effectivley govern much of the country there. What good have our military operations produced?