Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

When courageous journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan dared to dispute the establishment line by declaring that not only was the right wrong in declaring that a stand must be taken by America in Southeast Asia; they were seen as audacious in declaring that the war was demonstrably not winnable.  The right responded to such assertions in typical fashion by questioning their integrity.  

One point that critics raised in the early seventies has been renewed with clarifying vigor in the last few days.  

Certain perceptive critics observed that at the very time that Nixon intensified bombing in North Vietnam while poisoning that nation's air and populace with Agent Orange, which would have a damaging effect on American service personnel as well, activities were afloat in Communist China that many saw as clearly contradictory.

Richard Nixon extended every effort to establish relations with Premier Zhou Enlai's Chinese government.  Nixon and his globe trotting Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were so determined to establish ties with the world's most populous Communist regime that they did something that would have evoked cries of "treason" had the same act been carried out by a Democratic president.  

Without anything resembling a quid pro quo, Nixon and Kissinger, under pressure from the mainland Red Chinese government, rescinded favored nation status from the long time ally of the presumably hard-core anti-Communist right in Taiwan.  Indeed, for years the United Nations delegate from China came not from Zhou Enlai's government, but from Taiwan.

At the time that the Kennedy Administration was in power, JFK's United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was subjected to a right wing verbal lynching as demands were made for his removal.  The reason was that he declared the obvious truism that Red China's admission to the UN was "probably inevitable."  

The uproar can be currently viewed as absurd in view of Red China having ruled the mainland since the victory in 1949 of the revolutionary forces of Mao Zedong over those of China's President Chiang Kai-shek.  

Prior to his presidential election Richard Nixon had been a prominent corporation lawyer in New York City.  One of his closest clients and confidantes, along with being a former fellow law school student at Duke University in North Carolina, was the head of Pepsi Cola, Donald Kendall.  

Kendall recognized that China provided a lucrative marketing target in view of the fact that it would shortly be a nation consisting of better than one billion people.  Other corporate clients provided comparable messages.

So a distinction was made.  North Vietnam, along with neighboring Cambodia, were targeted for ferocious bombing assaults while the world's largest Communist regime was ceremoniously and determinedly wooed as Nixon and Kissinger took on roles of determined suitors.  

The little Communists needed to be crushed to promote continuing freedom and safety at home while the big Communists were pursued as lucrative future trading partners.

On Friday, May 26, George Washington University's National Security Archive released an important document from a collection of papers dealing with Henry Kissinger's years of diplomacy.  An Associated Press article by Calvin Woodward quoted Kissinger as telling Zhou Enlai, "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."

Woodward then delivered a conclusion that corroborated what Vietnam War opponents have been stating for years.  According to Woodward, "Kissinger's comments appear to lend credence to the `decent interval' theory posed by some historians who say the United States was prepared to see communists take over Saigon as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. departure to save face."

What about the domino theory?  How much did we really have to fear in the way of a purported Asian invasion of San Francisco Bay?  Were Halberstam and others giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy?  For those of the vigilant right who answer "yes" to the foregoing questions, does this now mean that the hero of the red-baiting anti-Communist right, Richard Nixon, was himself a traitor?

Such is life within the rancorous right.  Please note that these same arguments raised during the Vietnam War period by the vigilant anti-Communist right have been resurrected from the mothballs and are being currently expressed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney concerning the Iraq War and issues pertaining to the abrogation of civil liberties of American citizens.  

Remember, of course, that Richard Nixon is Karl Rove's hero.