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 News from Around the Americas | November 2005 
Nixon Documents Shine Light on Iraq-like Struggle in Vietnam
 AFP
| | File photo dated 27 October 1973 of the 37th President of the United States, Richard Millhouse Nixon, as he speaks to journalists during a press conference. Documents released this week have cast a light on Nixon's struggles during the Vietnam war reminiscent of those that President George W. Bush is now grappling with in Iraq. (AFP) |
Documents released this week have cast a light on President Richard Nixon's struggles during the Vietnam war reminiscent of those that President George W. Bush is now grappling with in Iraq.
The National Archives opened some 50,000 pages of declassified documents to the public on Wednesday, most of them from National Security Council files and office files of Henry Kissinger, Nixon's national security adviser.
The Vietnam documents cover a period from 1969 to 1973 and include cables, memoranda, memoranda of conversations, draft speeches, maps and photographs.
One set of national security files deal with military operations in North and South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos while a second set contains State Department communications on diplomatic, economic and military issues.
The Kissinger materials are drawn from across the government and refer to issues having to do with Vietnam, intelligence, security and defense budget.
The New York Times reported that files show Nixon struggling with many of the political and public perception issues now besetting the Bush administration in Iraq, including the impact on public opinion of the mistreatment of civilians.
The massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US soldiers at My Lai in 1968 "could prove acutely embarrassing to the United States," former defense secretary Melvin Laird warns Nixon in one document cited by the Times.
"Domestically, it will provide grist for the mills of antiwar activists," Laird said.
Other documents reflect the Nixon administration's efforts to bolster the South Vietnamese government of president Nguyen Van Thieu by pressing for democratic reforms.
The Times cites a White House memo from 1969 describing plans for creating "procedures for political choice that give each significant group a real opportunity to participate in the political life of the nation."
"What the United States wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing," the memo said. "What North Vietnam wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing. What is important is what the people of South Vietnam want for themselves." |
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