Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger is, by all measures, a foreign policy heavyweight. At a recent black-tie dinner, he stood — stoop-shouldered and peering imperiously over his signature thick, black-framed glasses — and remarked: “Unilateral withdrawal is not victory.” Whom could he have been talking about? Kissinger knows a thing or two about the pain of walking away. After negotiating the Paris Peace Treaty to end the Vietnam War, he saw President Nixon resign in disgrace over Watergate, then watched Congress pull the plug on all support for South Vietnam. America’s 25-year effort was squandered. With Soviet backing, the North Vietnamese rolled over the South. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were washed in a blood bath of oppression and genocide. Emboldened, the Soviet Union bankrolled new revolutions in South America and Africa and fostered a wave of transnational Islamist terrorism in the Middle East. Though many Vietnam War protestors, including now Secretary of State John Kerry, trumpet America’s withdrawal as a triumph, there is no reason to be proud of how we left. While we can still debate the wisdom of going to war there, there is no doubt that our total abandonment of our allies left a bloody and shameful legacy.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 22:31:11 +0000
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