Is GW Bush the Worst President Ever?

[vulturesrow]

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Never seen a president divide the country as much as Bush has done

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Then you should probably study US History a bit more.

[jaxmike]

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However, I guess that makes me a "radical right wing" something or other.

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Ever the oppressed, aren't you Jax. First it was a left wing media smear that brought down Nixon, now you are being labelled (by some mysterious unnamed individual) as a right wing radical fill-in-the-blank.

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It HAS been said before, on more than one occasion.

[jaxmike]

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And as you correctly pointed out, the US did not actually get until after he resigned in disgrace.

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Nixon did broker a ceasefire (like Korea) between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and start withdrawing troops. After he resigned the North broke the agreement and attacked. The president of South Vietnam appealed to Ford for help. Ford went to Congress and Congress refused to authorize the funds. Ford had no choice but to abandon Vietnam.

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No no no, whatever he says is right. He "lived through it" so he "knows" what happened. He knows nothing.

[Toro]

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And as you correctly pointed out, the US did not actually get until after he resigned in disgrace.

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Nixon did broker a ceasefire (like Korea) between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and start withdrawing troops. After he resigned the North broke the agreement and attacked. The president of South Vietnam appealed to Ford for help. Ford went to Congress and Congress refused to authorize the funds. Ford had no choice but to abandon Vietnam.

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No no no, whatever he says is right. He "lived through it" so he "knows" what happened. He knows nothing.

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At the time, I thought this was an excellent post made by AndyFox so I hope he doesn't mind me borrowing it.



[/ QUOTE ]Since Vietnam was the number one issue of the time, I'll just address that one. When Nixon ran for the presidency in 1968, he said he had a secret plan for getting us out of Vietnam. Nobody knew, at the time, what the plan was. There were two parts to it:

1) Sabotage the Paris peace negotiations. Nixon and his team privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers than an incoming Republican regime would offer them a better deal than would a Democratic one. Clark Clifford said:

"The activities of the Nixon team went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch and the responsibilities of the Chief Executive, the only people with authority to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nixon campaign constituted a gross, even potentially illegal, inteference in the security affairs of the nation by private individuals."

2) The Madman Theory: Nixon would convince the North Vietnamese that he was a madman and would drop "the big one" on them unless they behaved. He proceeded to drop more bombs on South Vietnam, the "country" we were supposed to be defending, than had been dropped previously in by all combatants in all of World War II. Then, four years later, he concluded our involvement in the war on exactly the same terms that the North had offered in Paris before his campaign team's activities had broken up the peace talks in 1968.

The Nixon policy in Vietnam involved the deliberate murder of civilians. For example, Operation Speedy Express killed, by its own official statistics, 10,899 "enemy," caputuring 748 weapons. One wonders how nearly 11,000 enemy combatants fought with 748 weapons.

Within two months of becoming president, Nixon personally approved a massive B-52 bombing stike, code-named Breakfast, in Cambodia, a neutral country. It was carried out under conditions of extraordinary secrecy that jeopardized our strategic defense. While we were bombing Cambodia, Nixon told the American people that we had never "moved against [Cambodia] because we did not wish to violate the territory of a neutral nation." He said this after three thousand B-52 sorties had been flown and a hundred thousand tons of explosives had been dropped. The secret bombing in Cambodia was later included in the articles of impeachment.

To give Nixon credit for ending the Vietnam War is as ludicrous as giving, say, Emperor Hirohito credit for ending the Japanese efforts in World War II. Nixon's efforts in Vietnam resulted in millions of civilian casualties, all concealed from Congress, the press, and the public.

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