No More Vietnams (23 page)

The negotiations were scheduled to reconvene after the election. In the meantime, we found that both Saigon and Hanoi were playing a frustrating game with us. Our intelligence indicated that Thieu had told his generals to prepare for a ceasefire before Christmas, but he continued to pretend that he was willing to go it alone. Our intelligence also showed that Hanoi was preparing for military moves, but its delegates continued to affect a sincere desire to make peace.

On November 9, I sent Alexander Haig to consult with the South Vietnamese. I thought he was the best man to bring Thieu around because he would be able to talk to him as one respected military officer to another. He delivered a letter to Thieu in which I responded to the South Vietnamese objections to the October agreement. “We will use our maximum efforts to effect these changes in the agreement,” I wrote. “I wish to leave you under no illusion, however, that we can or will go beyond these changes in seeking to improve an agreement that we already consider to be excellent.” Haig stressed that if we did not reach a settlement before Congress reconvened in January, it would almost certainly cut off our aid to South Vietnam. He pressed Thieu relentlessly, but Thieu would not budge. He continued to restate his previous objections.

On November 14, I wrote another letter to Thieu. I reiterated that we would probably not be able to obtain all the adjustments he had requested. I pointed out that what was
said
in any agreement was what we would
do
in the event the North Vietnamese renewed their aggression. I added, “You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide by the terms of this agreement it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory action.”

Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese had decided to try to take advantage of our differences with Saigon. Hanoi had come to
two conclusions: that a lack of progress in the talks would be blamed on Thieu and that, if an agreement was not forthcoming, Congress would pull the rug out from under us. Therefore, its delegates started to stall.

On November 20, our talks reopened in Paris. Kissinger presented Thieu's proposed changes, as well as some of our own. Hanoi's delegates objected strongly. After several tough negotiating sessions, I concluded that if we were to reach an agreement, we would have to abandon most of Thieu's major demands. I instructed Kissinger to seek a settlement along the lines of the October agreement. But Hanoi now began to stonewall us. It hardened its positions on the unresolved issues and pulled back concessions it had made on some resolved questions. Having reached an impasse, we recessed the talks.

On December 4, when the talks reconvened, Hanoi turned even more obstinate. Its delegates not only categorically rejected every change we had requested, but also withdrew some that had already been agreed upon during the last round and introduced several new and unacceptable demands of their own. Kissinger reported to me, “There is almost no doubt that Hanoi is prepared now to break off the negotiations and go another military round. Their own needs for a settlement are now outweighed by the attractive vision they see of our having to choose between a complete split with Saigon or an unmanageable domestic situation.” In the following days, although we succeeded in resolving some issues, the North Vietnamese reopened others. They gave us just enough each day to keep the negotiations going, but not quite enough to conclude an agreement. With the prospects for an agreement actually receding, Kissinger and I reluctantly concluded that the enemy had made a deliberate decision to prolong the war.

On December 13, we recessed the talks. I had decided that since Hanoi had made up its mind to continue the war, we had to make a move that would change its mind. We had to convince the North Vietnamese by our actions, not just by our words, that they were better off concluding an agreement on
our terms than continuing the fighting. This meant stepping up the bombing of North Vietnam. On December 14, I issued an order to reseed the mines in Haiphong Harbor, to resume aerial reconnaissance throughout North Vietnam, and to bomb military targets in the Hanoi-Haiphong complex with B-52s. It was the most difficult decision concerning Vietnam that I made during my entire presidency. But I had no choice. I was convinced that if we did not compel the North Vietnamese to agree to our terms, Congress would force us to accept defeat by agreeing to a withdrawal in exchange for our POWs.

On December 17, we began the mining operation, and within twenty-four hours 129 B-52s flew bombing runs over North Vietnam. Over twelve days we sent B-52s on 729 missions and fighter-bombers on about 1,000, dropping a total of more than 20,000 tons of bombs. Our targets—which included communications facilities, railroad yards, power plants, airports, fuel depots, and the like—all had military significance.

Our bombing provoked hysterical outbursts from our critics. A newsmagazine wrote that “civilized man will be horrified at the renewed spectacle of the world's mightiest air force mercilessly pounding a small Asian nation in an abuse of national power and disregard of humanitarian principles.” One newspaper wrote that it caused millions of Americans “to cringe in shame and to wonder at their President's very sanity.” One columnist said the bombing was the action of “a maddened tyrant,” and another stated that we had “loosed the holocaust.” One senator said it was a “stone-age tactic.” Another called it “the most murderous aerial bombardment in the history of the world” and “a policy of mass-murder that's being carried on in the name of the American people.”

Seldom has so much heated rhetoric been so wrong. Our critics denounced our actions as the “Christmas carpet bombing.” But they were wrong on both points: We did not bomb on Christmas day, and we never covered whole areas with a carpet of bombs, as had been the case with our bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II. Our pilots struck only at specific military targets and had explicit orders
to avoid collateral damage to civilian areas—even if this exposed them to greater risks.

Our critics should have known better than to make the utterly false accusation that we were indiscriminately bombing civilians. Hanoi
at the time
had put the number of civilian fatalities at between 1,300 and 1,600. Regrettable though these accidental losses were, they did not approach the death tolls that resulted when the Allies deliberately bombed civilian targets in World War II. Over 35,000 civilians were killed in the triple raid on Dresden, over 42,000 died in six nights of bombing in Hamburg, and over 83,000 Japanese were killed in just two days when we fire-bombed Tokyo in 1945. If we had targeted civilian areas during the December bombing, North Vietnamese losses would have been a hundred times higher than they were.

Our bombing achieved its purposes. Militarily, we had shattered North Vietnam's war-making capacity. Politically, we had shattered Hanoi's will to continue the war. Admiral James Stockdale, one of our POWs who was awarded the Medal of Honor when he returned, later described the scene when the prisoners heard the explosions as the bombs began hitting their targets. He wrote that “cheers started to go up all over the cellblocks of that downtown prison. This was a new reality for Hanoi.” He observed that the bombing took a heavy psychological toll on the enemy: “One look at any Vietnamese officer's face told the whole story. It telegraphed accommodation, hopelessness, remorse, fear. The shock was there; our enemy's will was broken.” Our POWs knew that they were coming home, even if our editorial writers did not.

Hanoi quickly accepted our first offer to resume the talks. We had forced Hanoi to come back to the negotiating table to end the war through a fair settlement. On January 8, when our high-level negotiations reconvened, North Vietnam agreed to our basic terms within forty-eight hours.

• • •

On my sixtieth birthday, January 9, 1973, I received a cable from Kissinger informing me that all the outstanding issues
had been resolved; only the formalities remained. When I heard the news, I should have been elated. Some White House staff members were puzzled that we did not raise a glass to toast “peace with honor” after America's longest war. But for most Americans Vietnam was a war without heroes, without victory parades, without celebrations. For many in the news media, the only heroes were the antiwar politicians, the antiwar demonstrators, and those who evaded military service rather than those who served.

There are those who believe that while war is an acutely traumatic and personal experience for soldiers who risk their lives on the battlefield, it is essentially an impersonal experience for a President who sends them into battle. A President, it is assumed, spends his time moving pins on a war map, reading reports on enemy body counts, and ordering the bombing of schools and hospitals. He is supposedly so obsessed with what happens to nations that he is oblivious to what happens to people.

But for Presidents, too, war is an intensely traumatic, personal ordeal. Like all Presidents, my four predecessors—Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—were men who cherished peace. Each one of them wanted to avoid going to war in Vietnam if at all possible. But they were hardheaded realists who knew that peace under communism has killed far more people than wars against Communists. And they recognized that a Communist conquest of Vietnam would be detrimental to American interests not only in Southeast Asia but also in the rest of the world.

I had been intimately associated with the history of Vietnam for twenty years. In 1953, as Vice President, I had made an official visit to the French colonial cities of Saigon and Hanoi. In 1954, I had participated in the National Security Council debate about whether to use American air power to prevent the fall of Dien Bien Phu. In 1956, I developed a close friendship with President Diem. I had great respect for him as a strong anti-Communist leader. I was deeply saddened when I learned of his assassination in 1963 and was shocked when I
heard that the United States had encouraged and masterminded the coup that resulted in his death. In the mid-1960s, I visited South Vietnam a number of times and developed a deep respect for our fighting men. I also felt a strong affection for the South Vietnamese people—a courageous nation that was suffering the ravages of a cruel war waged by a ruthless enemy who treated even women and children as legitimate targets for terrorism, torture, and murder.

In 1969, when I became President, I wanted nothing more than to end the war as quickly as possible, but in a way that would both prevent the imposition of Communist repression upon the South Vietnamese people and discourage other Communist aggressors from launching such wars in the future. I had to deal with other great foreign policy issues during my presidency, but a day never passed when the war in Vietnam was not prominent among my concerns. I hated the Vietnam war. But even more, I hated all wars. I knew that I must not end the Vietnam War in a way that would lead to more and larger wars in the future.

It was my responsibility to see the war from afar—and to make the decisions that would hasten its end on an honorable basis. But I also saw the war in intensely personal terms. I spent hours on letters to the next of kin of our soldiers who had been killed in action. No matter how hard I tried to give them personal warmth, I was never satisfied with the final product. It always seemed too cold. There were just no words to express adequately the heartfelt emotions I experienced when I heard about the death of an American who was killed in the prime of life in the service of his country.

During the Christmas holidays each year, I called the next of kin of our killed in action on a random basis. Usually, their mothers answered the telephone. I called to give them a lift, but frequently they ended up giving me a lift—probably without knowing how much I needed it. In their voices there was no self-pity and no recrimination, only simple and eloquent expressions of support for the actions I was taking to bring the war to an end. I vividly recall a conversation I had shortly
before Christmas in 1971 with a widow whose only son had been killed in action. I could sense the loneliness and sadness in her voice and was deeply moved when she told me at the end of our talk that she went to mass every day and always said a rosary for me and my family.

Most Americans are now aware of the heroism of our prisoners of war. But the families who prayed for their return were also heroic. Mrs. Nixon and I met with members of the League of Families a number of times. It was an emotional and heartwarming experience to hear them express support for the administration's policies and reject the demands of antiwar politicians that we accept defeat and simply withdraw our forces in exchange for our POWs. I often marveled at how our nation could produce men of such courage and devotion to country as our POWs, but in a different way the wives and mothers who remained at home were even more courageous.

I knew that there were heroes in the Vietnam War. I was reminded of this whenever I presented the Medal of Honor and read the citation to its recipient or, if it was awarded posthumously, to the next of kin. The overwhelming majority of those who received the Medal of Honor came from modest backgrounds. Many would call them “common men.” But when each was confronted with the ultimate challenge—risking his life to save the lives of other—she demonstrated that he only had to be tested to display uncommon qualities of extraordinary courage and patriotism.

All wars are alike in the personal tragedies that occur on the battlefield. What distinguished the war in Vietnam was the trauma we suffered on the home front. It was the most divisive foreign war in American history. It turned senators and congressmen who had been my friends for over twenty years into bitter adversaries when I was President. It turned many in the news media who previously prided themselves on being objective into viciously biased critics of the American war effort. Most journalists have always shown a liberal bias in their reporting, but during the Vietnam War their views were completely out of step with the country. In the presidential election
of 1972, when I won with 61 percent of the vote, my antiwar opponent received 81 percent of the votes of the members of the national news media. Their antiwar views showed in their reporting. Equal credibility was granted to enemy propaganda and United States government statements; and while our statements were greeted with skepticism, North Vietnam's word was usually taken at face value. Secret documents were published whenever reporters could get their hands on them. Reporters considered it their duty to try to oppose government policy by whatever means were available. The Vietnam War started the tradition of “adversary journalism” that still poisons our national political climate today.