Bret Stephens Quotes
Yes, Obama took over two wars from Bush - just as President Richard Nixon inherited Vietnam from President Lyndon Johnson and President Dwight Eisenhower inherited Korea from President Harry Truman. But at least the war in Iraq was all but won by 2009, thanks largely to the very surge Obama had opposed as a senator.
Stephens, Bret. Opinion column. The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 2014.
The “surge” was the short term injection of a large number of American combat troops into Iraq when the Iraq War was going badly. President George W. Bush, who at the urging of Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives had invaded Iraq and while the invasion went well the administration botched the so-called peace and America was in the midst of a Iraqi civil war. Bush went ahead with the surge despite the advice of the Joint Chiefs. What makes the quotation particularly interesting, beyond the fact that the senior military advice was ignored, was that the President had always campaigned on the principle that the President should listen to the senior American Military officials on military tactics and strategy. He like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and other presidents found that the military leadership perspective was often very narrow and not even militarily infallible. The Iraq War turned in our favor after the surge albeit that there have been arguments since then as to whether or not the surge was the reason or was it due to other factors which occurred at the same time. Probably, all were factors.
Podharetz was citing the Vietnam war. The two American occasions where the plausibility seemed to fade were the Vietnam War and The Irag war. Both Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson and George W. Bush as Bismarck predicted, had much political trouble over the wars.
The Vietnam War was certainly not a victory for the U. S. Some saw it as our first defeat. While it was not ended on Johnson’s watch, he must certainly share that responsibility with Nixon and even JFK as these three all were responsible for our Vietnam failure. Johnson, ended up with what he feared most.
When Nixon was running for President in the 1968 Presidential campaign, he learned from Henry Kissinger that the Johnson administration had made an agreement with the Russians and North Vietnamese that America would stop the bombing of North Vietnam if there would be Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War. Nixon feard that although the polls showed him ahead of Vice President Humphrey, the announcement of ongoing peace talks would bring many of the anti-war Democrats who were not supporting Humphrey because of the Vietnam War out to vote for Humphrey to support the Peace Talks. Nixon decided to sabatouge the Peace Talks by persuading Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu not to come to the peace table so there coulod be no talks. He accomplished this by having Anna Chennault, an extreme right-wing fund raiser who was the widow of General Chennault of Flying Tiger fame and who had connections with all the right wing politicans in Asia, get word to President Thieu that President Johnson would sell him out in the peace upcomming peace talks, and that if he would boycott the peace talks till after the American Presidential election, Nixon as the New Presidnt would be sure that Thieu would remain in control of South Vietnam or there would be no peace and America would continue the war until the North Vienamese would agree to a peace that kept Thieu in power. Earlier, Nixon had appointed Anna Chennault as the Offical Spokesperson of the Campaign on Asia. What Nixon did was a felony--private citizens are not alowed to intere with government negotiatons or descussions with foreign governments, under the Logan Act Many think that the action was legally Treason. Hoever, Nguyen VanThieu did boycott the peace talks despite all the entreaties of President Johnson and his administration. There were no peace talks and the public never even knew that there had been this attempt. The anti-Vietnam War voters mostly did not vote and Nixon won a close race. Shortly after the election, before Nixon could be sworn in, via the FBI Johnson learned of Chennault's activities but thee was no evidence to tie Nixon to the South Vietnam refusal to come to the peace table. It neever became a public issue although several leading politicians had learned what had really occured--see Quotation 664238. However, 0ver 40 years later, when Nixon's Chief of Staff's notes were finally made public, the smoking gun was dislosed and Farrell wrote this in his 2017 Biography of Richard Nixon. See Related Quotes for quotations from H. R. Haldman's hadnwritten notes of his phone call with Nixon, and other evidence that had also been uncovered.
Bret Louis Stephens is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He began working as an opinion columnist for The New York Times in April 2017 and as a senior contributor to NBC News in June 2017.
