

Saturday, June 3, 1972

Vietnam And The Election
By Andrew Tully
George McGovern was right in the first place -18 months ago. Vietnam indeed will be an issue in the Presidential election. But today the big IF is whether the war will serve the purpose of the South Dakota senator or any other Democratic nominee.
As these words are typed, South Vietnam has not been crushed by the massive invasion of upwards to 200,000 regular North Vietnamese troops. It has suffered losses, but its soldiers have fought back and even mounted several successful counteroffensive despite generally poor leadership. Meanwhile, American mining of North Vietnam harbors and air strikes against rail and war production facilities have posed a serious supply problem for the Hanoi invaders.
Moreover, the rainy season is fast approaching. Once it begins, the chances of the North Vietnamese making any new gains on the battlefield will be reduced virtually to zero, thus thwarting Hanoi's aim of winning a political victory by military means.
Ergo, the big IF. Should Richard Nixon make good on his gamble to foil the Communist invaders, he'll be in excellent shape in November. He can and will claim a victory, not only for South Vietnam but for the United States, and given a choice between victory and defeat most American voters will opt for victory. And if this victory is accompanied by the continued withdrawal of American forces, the Vietnam issue will have been all but demolished.
Confronted with such a Nixon triumph, the Democratic nominee will face some hard questions-especially if he is George McGovern. There will be voters who will ask whether McGovern, had he been in the White House, would have mined the North Vietnamese harbors and launched an all-out bombing attack on the North. They will recall that a Democratic President named Lyndon Johnson refused to mine the harbors even after committing more than half a million U.S. troops to a genuine war.
Richard Nixon, meanwhile, can be depended upon to declare that if it hadn't been for a Republican President we would never have "won" that war while simultaneously pulling out of it. He will remind the electorate that all the Democratic candidates except George Wallace and Sen. Henry Jackson had demanded immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces unaccompanied by any attempt to avoid the "humiliation" of total "capitulation."
At the same time, Nixon can boast that it was HE who went to Peking and HE who went to Moscow. He can tick off the names of Democratic politicians and press and broadcast commentators who announced flatly the Russians would cancel his visit in outrage over the decision to mine North Vietnam's harbors. He can make the valid claim that he was right and the opposition was wrong, all along.
"Vietnam and the Election", by Andrew Tully, published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Saturday, June 3, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes. |