...nor from the White House. This almost sounds like the Muslim version of the Tete' Offensive in Vietnam just before the 1968 presidential election that allowed Nixon to take power with his "secret plan" to end the war. Except this may be the secret plan to allow George W Bush to continue occupancy of the White House. Here is something that suggest maybe there is des ja vous all over again:
Introduction; Background; The Beginning of the War: 1959-1965; Escalated United States Involvement: 1965-1969; Ending the War: 1969-1975; The Troops; Response to the War in the United States; Effects and Recovery in Vietnam
V Ending the War: 1969-1975
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Promising an end to the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon won a narrow victory in the election of 1968. Slightly more than 30,000 young Americans had been killed in the war when Nixon took office in January 1969. The new president retained his predecessor’s goal of a non-Communist South Vietnam, however, and this could not be ensured without continuing the war. Nixon’s most pressing problem was how to make peace and war at the same time. His answer was a policy called “Vietnamization.” Under this policy, he would withdraw American troops and the South Vietnamese army would take over the fighting.
A Nixon’s Vietnamization
During his campaign for the presidency, Nixon announced that he had a secret plan to end the war. In July 1969, after he had become president, he issued what came to be known as the Nixon doctrine, which stated that U.S. troops would no longer be directly involved in Asian wars. He ordered the withdrawal of 25,000 troops, to be followed by more, and he lowered draft calls. On the other hand, Nixon also stepped up the Phoenix Program, a secret CIA operation that resulted in the assassination of 20,000 suspected NLF guerrillas, many of whom were innocent civilians. The operation increased funding for the ARVN and intensified the bombing of North Vietnam. Nixon reasoned that to keep the Communists at bay during the U.S. withdrawal, it was also necessary to bomb their sanctuaries in Cambodia and to increase air strikes against Laos.
The DRV leadership, however, remained committed to the expulsion of all U.S. troops from Vietnam and to the overthrow of the Saigon government. As U.S. troop strength diminished, Hanoi’s leaders planned their final offensive. While the ARVN had increased in size and was better armed than it had been in 1965, it could not hold its own without the help of heavy U.S. airpower.
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