1971: Richard M. Nixon and John Kerry - Men Of The Year

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1971: Richard M. Nixon - Time Magazine's Man of the Year
http://www.time.com/time/poy2000/archive/1971.html

FROM THE TIME ARCHIVE

He reached for a place in history by opening a dialogue with China, ending a quarter-century of vitriolic estrangement between two of the world's major powers. He embarked upon a dazzling round of summitry that will culminate in odysseys to Peking and Moscow. He doggedly pursued his own slow timetable withdrawing the nation's combat troops from their longest and most humiliating war, largely damping domestic discord unparalleled in the U.S. in more than a century. He clamped Government controls on the economy, causing the most drastic federal interference with private enterprise since the Korean War. He devalued the dollar, after unilaterally ordering changes in monetary policy that sent shock waves through the world's markets, and are leading to a badly needed fundamental reform of the international monetary machinery.

In doing all that--and doing it with a flair for secrecy and surprise that has marked his leadership as both refreshingly flexible and disconcertingly unpredictable--Richard Milhous Nixon, more than any other man or woman, dominated the world's news in 1971. He was undeniably the Man of the Year.


VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR AND
THE WINTER SOLDIER INVESTIGATION (1971)

Dr. Ernest Bolt, University of Richmond
http://www.urich.edu/~ebolt/history398/VVAW_WinterSoldier.html

For five days in April 1, the VVAW also led demonstrations in Washington. Leaders called their protest "a limited incursion into the country of Congress," as it followed Dewey Canyon I and Dewey Canyon II, code names for American and then ARVN invasions of Laos in February-March 1971. They called their protest effort Dewey Canyon III. The protest lasted a week and included an encampment to protest the war and to lobby Congress.

Veterans and mothers of soldiers killed in Vietnam marched to Arlington Cemetery while veteran John Kerrytestified against the war during Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings. The protests that week also included "guerrilla theater," with simulated attacks on "civilians" and the attempt of 60 vets to surrender to Pentagon officials for committing atrocities. (The Pentagon turned them away.) VVAW continued antiwar protests in 1972, and as the war ended for us in 1973, VVAW advocated universal amnesty for draft resisters and deserters.

The day after this VVAW-led protest, April 24, 1971, over 500,000 demonstrators arrived in Washington to lobby Congress and to "stop the government" if President Nixon did not stop the war. May 4 saw the arrest of over 1,400 protesters on the steps of Congress. Daniel Ellsberg was one of the ex-Marines who had tried to block DC traffic that day.

THE WAR AT HOME-THE ANTIWAR MOVEMENT:
http://www.urich.edu/~ebolt/history398/Anti-WarMovement.html

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and the Winter Soldier Investigation (1971):
http://www.urich.edu/~ebolt/history398/VVAW_WinterSoldier.html

Vietnam War Veteran John Kerry's Testimony (1971):
http://www.urich.edu/~ebolt/history398/JohnKerryTestimony.html

_____________________________________________________________________


Richard M Nixon-

QUOTATION: see these bums, you know, blowing up campuses … storming around about this issue.

ATTRIBUTION: On student protesters against Vietnam War, remark on leaving Pentagon meeting 1 May 70


John F. Kerry-

QUOTATION: war the soldiers tried to stop.

ATTRIBUTION: JOHN F. KERRY, commenting on how Vietnam would be known to future generations, at rally of antiwar demonstrators, west front of the Capitol, April 24, 1971, as reported by The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., April 26, 1971,

[blm]

1. Nixon, Reagan and Bush. Kerry changed ALL their legacies.

And he is about to change Bush2's in November.