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Originally Posted by California Tanker
Just one minor comment, though.
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2. Notice how McTeague utterly fails to mention the fact that the Republican President, Richard Nixon, was embroiled in the Vietnam war, appeared to be losing that war, and no end of US involvement was in sight.
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The last US combat troops left Vietnam over two years prior, and American financial aid was reduced as well. |
Incorrect.
Britannica:
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Nixon ordered 11 days of intensive bombing over Hanoi itself (December 18–28) while sending Thieu an ultimatum threatening a separate peace and cessation of U.S. aid if Saigon did not accept the peace terms. The United States was castigated worldwide for the “Christmas bombing,” but, when talks resumed in January, Hanoi and Saigon quickly came to terms. A Vietnam cease-fire went into effect on Jan. 27, 1973, and the last American soldiers departed on March 29.
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US involvement, however, continued, right up to the 1974 election, being pulled back right before the fall campaign season kicked off - gee, imagine that:
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The year 1974 was characterized by a series of small offensives as each side sought to seize land and people from the other. The North Vietnamese began preparing for a major offensive to be launched in either 1975 or 1976, while the South Vietnamese tried to hold all of the areas under their control, although they lacked the strength to do so. South Vietnam's difficulties were compounded when the United States drastically cut its military aid in August 1974. The morale and combat effectiveness of the ARVN plummeted as a result.
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And so the American public blamed the GOP:
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Vietnam had been America's longest and most divisive war, and public and congressional opinion flatly opposed any resumption of the agony. The 1973 accords, therefore, were a fig leaf hiding the fact that the United States had just lost its first war despite an estimated expenditure of $155,000,000,000, 7,800,000 tons of bombs (more than all countries dropped in all of World War II), and some 58,000 American lives. Estimates of Vietnamese dead (North and South) totaled more than 2,000,000 soldiers and civilians. In its proportional impact on Vietnamese society, the Vietnam War, 1955–75, was the fourth most severe in the world since 1816.
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And from another article:
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Agriculture, business, and industry had been disrupted. In the United States, Johnson's economic program for a “Great Society” had been largely halted by the economic and military demands of an unpopular war. The cost of the war has been estimated to have totaled about $200 billion. With the communist victory in South Vietnam and communist takeovers in neighbouring Cambodia and Laos, the new Vietnam emerged as an important Southeast Asian power.
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That is what the public blamed the GOP for.