DOOMED PRESIDENCY OF GERALD FORD – AMERICA’S UNFINISHED WAR
Doomed Presidency of Gerald Ford – America’s Unfinished War.
Nixon-Kissinger and Gerald Ford initiated era of Doomed US Presidency when they concluded War against Communism through negotiated Surrender. Unchecked Communist Expansionism in Southern Asia poses severe risks to vital US security interests in Asia-Pacific Region.
At a speech at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford says the Vietnam War is finished as far as America is concerned. “Today, Americans can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war.” This was devastating news to the South Vietnamese, who were desperately pleading for U.S. support as the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon for the final assault on the capital city.
The North Vietnamese had launched a major offensive in March to capture the provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot (Darlac province) in the Central Highlands. The South Vietnamese defenders there fought very poorly and were quickly overwhelmed by the North Vietnamese attackers. Despite previous promises by both Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to provide support, the United States did nothing. In an attempt to reposition his forces for a better defense, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu ordered his forces in the Highlands to withdraw to more defensible positions to the south. What started out as a reasonably orderly withdrawal soon degenerated into a panic that spread throughout the South Vietnamese armed forces. The South Vietnamese abandoned Pleiku and Kontum in the Highlands with very little fighting and the North Vietnamese pressed the attack from the west and north. In quick succession, Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang in the north fell to the communist onslaught. The North Vietnamese continued to attack south along the coast, defeating the South Vietnamese forces at each encounter.
As the North Vietnamese forces closed on the approaches to Saigon, the politburo in Hanoi issued an order to Gen. Van Tien Dung to launch the “Ho Chi Minh Campaign,” the final assault on Saigon itself. Dung ordered his forces into position for the final battle.
The South Vietnamese 18th Division made a valiant final stand at Xuan Loc, 40 miles northeast of Saigon, in which the South Vietnamese soldiers destroyed three of Dung’s divisions. However, the South Vietnamese finally succumbed to the superior North Vietnamese numbers. With the fall of Xuan Loc on April 21 and Ford’s statement at Tulane, it was apparent that the North Vietnamese would be victorious. President Thieu resigned and transferred authority to Vice President Tran Van Huong before fleeing Saigon on April 25.
By April 27, the North Vietnamese had completely encircled Saigon and began to maneuver for their final assault. By the morning of April 30, it was all over. When the North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, the South Vietnamese surrendered and the Vietnam War was officially over.
DOOMED PRESIDENCY OF GERALD FORD – AMERICA’S UNFINISHED WAR. NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON DID NOT FINISH AMERICA’S WAR ON COMMUNIST EXPANSIONISM.
NO CHINA, NO RUSSIA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. RUSSIAN EMPIRE IN 1913.
United States must define Foreign Policy before choosing allies. “AMERICA FIRST” Foreign Policy demands choosing “TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.”
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. QING CHINA EMPIRE CIRCA. 1820.
Both Russia and China are major military powers of world competing for Superpower status. To achieve ‘Balance of Power’ to restore ‘Power Equilibrium’, America must choose Tibet because of its strategic location.
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. BRITISH EMPIRE 1921.
Tibet is second largest nation of the region and Tibet’s Independence from military occupation is the only real solution to contain and engage military powers like Russia and China.
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. A SATELLITE’S EYE VIEW OF TIBETAN PLATEAU.
Major Retd Rudranarasimham, DOOM DOOMA DOOMSAYER
CHINA OR RUSSIA? U.S. MAY HAVE TO CHOOSE AN ALLY
NEWSWEEK
Newsweek Europe
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.
This article originally appeared on The Conversation.
Forty-five years ago, last February, U.S. President Richard Nixon returned from a visit to China that shocked the world and unsettled leaders in Moscow, who were awaiting a visit from Nixon a few months later.
Soviet leaders wondered if they were finally witnessing the birth of a U.S.-China alliance that they had feared ever since the breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the early 1960s.
As Washington and the media convulse over every new outrage emanating from Moscow, while President Trump repeatedly asks, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?” U.S. policymakers are faced with the same choice between Russia and China, though this time the stakes might be even higher.
The history of persistent tensions between Russia and China suggests two choices: Accommodate and reconcile with Russia to balance against the greater power—China. Or, align with China to defend a rules-based international order from its most powerful antagonist—Russia.
It should be clear by now that we can no longer oppose Russia and China at the same time. Though that route might seem tempting and natural, given the historical aspirations of U.S. foreign policy to protect territorial sovereignty, promote human rights and provide a framework for free trade, we are no longer equal to the task.
At a minimum, that would require decisive U.S. action in Syria, firm military support for the government in Kiev, a drastic military buildup of NATO forces across Eastern Europe and a more confrontational posture in the South and East China seas. Doing that would further stretch a U.S. military that is already facing a personnel shortage. It would also represent a burden that the American people apparently no longer wish to carry.
Lost in the discussion of whether Trump’s “America First” bravado reflects militarism or isolationism are the ways in which our options have been shaped by the administration that preceded him.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, second from right, and China President Xi Jinping watch the Victory Day parade at Red Square in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2015. Reuters
We have only begun to reckon with the foreign policy legacy of Barack Obama, but he has clearly done more to shape the current global predicament than Trump has. When the Russian, Iranian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Moscow in the final weeks of the Obama administration to solve the Syrian crisis by themselves without inviting the U.S., they were making a startling declaration: The nation that had once declared itself to be “indispensable” was now very clearly dispensable. It would have been unthinkable at any point since Pearl Harbor for American interests to be discounted so brazenly in solving the most pressing international crisis.
It is hard to separate the factors that brought us to this point. Is this simply an inevitable product of relative, or even absolute, American decline? Is it a product of a president who sought to “lead from behind” and whose fundamental foreign policy principle was that sins of commission are always worse than sins of omission? Or did Obama conclude he was dealing with a country, already exhausted by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that was no longer willing to shoulder the burden of defending the free world? Either way, Trump has inherited a country that is no longer willing and able to play the leadership role it once did in world affairs.
So where do we go from here? If we cannot oppose both Russia and China, then we need to compromise with at least one of them.
MAKE FRIENDS WITH RUSSIA?
Arguing for a Russian alignment is the notion that China already does more damage to American interests around the globe than Russia does. China damages U.S. economic interests through unfair trade practices, our standing in Asia by undermining our alliances, and our ability to promote democracy, particularly in Africa, by offering aid and investment without good governance conditions. As China grows more powerful and assertive, its efforts to drive the U.S. out of East Asia, coupled with increasing challenges to American interests around the globe, will amount to a full-spectrum challenge to the current U.S. position in the world.
In contrast, Russia’s challenges to American interests are relative pinpricks. Russia does not have the ability to turn either Eastern Europe or the Middle East into its own sphere of influence. It is even losing the competition for economic influence in Central Asia, its own post-Soviet backyard, to China.
Putin might not be an evil dictator bent on doing as much damage to the West as possible, but rather a spurned pragmatist with a realistic view of Russia’s position in the world who had initially hoped to cooperate with Western leaders, but has been embittered by poor treatment by them. Putin’s Russia, therefore, would represent not a mortal threat to the international world order, but rather a missed opportunity, one that can still perhaps be salvaged.
OR CHOOSE CHINA INSTEAD?
Alternatively, we could align with China against Russia.
This approach makes sense if you believe Putin began as a pragmatist, but that was only a temporary tack, given his KGB background and nationalist authoritarian inclinations. But now that he has seen how weak his opponents are and how much havoc he can wreak, he has set his sights higher. Fifteen years ago he might not have imagined he could break NATO or the EU, but now that seems within reach, and nothing will deter him from this chance to realize the fondest dreams of his Soviet predecessors. What could we possibly offer him to match such dreams? He would revel in the chaos that would follow.
Chaos, however, is precisely the opposite of what the leaders in Beijing desire. China’s resurgence is built on a world of peace and trade, a world ultimately sustained by American military strength. For China to seek to challenge such an order, it would have to imagine that it could not only fill the role the U.S. currently fills, but manage the transition in such a way as to avoid a chaotic interlude. Chinese leaders are far too clear-headed for such a gambit, and in any case they see no need to rush such a transition before conditions for it have matured.
President Xi Jinping is anyway preoccupied with ensuring the indefinite continuation of Communist Party rule. What could jeopardize that more than a world in chaos and economic disaster?
IS THE CHOICE EVEN OURS?
With Russia against China? With China against Russia?
There is no question such a choice is unpalatable. Not only would either alternative involve morally difficult concessions, but having to make the choice at all implies that the United States is no longer capable of defending the world order it has long sponsored. This is a difficult reality to accept.
And broaching the possibility of such a choice leads to more difficult questions.
Could Russia even be persuaded to align with the U.S. against China or China against Russia? What would we have to offer either side? What would this mean for our allies, especially in Europe and East Asia? The latter question might not be as insoluble as it may seem, because our allies have long since begun anticipating just such a scenario. But if we are no longer able and willing to perform the role we once did, we need to reckon with the consequences.
Jeremy Friedman is Assistant Professor, Business, Government, and the International Economy, Harvard Business School.
NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. RUSSIAN EMPIRE 1914. NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. THE CHINESE EMPIRE 1910. NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM. NO RUSSIA, NO CHINA – U.S. MUST CHOOSE TIBET EQUILIBRIUM.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA. DOOMED GUN OF DOOM DOOMA SYMBOLIZES DOOMED US – CHINA POLICY.
United States fought War in Vietnam to engage and contain the spread of Communist influence in Southern Asia. Due to Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason, this War has never finished. This War is about restoring Balance of Power in Southern Asia. The Power Equilibrium shifted dangerously in favor of Communists when Red China invaded and occupied Tibet, South Asia’s second largest nation. In terms of size, and geographical location, Tibet is of high priority as compared to defending territorial rights of nations like Japan, Philippines, or Vietnam. Red China cannot claim sovereignty over Tibet and her illegal military occupation cannot wipe out the long history of Tibet’s independence. Eviction of Tibet’s illegal military occupier represents Unfinished War in Southern Asia and it cannot be avoided.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA.
I will ask my readers to tell the US Congress and The White House to reverse the course of Nixon-Kissinger Doomed China Policy.
Our war with China another Vietnam War in the making
THE SOUTH CHINA SEA GAMBIT
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA.
In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a Russian naval ship arrives in port in Zhanjiang in Southern China’s Guangdong Province, Monday, Sept. 12, 2016. The Chinese and Russian navies launched eight days of war games.
By BRUCE FEIN – – FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2017
A disastrous, purposeless war with China to defend the global credibility of the United States is imminent. Only vocal citizen opposition to the war communicated to the Congress and the White House can prevent our self-ruination. It happened in 2013 to prevent President Obama from another trillion-dollar fool’s errand against Syria. The system still works, if citizens will use it.
Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson testified on Jan. 11, 2017, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States would deny China access to islands in the South China Sea over which China claims sovereignty. (The artificial islands are thousands of miles from the continental United States and irrelevant to invincible self-defense). Mr. Tillerson declared that China’s building and militarization of the islands was “akin to Russia’s taking Crimea” from Ukraine.
He bugled: “We’re going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed.” (How do you think the United States would respond if China denied us access to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base?)
The White House reiterated on Jan. 24, 2017, that the United States would prevent China from accessing the South China Sea islands China claims, and hinted at an American blockade. A blockade would mean war, according to a nationalist Chinese newspaper. (A blockade assumes a state of war.) Australia, a longstanding United States ally in the Asia Pacific region, balked at participation.
The White House – Tillerson bellicosity aligns with everything the United States has done since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 announced a “pivot” to Asia to encircle China. We have sought to deny China a regional sphere of influence that we have exerted for almost two centuries beginning with the Monroe Doctrine. We have established a Marine training base in Darwin, Australia. We are building a THADD missile defense system in South Korea. We have negotiated the use of five military training bases in the Philippines. We have supported Vietnam in its South China Sea maritime dispute with China. We have sent aircraft carriers there. We have declared an obligation to defend Japan’s claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands disputed by China.
The United States has accused China of currency manipulation and threatened to impose prohibitive tariffs on Chinese imports.
These unfriendly acts are the very definition of encirclement.
Chinese resentment against the west and the United States has been building for centuries. The First Opium War (1839-42), fought by Britain, was precipitated by China’s refusal to legalize opium. It ended with the Treaty of Nanking, which indemnified merchants for confiscated opium, granted the British extraterritoriality, opened five treaty ports, and ceded Hong Kong.
The Second Opium War (1856-60) was fought by the British to compel China to open up its ports and interior to Western trade. Other Western powers piggybacked on Chinese concessions to Britain through most-favored-nation clauses in a series of “unequal treaties.”
The 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War concluded in the Treaty of Shimonoseki by which China was obliged to recognize the independence of Korea; to cede Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaodong (south Manchurian) Peninsula to Japan ; to pay an indemnity of 200,000,000 taels to Japan; and to open the ports of Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou to Japanese trade.
These Western and Japanese humiliations sparked the 1900 Boxer Rebellion to expel western spheres of influence. An international force featuring British, Russian, American, Japanese, French and German troops relieved Peking (Beijing) after fighting their way through much of northern China. The victors agreed that China would not be partitioned further. In September 1901, the Peking (Beijing) Protocol was signed. Foreign nations received extremely favorable commercial treaties, foreign troops were permanently stationed in Peking (Beijing), and China was forced to pay $333 million dollars as penalty for its rebellion.
The United States intervened in the Chinese Civil War (1946-49) in favor of Gen. Chiang Kai-shek against Mao Zedong. After Chiang was driven off the mainland to Taiwan in 1949, the United States launched covert actions against the People’s Republic of China seeking the overthrow of Mao.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s adventurism during the Korean War provoked China to intervene with more than 1 million troops.
Depend upon it. What will provoke war against China will be a professed need to defend our credibility everywhere on the planet. It will be said that if we do not fight China over the South and East China Sea islands as we have threatened, Russia will be emboldened to attack the Baltic States or Eastern Europe, Iran will be emboldened to attack Israel and destabilize its Sunni rivals, and North Korea will be emboldened to attack South Korea and Japan.
The Han Chinese is a proud people, and China is a proud nation. China invented gunpowder and paper. It gave the world Confucius and Sun Tzu. It possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons. After suffering humiliation and subjugation by Western imperial powers for centuries, China will fight the United States for its own sphere of influence in the South China and East China Seas.
China will never bow to the double standards of the United States. We have intervened in Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Chile and Grenada to maintain our sphere of influence in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Our schoolmarm-like rebuke of China over its assertion of regional hegemony takes audacity to a new level.
The Han Chinese is every bit or more nationalist than were the Vietnamese who bested the United States in the Vietnam War. The morale of United States troops in Vietnam suffered terribly because the war was about an abstraction — global American credibility — not about defending the United States from aggression.
The same will be true in our war with China, and the morale of our troops will suffer accordingly. We will be defeated for the same reasons we were defeated in the Vietnam War.
This looming calamity can be forestalled if American citizens immediately flood the White House and Congress with phone calls and emails voicing vehement opposing war with China absent actual unprovoked Chinese aggression against the United States or a Chinese declaration of war. That would represent the high water mark of self-government celebrated in the Declaration of Independence.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – THE CIA’S CANCELLED WAR
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – THE CIA’S CANCELLED WAR.
‘TIBET: THE CIA’S CANCELLED WAR’ fails to describe Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason during 1971-72 when Americans were fighting a bloody War in Vietnam against Communists supported by the Soviet Union and Red China. As I was part of this CIA Mission in Tibet, I knew that Tibet and India were willing to help the US by fighting against Communists inside Tibet rather than directly engaging Communists in Vietnam. Tibet and India want to choose their Battlefield in full support of the US Policy to engage and contain the spread of Communism. The Central Intelligence Agency or CIA has no vested powers to wage or fight wars. “The Cancelled War” is simply an act of Treason. The 37th President of the United States chose to provide support and comfort to the Enemy during War waged on behalf of the United States.
In 1971-72, CIA Mission in Tibet never ended. The Mission continued without direct participation of American nationals. I can appreciate CIA’s unwillingness to divulge the truth about its Mission which is always sanctioned by the executive powers vested in the US President. In my analysis, this War will be fought to restore Balance of Power in Southern Asia.
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – CIA’S CANCELLED WAR
Lhamo Tsering Collection
Resistance fighters on the Tibetan border during the early years of the CIA’s Tibet program
For much of the past century, US relations with Tibet have been characterized by kowtowing to the Chinese and hollow good wishes for the Dalai Lama. As early as 1908, William Rockhill, a US diplomat, advised the Thirteenth Dalai Lama that “close and friendly relations with China are absolutely necessary, for Tibet is and must remain a portion of the Ta Ts’ing [Manchu] Empire for its own good.” Not much has changed with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama one hundred years later. After a meeting in 2011 with President Obama in the White House Map Room—the Oval Office being too official—the Dalai Lama has ushered out the back door, past the garbage cans. All this, of course, is intended to avoid condemnation from Beijing, which regards even the mildest criticism of its Tibet policy as “interference.”
However, there was one dramatic departure from the minimalist approach. For nearly two decades after the 1950 Chinese takeover of Tibet, the CIA ran a covert operation designed to train Tibetan insurgents and gather intelligence about the Chinese, as part of its efforts to contain the spread of communism around the world. Though little known today, the program produced at least one spectacular intelligence coup and provided a source of support for the Dalai Lama. On the eve of Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 meeting with Mao, the program was abruptly canceled, thus returning the US to its traditional arms-length policy toward Tibet. But this did not end the long legacy of mistrust that continues to color Chinese-American relations. Not only was the Chinese government aware of the CIA program; in 1992, it published a white paper on the subject. The paper included information drawn from reliable Western sources about the agency’s activities, but laid the primary blame for the insurgency on the “Dalai Lama clique,” a phrase Beijing still uses today.
The insurgency began after the People’s Liberation Army invaded Tibet following its defeat of the Nationalists, and after Beijing forced the Dalai Lama’s government to recognize Chinese administration over the region. In 1955, a group of local Tibetan leaders secretly plotted an armed uprising, and rebellion broke out a year later, with the rebels besieging local government institutions and killing hundreds of government staff as well as Han Chinese people. In May 1957, a rebel organization and a rebel fighting force were founded and began killing communist officials, disrupting communication lines, and attacking institutions and Chinese army troops stationed in the region.
By that point, the rebellion had gained American backing. In the early 1950s, the CIA began to explore ways to aid the Tibetans as part of its growing campaign to contain Communist China. By the second half of the decade, “Project Circus” had been formally launched, Tibetan resistance fighters were being flown abroad for training, and weapons and ammunition were being airdropped at strategic locations inside Tibet. In 1959, the agency opened a secret facility to train Tibetan recruits at Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, partly because the location, more than 10,000 feet above sea level, might approximate the terrain of the Himalayas. According to one account, some 170 “Kamba guerrillas” passed through the Colorado program.
While the CIA effort never produced a mass uprising against the Chinese occupiers, it did provide one of the greatest intelligence successes of the Cold War, in the form of a vast trove of Chinese army documents captured by Tibetan fighters and turned over to the CIA in 1961. These revealed the loss of morale among Chinese soldiers, who had learned of the vast famine that was wracking China during The Great Leap Forward. Over the next decade, however, there was growing disagreement in Washington over the CIA’s activities in Tibet, and in 1971, as Henry Kissinger prepared for Nixon’s meeting with Mao, the program was wound down.
“Although Tibet may not have been on the table in the Beijing talks, the era of official US support for the Tibetan cause was over,” recalled John Kenneth Knaus, a forty-year CIA veteran, in his 1999 book Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival. “There was no role for Tibet in Kissinger’s new equation.” By 1975, President Gerald Ford could say to a skeptical Deng Xiaoping, China’s future leader, “Let me assure you, Mr. Vice-Premier, that we oppose and do not support any [United States] governmental action as far as Tibet is concerned.”
Many friends of Tibet and admirers of the Dalai Lama, who has always advocated nonviolence, believe he knew nothing about the CIA program. But Gyalo Thondup, one of the Dalai Lama’s brothers, was closely involved in the operations, and Knaus, who took part in the operation, writes that “Gyalo Thondup kept his brother the Dalai Lama informed of the general terms of the CIA support.” According to Knaus, starting in the late 1950s, the Agency paid the Dalai Lama $15,000 a month. Those payments came to an end in 1974.
In 1999, I asked the Dalai Lama if the CIA operation had been harmful to Tibet. “Yes, that is true,” he replied. The intervention was harmful, he suggested because it was primarily aimed at serving American interests rather than helping the Tibetans in any lasting way. “Once the American policy toward China changed, they stopped their help,” he told me. “Otherwise our struggle could have gone on. Many Tibetans had great expectations of CIA [air] drops, but then the Chinese army came and destroyed them. The Americans had a different agenda from the Tibetans.”
This was exactly right, and the different goals of the Agency and the Tibetans are explored fully by the Tibetan-speaking anthropologist Carole McGranahan in her Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (2010). Although sometimes clouded by anthropological jargon, her account fascinatingly explores how differently from their American counterparts the Tibetan veterans remember the CIA operation. A striking example is the matter of the Chinese army documents, whose capture in a Tibetan ambush of a high-ranking Chinese officer is depicted in grisly detail in a huge painting in the CIA’s museum in Washington. In addition to revealing low Chinese morale, the documents disclosed the extent of Chinese violence in Tibet. “This information was the only documentary proof the Tibetan government [in exile] had of the Chinese atrocities and was therefore invaluable,” McGranahan notes. Yet the documents and their capture rarely came up during her long interview sessions with the veterans. “Why is it that this achievement, so valued by the US and Tibetan governments, is not remotely as memorable for [the] soldiers?”
One reason is that the Tibetan fighters were told nothing about the value of the documents, which they couldn’t read. One veteran explains to her:
Our soldiers attacked Chinese trucks and seized some documents of the Chinese government. After that, the Americans increased our pay scale. Nobody knew what the contents of those documents were. At that time, questions weren’t asked. If you asked many questions, then others would be suspicious of you.
The leader of the ambush tells her that “as a reward, the CIA gave me an Omega chronograph,” but he, too, had little knowledge of the documents’ importance. As McGranahan shows in extensive detail, the veterans were preoccupied above all by their devotion to the Dalai Lama, whom they wanted to resume his position as supreme leader of an independent Tibet.
After the CIA mission was ended, Tibet became increasingly marginal to Washington’s China policy, as Knaus has now made clear in a second book, Beyond Shangri-la: America and Tibet’s Move into the Twenty-First Century. The reality is that American presidents now face a world power in Beijing. In language that sums up the cats-cradle of American justifications for ignoring Tibet, ex-Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Marshall Green recalls to Knaus, “there was nothing we could do to help the Tibetans except by improving our relations with the Chinese Communists so that we might be in a position to exert pressure on them to moderate their policies towards the Tibetans.” Green “admitted that this was ‘perhaps a rationalization.'”
President Obama will soon meet the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. His advisers will have reminded him of the encounter between his predecessor, Bill Clinton, and then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin on June 27, 1998. In that meeting, Clinton assured Jiang that, “I agree that Tibet is a part of China, an autonomous region of China. And I can understand why the acknowledgment of that would be a precondition of dialog with the Dalai Lama.” Banking on his well-known charm, Mr. Clinton added, “I have spent time with the Dalai Lama. I believe him to be an honest man, and I believe if he had a conversation with President Jiang, they would like each other very much.” Jiang, it is reported, threw back his head and laughed. Clinton’s suggestion was omitted from the official Chinese transcript.
REMEMBERING PRIME MINISTER ZHOU ENLAI – DIED ON JANUARY 08, 1976
REMEMBERING CHINESE PRIME MINISTER ZHOU ENLAI ON JANUARY 08, 2017, HIS 41st DEATH ANNIVERSARY. I KEEP HIM ALIVE IN MY THOUGHTS.
Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai died on January 08, 1976. On January 08, 2017, Zhou’s 41st Death Anniversary, I disclose that I keep Zhou Enlai alive in my thoughts for Tibet is still under Military Occupation. I will bury my thoughts of Prime Minister Zhou Enlai when the Military Occupier of Tibet gets evicted from Tibet.
REMEMBERING CHINESE PRIME MINISTER ZHOU ENLAI ON JANUARY 08, 2017, HIS 41st DEATH ANNIVERSARY. I KEEP HIM ALIVE IN MY THOUGHTS.REMEMBERING CHINESE PRIME MINISTER ZHOU ENLAI ON JANUARY 08, 2017, HIS 41st DEATH ANNIVERSARY. I KEEP ZHOU ENLAI, MAO ZEDONG, RICHARD NIXON ALIVE IN MY THOUGHTS FOR TIBET REMAINS UNDER MILITARY OCCUPATION.
Zhou Enlai, premier of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949, dies of cancer at age 77. Zhou was second to Mao Zedong, the leader of the revolution that brought a communist regime to China, in terms of importance in the PRC. Beyond his significance as a leader of communist China, Zhou was instrumental in the negotiations that resulted in the U.S. recognition of the PRC in 1979.
Zhou was born in 1898, and he was heavily involved in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by the 1920s. He rose quickly through the party ranks and became one of Mao Zedong’s most trusted advisors, particularly valued for his skill at negotiations and diplomacy. These skills were crucial during the 1930s, when the CCP found it necessary to collaborate with its enemy, the Chinese Nationalists, to oppose Japanese aggression. In 1949, the CCP was victorious in its civil war against the Nationalists and Zhou was appointed premier and foreign minister of the new government.
During the 1950s, he represented China at various diplomatic gatherings, including the 1954 Geneva Conference and the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung. He was also a stabilizing force inside China during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution and its resultant political tensions.
In the early 1970s, Zhou embarked on a program to rebuild relations with the United States, which had refused to recognize the Chinese communist government. In 1972, he and President Richard Nixon shocked the world by meeting and agreeing to work for closer political and economic relations between the two nations. These talks eventually did bear fruit in 1979, when the United States formally recognized the PRC.
Remembering Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai on his 41st Death Anniversary. I keep Zhou alive in my thoughts. Major Milestones in U.S.-China Relations Remembering Chinese Prime Minister on his 41st Death Anniversary. I keep Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and Richard Nixon alive in my thoughts. Cultural Revolution Remembering Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai on his 41st Death Anniversary. I keep Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, and Richard Nixon alive in my thoughts. Nixon Returns From China
PEACEMAKING IN OCCUPIED TIBET – DALAI LAMA – PEACEMAKER vs SPIRITUAL HEALER
PEACEMAKING IN OCCUPIED TIBET – DALAI LAMA – PEACEMAKER vs SPIRITUAL HEALER. THE PROBLEM OF JOY AND EVERLASTING HAPPINESS IN TIBET.
Dalai Lama, exiled Ruler of Tibet is often described as Spiritual Leader of Tibet who may provide Spiritual Healing to problems experienced by people all over the world. Dalai Lama recommends Peaceful Resolution of all Conflicts. In Tibet, China’s Military Occupation violates Natural Order and Natural Equilibrium that operates Tibetan National Life. This Violation of Tibetan National Life stimulates ‘Resistance’ as Natural Reaction to Oppression. Peacemaking in Occupied Tibet demands Eviction of Military Occupier which may or may not demand application of Physical Force depending upon Red China’s willingness to seek Peaceful Resolution of Conflict arising from her own actions.
PEACEMAKING IN OCCUPIED TIBET – CIA FUNDING NOT ENOUGH
Cold War Era Secrecy will not secure Peace, Freedom, and Justice in Occupied Tibet. Democracy thrives on the principles of Transparency and Public Accountability. To confront threat posed by Communist Expansionism, the assets of CIA are not enough. It is no surprise to note Tibet exists under Red China’s Subjugation.
United States must correctly assess Enemy’s Military, Economic, and Intelligence capabilities and engage Enemy on various fronts to neutralize Enemy’s assets before meeting Enemy on the Battlefield.
PEACEMAKING IN OCCUPIED TIBET – CIA FUNDING NOT ENOUGH
In my analysis, CIA lacks military, financial, and intelligence capabilities to Evict Military Occupier of Tibet. In this ‘BATTLE OF RIGHT AGAINST MIGHT’ of Red China, I ask World to Unite.
Doomed Gun of Doom Dooma – Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason
Doomed Gun of Doom Dooma – Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason. United States Rifle M14.
In 1971, for the first time in my life, I was introduced to the United States Rifle, 7.62mm, M14.
I describe US Rifle, 7.62mm, M14 as the ‘Doomed Gun of Doom Dooma’ as my golden opportunity to join the US War on Communism doomed in Doom Dooma. Nixon-Kissinger US administration flatly denied me that opportunity while giving me full access to the US Rifle. Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason forced me to reject the United States Rifle, M14. This Gun is Doomed for it is given to me to use against Enemy whom US President befriended in a treacherous deviation of the US Policy on Communism.
DOOMED GUN OF DOOM DOOMA – NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON.
NIXON-KISSINGER TREASON IN VIETNAM – REMEMBERING JANUARY 23, 1973
NIXON-KISSINGER VIETNAM TREASON – UNFINISHED WAR IN SOUTHERN ASIA. DOOMED GUN OF DOOM DOOMA SYMBOLIZES DOOMED US-CHINA POLICY.
On January 23, 1973, President Nixon announced about ‘The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam’ popularly known as Paris Peace Accords. This Vietnam Peace Treaty was signed on January 27, 1973, with cease-fire effective from January 28, 1973. Nixon-Kissinger are guilty of treason in Vietnam for President Nixon won his election for first-term in 1968, and later won his election for second-term in 1972 by using Vietnam War for political gain and not to serve the purpose of the United States which was at War actively fighting against the enemy. For all practical purposes, ‘The Fate of Saigon’, and ‘The Fall of Saigon’ on April 30, 1975, was decisively concluded on January 23, 1973.
THE WASHINGTON POST
SECRET ARCHIVE OFFERS FRESH INSIGHT INTO NIXON PRESIDENCY
Nixon believed that years of aerial bombing in Southeast Asia to pressure North Vietnam achieved “zilch” even as he publicly declared it was effective and ordered more bombing while running for reelection in 1972, according to a handwritten note from Nixon disclosed in a new book by Bob Woodward.
Nixon’s note to Henry Kissinger, then his national security adviser, on Jan. 3, 1972, was written sideways across a top-secret memo updating the president on war developments. Nixon wrote: “K. We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and V.Nam. The result = Zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the Air Force.”
By David E. Hoffman October 11 at 9:29 AM
The Post’s Bob Woodward, the author of the new book, “The Last of the President’s Men,” talks to former Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield about a previously undisclosed top-secret memo updating Nixon on war developments. (Ultan Guilfoyle and Tom LeGro/The Washington Post)
The day before he wrote the “zilch” note, Nixon was asked about the military effectiveness of the bombing by Dan Rather of CBS News in an hour-long, prime-time television interview. “The results have been very, very effective,” Nixon declared.
Nixon’s private assessment was correct, Woodward writes: The bombing was not working, but Nixon defended and intensified it in order to advance his reelection prospects. The claim that the bombing was militarily effective “was a lie, and here Nixon made clear that he knew it,” Woodward writes.
Nixon’s note, which has not previously been disclosed, was found in a trove of thousands of documents taken from the White House by Alexander P. Butterfield, deputy to H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, and not made public until now. Butterfield’s odyssey through Nixon’s first term is the subject of Woodward’s book, “The Last of the President’s Men,” to be published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.
Doomed Gun of Doom Dooma – Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason.
Richard Nixon performs the last acts of his devastated presidency in the White House East Room on Aug. 9, 1974, as he bids farewell to his Cabinet, aides and staff. (AP)
Butterfield became a key figure in the Watergate scandal when he revealed to Senate investigators the existence of the White House taping system. The tapes captured Nixon’s role in the coverup and marked a critical turning point in the collapse of his presidency. He resigned in 1974. Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate story in The Washington Post.
The new book, based on the documents and more than 46 hours of interviews with Butterfield, offers an intimate but disturbing portrayal of Nixon in the Oval Office. Butterfield depicts Nixon, who died in 1994, as forceful and energetic, but also vengeful, petty, lonely, shy and paranoid.
Butterfield felt deeply conflicted; he was proud to be serving but chagrined to be caught up in the underside of Nixon’s presidency. “The whole thing was a cesspool,” he told Woodward.
Doomed Gun of Doom Dooma. Butterfield who gave an account of Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason.
Alexander Butterfield is photographed in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 10. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)
Butterfield, now 89, was in charge of preventing other Nixon staffers from leaving the White House with government documents, but he saw many, including the late Nixon counselor Arthur Burns, haul away boxes when they left.
Butterfield anticipated writing a memoir, so when he left the White House in 1973, “I just took my boxes of stuff and left,” he told Woodward, packing them into his and his wife’s car. Woodward writes that the boxes contained everything from routine chronologies and memos to some top-secret exchanges with Kissinger and a few highly classified CIA bulletins.
The new book by The Post’s Bob Woodward, “The Last of the President’s Men,” is based on previously undisclosed documents and more than 46 hours of interviews with Alexander Butterfield, the Nixon aide who revealed the existence of the White House taping system. (Ultan Guilfoyle and Tom LeGro/The Washington Post)
Butterfield acknowledged to Woodward that it was improper and wrong to remove them, and pledged to ensure that they will be deposited with a proper archive. Woodward, who wrote that he thought the Nixon story was over for him after his book on Mark Felt, the FBI associate director and a secret source known as Deep Throat, said he was “shocked” at the existence of Butterfield’s secret files. “So the story, like most of history, does not end,” he writes.
‘SHAKE THEM UP!!’
The Vietnam War had been all-consuming for Nixon’s presidency. The antiwar movement was strong in the United States, and Nixon was under political pressure to end the conflict. The centerpiece of Nixon’s approach was “Vietnamization”: withdraw U.S. troops so that the South Vietnamese could take over, and negotiate a peace settlement “with honor,” avoiding anything that could be labeled a defeat.
As ground troops withdrew, air power was one of Nixon’s few remaining tools to pressure Hanoi. In late December 1971, Nixon ordered the renewed bombing of North Vietnamese targets for five days.
By early 1972, Nixon was on the verge of announcing his reelection campaign and taking his momentous trip to China. But he was worried about reports of a major North Vietnamese buildup, foreshadowing a possible offensive.
On Jan. 2, 1972, in the CBS television interview, Rather asked Nixon, “On everyone’s mind is the resumption of the widespread bombing of North Vietnam. Can you assess the military benefits of that?” Nixon reiterated what he had often said about the bombing, that it was “very, very effective,” and added, “I think that effectiveness will be demonstrated by the statement I am now going to make.” Nixon then announced that he would soon bring home more troops — virtually removing any U.S. combat forces in Vietnam.
The next day, writing his private thoughts to Kissinger, Nixon added, “There is something wrong with the strategy or the Air Force. I want a ‘bark-off’ study — no snow job — on my desk in two weeks as to what the reason for the failure is.” Nixon added that “otherwise continued air operations make no sense in Cambodia, Laos, etc. after we complete withdrawal — Shake them up!!” Nixon underlined the last words twice.
Woodward said he could find no evidence that the study was ever carried out. [How Mark Felt Became ‘Deep Throat’]
In another memo written a few months later, also found in the Butterfield files, Nixon complained to Kissinger that the military and bureaucracy were too timid. Nixon demanded action that is “strong, threatening and effective” to “punish the enemy” and “go for broke.” Nixon may also have been frustrated at North Vietnamese resilience. Woodward cites CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Pentagon memos showing that the bombing was not that effective because the North was getting more supplies than it needed to fight the ground war in the south, and could hold out for two years even if the bombing continued.
Kissinger, in an interview, told Woodward he agreed with the conclusion that years of bombing North Vietnam had failed, and he recalled that Nixon was frustrated. “He was in the habit of wanting more bombing . . . his instructions most often were for more bombing,” Kissinger said.
Woodward writes: “The ‘zilch’ conclusion had grown over three years. In what way and when did he realize this? History may never know. Maybe Nixon never knew, never grasped the full weight of his own conclusion.”
Woodward concludes that while Nixon knew the bombing was militarily futile, he believed it would reap political rewards at home. After Nixon resigned, papers found in his hideaway office in the White House included a GOP polling study, commissioned in 1969, that showed that the American people would favor bombing and blockading North Vietnam for six months. Woodward cites the work of Ken Hughes of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center to show that “the massive bombing did not do the job militarily but it was politically popular. Hughes argues with a great deal of evidence that the bombing was chiefly designed so Nixon would win re-election.” [Woodward and Bernstein: Nixon was far worse than we thought]
The “zilch” note was followed in February by orders for an intensified bombing of North Vietnam. On May 8, Nixon ordered the mining of Haiphong Harbor and bombing of key military targets. On Sept. 8, Nixon reported to Kissinger that poll numbers favored the bombing. “It’s two-to-one for the bombing,” he boasted.
On Oct. 16, just weeks before the election, Nixon recalled the May 8 decision to mine the harbor and told Kissinger, “May 8 was the acid test. And how it’s prepared us for all these things. The election, for example.” Kissinger replied, “I think you won the election on May 8.” Nixon was reelected by a landslide in November.
In that election year, the United States dropped 1.1 million tons of bombs in the Vietnam War, including 207,000 tons in North Vietnam alone, Woodward reports, citing Pentagon records.
‘DEEP, DEEP RESENTMENTS’
Before joining the White House, Butterfield was a 42-year-old U.S. Air Force colonel with an assignment in Australia. After Nixon’s triumph in the 1968 election, Butterfield reached out to Haldeman, an acquaintance from their university years at UCLA. Haldeman then hired Butterfield as his White House deputy. Butterfield was an outsider, unlike many of the others around Nixon, and what he saw in the next four years left a vivid impression.
When Butterfield was introduced to the president in the Oval Office by Haldeman, Nixon mumbled, cleared his throat and gestured. “No words came out, only a kind of growl,” Woodward writes, based on Butterfield’s recollection. Another time, also in the White House, Nixon dropped by a birthday party for Paul Keyes, a comedy writer and Nixon friend who had helped on the 1968 campaign. When Nixon entered the room, there was an unnatural hush. No one offered a handshake or a glass of wine. Nixon seemed at a loss. Keyes was wearing a solid green blazer. “Ah, ah, ah . . . uh,” Nixon muttered, according to Woodward’s account. “Then Nixon pointed down at the carpet, a worn, faded maroon. He spoke in a deep but barely audible voice. ‘Green coat . . . red rug . . . Christmas colors.’ He then wheeled around and strode out of the room to the Oval Office.”
Doomed Gun of Doom Dooma. Butterfield gave his account of Nixon-Kissinger Vietnam Treason.
Alexander Butterfield, an administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, arrives at the Rayburn Building to testify before the Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1974. (Bob Burchette/The Washington Post)
Woodward says Butterfield felt that “Nixon was quickly becoming the oddest man he’d ever known.”
“It was if he were locked in his own deeply personal world, thinking, planning and churning,” Woodward writes of Butterfield’s impressions. Butterfield described Nixon as so lonely that he often took dinner by himself in the Old Executive Office Building, sitting with his suit coat still on, writing on his legal pad. “He was happiest when he was alone,” Butterfield recalled.
Nixon’s relationship with his wife, Pat, was cold, Butterfield observed. At the Winter White House, a compound in Key Biscayne, Fla., she stayed in a separate house.
On Christmas Eve 1969, Nixon walked through the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House to wish employees a Merry Christmas. The president discovered that some support staff employees had prominently displayed photographs of President John F. Kennedy and that one worker had two. Nixon was furious and ordered Butterfield to remove all photos of other presidents. On Jan. 16, 1970, Butterfield wrote a memo to the president, titled “Sanitization of the EOB,” describing how all 35 offices displayed only Nixon’s photograph.
Alexander Butterfield, the deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon, describes to The Post’s Bob Woodward how Nixon barred certain reporters from traveling with him to China in 1972. (Ultan Guilfoyle and Tom LeGro/The Washington Post)
Butterfield learned that Nixon did not just have an “enemies list” with dozens of names, but also an “opponents list” and a “freeze list.” One day Nixon exploded in anger after finding out that Derek Bok, then the president of Harvard University, was at the White House. “I don’t ever want that son of a bitch back here on the White House grounds,” he told Butterfield. “And you get those enemies lists, make sure everybody knows who’s on them.” [Kissinger: the Dr. Frankenstein of foreign affairs, or just self-promoter?]
The president constantly scrutinized event invitation lists, striking names. Nixon organized a procedure with Butterfield so that during coffee after a state dinner, only a pre-selected group of five out of some 100 invited guests would get a chance to talk to the president. No one else could approach him.
Butterfield told Woodward that Nixon was controlled by “his various neuroses, the deep, deep, deep resentments, and hatreds — he seemed to hate everybody. The resentments festered. And he never mellowed out.”
Butterfield did not know about the specifics of the Watergate break-in but witnessed how Nixon’s obsessions led to it. At one point, Butterfield was given the assignment to plant a spy in the Secret Service detail of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). Nixon later mused that the spy — a retired agent who was reactivated — might find information that would “ruin him for ’76,” when Kennedy might be considered a possible presidential candidate. Butterfield knew the plan was illegal and told Woodward that he was surprised at himself for going along with it.
Alexander Butterfield, the deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon, talks to The Post’s Bob Woodward about revealing the existence of the White House taping system. (Ultan Guilfoyle and Tom LeGro/The Washington Post)
It fell to Butterfield to organize the White House taping system, installed at Nixon’s behest in February 1971. Although Nixon endlessly explored and sifted his options on most issues, Woodward reports that “there was apparently no discussion about the merits or risks of such a taping system.” It was installed over a weekend by the Secret Service while the president was out of town. Five microphones were put in the president’s desk, on the top, concealed with a coating of varnish. The lights on the mantel in the Oval Office also carried microphones, a place where Nixon often took guests, including heads of state, to chat. The microphones were connected to voice-activated tape recorders behind a metal door in the basement.
When the Watergate scandal broke, “I was thinking of the tapes the whole time,” Butterfield recalled. “God, if they only knew. If they only knew. In a way I wanted it to be known. In the deep recesses of my brain, I was eager to tell.” Woodward devotes several chapters to Butterfield’s personal struggle over whether to reveal the secret taping system, which Nixon thought would never be made public.
On the day of Nixon’s departure from the White House, Aug. 9, 1974, Butterfield saw many White House officials and workers weeping in the East Room. “I could not believe that people were crying in that room,” he told Woodward. “It was sad, yes. But justice had prevailed. Inside I was cheering. That’s what I was doing. I was cheering.”
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