We would begin with a tribute to Mr. McNamara for his initiative to arrange for the collection and preservation of these records documenting our Vietnam involvement for the convenience of historians and scholars and future decision-makers. So we are also grateful to the Nixon administration for at least being good enough to allow this series to run for three days before deciding that the installments as yet unpublished somehow endangered national security in a way which the three installments already published apparently did not. Why the government moved on Tuesday, instead of, let us say, late Saturday night when the first edition became available, is, well, puzzling. But there is plenty to chew on as it is and there are more than enough lessons to study and absorb. But not in such incredibly damning form, not with such irrefutable documentation.
Asian boys ought to fight for themselves.
This is Political Biz, you could say, but it doesn't make it any less sorry a performance. And yet the deceit is only a part of it because a policy of calculated deception flows quite logically from the larger strategy of a limited war, fought for limited objectives, with limited means. It all began, the document tell us, with a recognition in early 1964 that the South Vietnamese were too weak to bargain for a settlement. So the name of the game was to even up the odds, to redress the balance of force to widen the war in the name of peace because only by widening the war could you create the condition that would lead both sides to accept a settlement. So instead we assembled huge stacks of chips and played them a few at a time in hopes that the North Vietnamese, instead of raising back, would simply call, by suing for peace.