Bad Men, Bad Wars 0

Ironic, considering that the phrase was, from Day One, nothing but a political ploy of the cheapest kind. In fact, Nixon and Kissinger wanted to get out of Vietnam just as much as the Democrats of the early 1970s — the only difference was they wanted to make sure that they won an election first.

When someone told Kissinger that Nixon could not be re-elected, because of Vietnam, he disputed it and added, according to a memo of a conversation, that “anytime we want to get out of Vietnam we can,” and that “we will get out of Vietnam before the [1972] election.” Nixon wanted to plan the removal of all U.S. troops by the end of 1971, but Kissinger cautioned that, if North Vietnam then de-stabilized Saigon during the following year, events could have an adverse effect on the president’s campaign. According to Haldeman’s diaries, Kissinger advocated a pullout in the fall of 1972, “so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election.” He apparently had nothing to say about the American lives that would be lost by deliberately prolonging the war.

In fact, a lot of American lives (and countless Vietnamese lives) were lost due to that calculated policy. From the beginning of 1969 (20 days before Nixon took office) until the end of the war, another 20,604 Americans gave their lives in a crusade that somehow morphed into a campaign to re-elect the president.