Quote:
Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!
Richard Nixon faced the same dilemma presiding over the lost Vietnam War. In 1971, he wanted to withdraw U.S. forces from South Vietnam until Henry Kissinger reminded him that the place would likely fall apart in 1972, the year Nixon was up for reelection. To avoid this scenario, Nixon unconscionably delayed a peace settlement until 1973, thus trading more wasted American lives for his reelection.
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I was there at the time, and we joked about it. "He said if we elected him he would get us out of Vietnam. Then he said if we re-elected him he would get us out of Vietnam. Sounds like a deal."
Or, at the risk of crossing the line that I hate crossing, we had another joke back then: "Why switch Dicks in the middle of a screw? Vote for Nixon '72!"
As for Obama, I don't know. We do have the same problem we had then, though. The "War" is far and away. On the one hand we see it on television all the time, which makes it closer than past wars, but on the other it's slightly unreal in the sense that the countries involved aren't changing their entire national focus like they did in the World Wars. If you've lost a loved one it's very close to home. If not, it's not quite real.