Nuke 'em all

WASHINGTON - President Nixon, in his first year in office and eager to end an unpopular war that killed tens of thousands of U.S. troops, considered using nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese, recently declassified documents show.

By mid-1969, Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger had settled on a strategy using international diplomacy with threats of force against the communists ruling the north in an attempt to get them to buckle, according to an analysis of the papers by the National Security Archive. The private research group is headquartered at George Washington University.

Kissinger and his staff began developing contingency military plans under the code name of "Duck Hook." He also created a committee within the National Security Council to evaluate secret plans prepared by Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington and military planners in Saigon.

A pair of declassified documents raised the question of nuclear weapons use in connection with the military operation against the north, which was fighting to reunite with the democratic south, according to the archive.
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But Nixon abandoned Duck Hook shortly after Oct. 2. Both his secretaries of Defense and State, Melvin Laird and William Rogers, opposed the plan. Nixon apparently also began to doubt whether he could sustain public support for the three- to six-month period the plan might require. He also concluded that his military threats against the North Vietnamese had no effect.

It's not that big of a deal that Nixon considered nuking North Vietnam. The military should, and probably does, create plans for every conceivable scenario. I'm sure there are very detailed plans for nuking Iran and Syria right now. The question is, how unhinged is the guy making the decisions, and do we really want to leave that up to one person?

Interesting though that Nixon concluded that threats had no effect. Now, move that forward 40 years - do they have an effect now? Iran and North Korea don't seem too put off.

Look at Vietnam today. Is it a utopian ideal? Hell no.. there's still some god awful shit that goes on in Vietnam, but are they making progress? Hell yes. Vietnam held no more threat to the United States then Iraq did when we invaded there as well. Just as the native culture of Vietnam has, and will continue, to sort out their own society, so would have Iraq. So will Iraq, as what "we" do in Iraq will have very little influence in the eventual outcome.

The moral of the story is - in all things - mind your own fucking business.