75-12-B4
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M.I.A.
TranscriptThe North Vietnamese signed an agreement to help us locate our missing and action servicemen. But now there's a catch to the deal. I'll be right back. In 1967 before he was elected president, Richard Nixon suggested in a radio interview that the United States should go all out to crush North Vietnam and then once the security of South Vietnam had been established, help rebuild the North. Now this is just what the U.S. did in World War II, crush the enemy then help rebuild his lands within the framework of Democracy. This might have worked in Vietnam in 1967. But by 1969 when Nixon took office, public opinion in America was so strongly for peace at almost any price, that Nixon felt he couldn't take the military steps necessary to provide a total victory. So he settled eventually for a draw which someone once said is like kissing your sister. A draw couched in such terms as peace with honor, but depended on a strong president to make it last preferably with Congress active support, but at least without its active opposition. As we all know things turned out far differently. There are many reasons to decry the current situation and the American weaknesses that led to it, not the least of these is that the fall of South Vietnam diminished our hopes of ever accounting for the nearly twelve hundred Americans still listed as missing in action. There's little doubt in most minds that most of these men are dead, but even so, their families have a right to know. a right to end the uncertainty that has clouded their lives for years. Yet our government continues its do-nothing approach to the problem, even though the Paris Accords of 1973 are very clear. They read, "the parties shall help each other to get information about those military personnel and foreign civilians of the parties missing in action to determine the location and to take care of the graves of the dead so as to facilitate the exhumation and repatriation of the remains and to take any such other measures as may be required to get information about those still considered missing in action." Since then, the Communists not surprisingly have attached a quid pro quo to any help they might render in the search for our missing men. In March, before South Vietnam fell, their help hinged on an end to us aid to south Vietnam. After the fall they came up with a new angle. Their help now depends on the U.S. paying to rebuild North and South Vietnam. Well here's one American who isn't willing to agree to that kind of deal. It's one thing for a victorious America generous in victory to help rebuild a defeated enemy and thereby strengthen the cause of peace. It's another thing entirely to pay blackmail to a nation which still counts itself as our enemy and whose word, as we have learned time and again, cannot be trusted. Instead every legitimate pressure that can be brought on the North Vietnamese to live up to the Paris Accords must be brought. If we've learned nothing else from the Vietnam debacle, we should have learned that the Communists only understand strength and always take advantage of weakness. let us not show them any more weakness and indecision than we already have. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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