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Show u I? JL The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, April 28, 1985 Kissinger: Divided America, Watergate Undermined U.S. in Vietnam Continued Prom A-- l of legislation becomes the primary thing. But then there were two spectators to what was going on in Washington. One was the Squth Vietnamese and, of course, the other was the North Vietnamese. In the memoirs by the former North Vietnamese chief of staff he has what he calls verbatim accounts of some of their discussions he says Hanoi concluded that the Americans absolutely could not and would not do anything, so they decided to attack another provincial capital, this one in the central highlands. That was in March. For their part, the South Vietnamese decided that they should hunker down to get through our 1976 elections. Now, the South Vietnamese had made many mistakes. The organization of their military was not well suited to crises because all of these divisions had their families with them, so there was no tactical flexibility. They were very good when they were defending their dependents. But if you moved them to another area, they became very poor because they wanted to get home. This was a terrible problem because the frontier was very long. The South Vietnamese army was always stretched out, while the North Vietnamese could concentrate at the point of attack. South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu attempted to solve this problem by withdrawing from the central highlands and setting up a rtiore defensible line. In theory, this may have been a good way to get through the dry season. But it did not take into account that the South Vietnamese had no sense of logistics at all, specifically how to move two divisions from the central highlands over back roads with their dependents. So a horrendous traffic jam de veloped. In the end, all the units in the central highlands disintegrated. From their own accounts, all the North Vietnamese Intended to do in 1975 was to improve their position for a big offensive in 76. But when the central highlands collapsed and then Danang fell they decided to throw the dice and literally sent their entire army into the south. The rout was on. At that point, I was in the Middle East negotiating the second disengagement agreement and on the way back from there I was told that Quang Tri, which is the northern provincial capital, had fallen. Then I knew we were in deep trouble. By late March, I knew Vietnam was lost. On April 1, 1 told the president that we had to begin planning evacuation. Since the Congress had cut off aid to Cambodia, it was simply a question of time until that collapsed as well. The problem, as I saw it, was how to get through this period in a manner most compatible with American interests and with saving the and maximum number of lives of those who had relied on us. That started another horrendous debate within our country and within our government with the Congress, with the media, to some extent with our allies. Entirely Different Now, in 1975, the problem was entirely different from the original question of supporting South Vietnam while, at the same time, seeking an honorable conclusion to the war. When I made a formal recommendation to President Ford that we should begin thinking of evacuation, we knew Vietnam and Cambodia were going to fall. Such dominoes as were going to fall were going to fall. But for President Ford, myself and Brent Scowcroft, the problem was whether the United States should accelerate self-respe- this process and In the last moment stab its allies in the back or whether we should try to hang on as long as possible to save as many of our friends as possible. Perhaps we could delay the process long enough to get a transition period that was hurpane. It was essentially out of our control. Anybody could see the rate of the advance of the North Vietnamese. There was the additional consideration that if we took the advice of assosome of our Washington-baseas of the well as ciates, Congress and the media, just to pack up and bug out, there was a great risk that the South Vietnamese army, which was still strong around Saigon, might turn on us and we would be accused of having betrayed them, and that far from getting people out we might end this whole thing in a horrible debacle in which we would have to fight our former allies. Withdraw Americans The only means we had to achieve that objective was to stage the withdrawal of some 20,000 Americans over a sufficient time to keep matters calm and to take out a massive number of our friends with us. The key players, as I remember it, were as follows: the Defense Department with the exception of Deputy Defense Secretary William C. Clements wanted to get out as quickly as possible and, in fact, they were flying empty airplanes in and out of Saigon in order to make clear that if any American was left behind it was my fault, or Fords fault, or at any rate not their fault; the ambassador in Saigon Graham Martin, who had lost a son in Vietnam, wanted to stay in as long as possible and in fact sent in reports which were probably d c. The ambassador in Cambodia took Oklahomans to Vote on Legalizing Liquor by the Drink in Barrooms By Ron Jenkins Associated Press Writer OKLAHOMA CITY - In a state that did not repeal Prohibition until 1959, booze, bottles and barrooms are still a tricky political question. Voters in the states 29 most populous counties go to the polls Tuesday to decide if they want to permit bar sales of liquor by the drink. Approval would end a ban on drink sales that was ignored in many areas of Oklahoma under a system that became known as liquor by the wink. Oklahoma will be dry as long as the voters can stagger to the polls, was the late humorist Will Rogers comment about his home states voting habits on liquor questions. Voters can choose between liquor by the drink, which is opposed by church groups and supported by chambers of commerce and business groups, or a system allowing public bottle drinking only in clubs. Counties that turn down liquor by the drink will automatically approve bottle clubs, where a patron pays for an entire bottle and the rules will be L.A. Jurors OK $3 Million For Victim of Loan Scam - An LOS ANGELES (UPI) man whose mortgage-fre- e home was threatened with foreclo- sure because someone borrowed money against it in his name will receive nearly $3 million, most of it for distress he suffered. A jury decided Friday that Carl Rookhuizen, a retired handyman who paid $62,000 cash for the home in 1969, should get the money from Aames Home Loan, the bulk of it in punitive damages due to distress caused the homeowner. Superior Court Judge Max Deutch will rule formally on the jury's unanimous decision next month. Aames attorneys said they will appeal. This was a guy who always paid cash for everything, never owned a credit card, never took out a loan," said Rookhuizens attorney, Lawrence Grassini. Talk about emotional distress! Grassini said a man used Rookhuizens name in 1982 to borrow $50,000 on Rockhuizens North Hollywood home, by then worth $150,000, while the homeowner was recuperating in Montana. The attorney said the loan broker, who pocketed a $9,000 commission on the transaction, made no attempt to actually owned the house. The borrower, who has never been found or charged with a crime, ab- sconded with the $41,000, Grassini said. Aames began foreclosure proceedings after no payments were made on the loan. The lawyer said burglars took silverware and furniture from the house during the foreclosure period, which was untimately headed off by Grassini. My client thought all along they were trying to steal his house out from under him, Grassini said. Now he is happy, because the verdict means that nobody else will have to go through what he did." y Aames maintained during the trial it had acted reasonably and legally in granting the loan and initiating foreclosure. six-da- For us Ford, Scowcroft and myself this was not a question of high geopolitics at this point. For us it was a question of saving lives and saving American and not leaving Indochina with the disgrace that once a defeat had been inflicted all we would think of is ourselves. It was perhaps the saddest period of my governmental service. self-respe- Reduce Number Finally, we gave the order to reduce the number of Americans in Saigon to what could be evacuated in one days airlift and to stay there with that as a calculated, justifiable risk. In this manner we also1 saved some 150,000 Vietnamese, of which Im very proud, without losing any Americans. But had any Americans been lost, Ford, Scowcroft and I would have been the villains. Q: How about Nicaragua and this problem of political divisions within government? A: On Nicaragua, we are in danger of repeating the same sort of domestic debate. We got down to an administration request which was hard to reconcile with a definition of vital interests. How can something be of vital interest and be only worth $14 million? And then the Congress was saying you must make a compromise. You can have aid for the guerrillas. What is the meaning of that? Who is going to fight for our vital interests? Either its not a vital interest or its worth more than $14 million, or its worth lethal equipment. I dont want to enter into the merits of that dispute in this interview, but the shape of the debate is getting very similar to Vietnam. A fixed philosophical position is attached to some symbolic grant like the $300 million for Vietnam or the $14 million for Nicaragua. In each case, the symbolism of the cutoff is likely to be more important than even the substance. Cant Change You have written on this quesQ. tion. Can a pluralistic society, with the leaks, the divisions, the strongly held moral convictions added to strongly held political positions, conduct foreign policy on a rational basis? A. The answer is contradictory. As far as America is concerned, in the non-leth- al last past 15 years it hasn't. We cant change our political system; we have to be true to ourselves, and there is no alternative for America to a pluralistic system. It is also true that in the last 15 to 20 years, we have not been conducting a serious foreign policy on a pluralistic basis, at least on some issues, because the divisions have become so great. People always talk about compromise, but it isnt compromise you need in the design of foreign policy, it is a sense of nuance, a sense of coherence over a long period of time. If you have totally incompatible positions and you compromise between them, youre going to wind up with the worst of all possible worlds and a sort of a fitful approach to policy as shown by what Ive told you so that you cant even determine who was right or wrong in purely tactical decisions. You cant say you have a foreign policy when only the president, the secretary of state and the security adviser are for it, together with the deputy secretary of defense, while everyone else is opposing it. So Im not attaching blame, Im describing a condition. But if this continues another 20 years, we are bound to suffer a huge erosion of our position. The solution to that is not to have some sort of dictatorial management of our foreign policy. The solution is to try to find some bipartisan consensus again, but thats much easier said than done. Domestic Disarray Q. Did Vietnam lead to the kind of domestic disarray that makes foreign policy so hard to conduct, or did it just intensify trends that were already there? A. That's a very good question. I think that even without Vietnam we would have had to reconsider the foreign policy of the postwar period, which was really based on an atomic monopoly and on a huge economic superiority over the rest of the world. So in the late 60s and early 70s, we would have had to rethink those premises, and there were already symptoms of that when the Berlin Wall went up. In retrospect, I would argue that the Kennedy period was not the beginning of a new era, but the last flowering of an old era. Or maybe Kennedy could have in his second term led the transition, well never know this. In fact one could argue that Vietnam has delayed the adaptation to the new circumstance by confusing the debate and focusing it on one corner of the globe, by polarizing our country and in fact destroying the political center; in that sense, Vietnam was a symptom and not a cause of reconsideration. . Q: Defense Secretary EUspftr W Weinberger seems to have taken Coir Harry Summers book about Vietnam to mean that you can't ever involve yourself in a military action unless you have full support of the Afnerlcan public. A lesson from Vietnam appat-- ' ently. Is that valid? members ipay drink only from their own bottles. The law even prohibits serving married couples from the same bottle. Members must buy $25 annual membership cards, or $3 cards valid for 72 hours, for each place where they want to drink. The money, plus $1 on each bottle, will go to the state as a tax. Three state questions also are on includthe special election ballot ing one designed to ease a state budget crunch by revising tax estimating formulas. , ' A: A president is elected in a wfty to " take care of the future of the people and the people will not forgive hin) for disasters, even if the disasters correspond to their own fishes. Aftef all, Chamberlain had 90 percedt bf the people with him at the time of Munich and 18 months later Munich became an epithet. So what do you do when a president and his closest visers are deeply convinced Ithat something is in the overwhelming navtional interest and they cant carr$; the Congress or the media with tlenrl l It creates a terrible problem fot fheiir; conscience if theyre serious peopt6 This is one fundamental protflem , Now to go to your question; ,4What we absolutely need ia sortje kind of consensus of what 4s a vital . interest. If an interest is vital, we have to be able and willing to defend . it. We have to be willing to face the Z fact that the challenge is almost cer-- ; to be ambiguous and ambiguous in this sense: if you could prove, that ! ; the danger to us is overwhelming, ev-- , erybody would agree, but by the time I that the danger is overwhelming in the modern period it is too late tQ dp something about it. This is in fftet ft- - ; change between the 50s and 60s ajdy the 70s. In the 50s and 60s, we wbt$v so preponderant that we could Now we are likely to face ambigqbiis situations. But if we commit ourselvei wtv must prevail. You cannot fight a wairA-fo- r a stalemate; you can only fight war for a victory and then you eftn be) generous in the settlements. Yoiwnay be able to make a compromise if you are on the way to victory. But if yoir proclaim stalemate as an objective, youre likely to lose or at any rate get into so protracted a conflict that the public will not sustain it. What we must not do is to slip into a military engagement thinking that it is only a very limited thing to fQc one short-terproblem and theh escalate it to rescue the previous commitment and then escalate it again to rescue the previous commitment because then we are on a treadmill t6 nowhere. I think that Weinberger is stating it too simply, too mechanically. The way he states it were going to be pushed back into fortress America. -- - - -- ' (c) 1985, Los Angeles Times Syndicate A CLOSET TO MAKE A MOTHER PROUD. PRICED TO FIT YOUR BUDGET CALL NOW anti-liqu- A CLOSET DESIGNED 9L2-637- 9 JUST TOR YOU AND YOUR Tuesdays vote follows approval of a ballot question last September asking voters if they wanted to see county option votes on liquor availability. Among the counties voting Tuesday are Oklahoma County and Tulsa County, seats of the states two largest cities. 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