Vietnam, Nixon, and the McGovern Candidacy

Abstract

If one were writing about Vietnam for a readership which, like the great majority of Americans, gets most of its information from the commercial press and airwaves, one would have to analyze in detail the overall picture which has been conveyed, or at any rate has sought to be conveyed, during the spring and summer months of 1972. That picture is of a peace-loving South Vietnam, struggling to get on its military and economic feet with generous U.S. assistance, being brutally invaded across an established international border by an enormous Soviet-and Chinese-supplied war machine directed by the evil Communist genius of General Giap. The manifest purpose of this naked aggression has been to overrun South Vietnam, occupy its main cities and its capital, expel (if not massacre) remaining American forces, ending with the total conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam and the liquidation of all patriots who had fought to protect South Vietnam's independence.

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