Enough with the Nixon nostaglia!

[DerekG]

I appreciate the fact that there is no adolation whatsoever for Richard Nixon on the DU--and yet I hear some who admit to having a begrudged respect for him ("unlike Shrub, Nixon came from poverty", "unlike the neocons, Nixon loved his country", "Nixon was a hell of a lot smarter than Reagan or Bush", "Nixon's practically liberal compared to today's Republicans").

Nixon wasn't a liberal by any standards--his toleration for the Great Society and Civil Rights laws was due to him being held in cultural check.

Nixon didn't end the Vietnam War--he prolonged it through sabotaging the Paris Peace Talks in '68. Had not the anti-war advocates, whistleblowers, and the Watergate scandal itself loomed on his presidency, Nixon's atrocities in Southeast Asia would have gone on for far longer.


Please read the following, a conversation between Nixon and Kissinger in 1972, which I found reprinted in Daniel Ellsberg's book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers:


President: How many did we kill in Laos?
Ziegler: Maybe ten thousand--fifteen?
Kissinger: In the Laotian thing, we killed about ten, fifteen....
President: See, the attack in the North that we have in mind....power plants, whatever's left--POL , the docks....And, I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?
Kissinger: About two hundred thousand people.
President: No, no, no....I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that, Henry?
Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
President: The nuclear bomb, does that bother you?....I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes.


Nixon was just as monstrous as our current leader; in fact, Chimpy has a long way to go to equal Tricky Dick's body count (although I have a horrible feeling that he'll try, nonetheless).

[Parche]

1. nixon

And the blatantly ignorant henry kissinger are both pure
evil, but gw bush and dickhead cheney take the cake, they are
EVILER!!!!

[joeyslither]

3. Eviler?

Proper English usage is more Evil

[maha]

5. I dunno

I kinda like "eviler."

[DerekG]

4. Ignorant may not be the appopriate word...

He was very confident and unwavering in his practice of geopolitics--the human lives destroyed from said policy were just statistics to him. Positively Machiavellian.

[MarianJack]

2. Choosing...

...between chimp and tricky dickie is like choosing between getting shot or hung!

[VolcanoJen]

6. He Was A Crook.

Following Nixon's death, and after watching, disgusted, as leaders of this nation lined up to mourn his passing and to praise him for being a great American, I was relieved to open up my Rolling Stone one day and read this excellent essay from Hunter S. Thompson.

I think it puts it all in perspective.

He Was A Crook

Excerpt:

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

[Bridget Burke]

7. HST always puts it into perspective....

From the linked article:

"Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together."

But the current crew does, almost, make one nostalgic for Tricky Prickears.

[Pastiche423]

8. clark voted for Nixon

Then went on to vote for Reagan twice.

[VolcanoJen]

9. I voted for Reagan once.

And I'm not about to start hating myself, Pastiche. My father continues to vote Republican, and I love him, and think he's a great dad, too.

[Rowdyboy]

10. I think about half of us here have

voted Republican in the past. Yes, I realize none of us are running for president. And no, I don't care who Clark voted for or what he said at a Republican fundfraiser. I've read it all, several times.

I don't care. I want to beat Bush. Clark is a liberal Democrat who can beat Bush.

[Pastiche423]

11. It is not a matter of hating anyone

But I must say, I am not surprised that you do not understand the importance of clark's voting history.