More tapes from Richard Nixon were released to the public and liberals immediately pounced. We are once again being reminded of the evil Tricky Dicky. But the reality is that these tapes show something very different. The whole Watergate thing was a pathetic joke. Some clowns, loosely connected with Nixon’s re-election campaign tried to plant wire taps at the Democratic National Committee. To quote Hillary Clinton: “what differences does it make?” They got caught. It was an idiotic plan which involved high risk for little or no reward.
What struck me was how minor the Watergate incident was in the scheme of things. Suppose someone from Barack Obama’s campaign had got caught planting wiretaps in the Republican National Committee headquarters. No one in the main stream media would bother to investigate. If a House Republican committee dared ask questions about it the liberal media would howl with scorn and indignation. It would probably be labeled as another racist attack.
It should have ended there. The real story of Watergate is not the third rate unsuccessful burglary, it is the malicious prosecution of a President by partisan political opponents. In the end, Nixon became even more paranoid and started viewing the main stream media and liberal democrats as enemies. He was right about that. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t actually out to get you. It is no surprise that Richard Nixon, who was under seige, developed a seige mentality. Nixon brought about his own demise, but in some ways this is similar to an individual who is bulled into committing suicide. Yes, the person who committs suicide is primarily to blame, but at least part of the blame belongs to those who pushed that person to the brink.
In 1968, I was a crewmember flying combat missions in South East Asia. It was a very bad year. There were wide spread protests and the President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson seemed determined to lose the war he personally started by lying to the American people. When Richard Nixon was elected it was like a breath of fresh air. He immediately restored a sense of purpose and he miraculously managed to keep his promise of “peace with honor.” The United States won that war. When Nixon ordered B52 raides over North Vietnam they folded like a cheap umbrella. They signed a peace treaty and sent our POWs home. I don’t believe the North Vietnamese would have ever risked violating that treaty with Richard Nixon still in the Oval Office. If Richard Nixon had remained in office, South Vietnam today might look like South Korea and 3 million Cambodians might still be alive.
The liberal left with the wild support from the main stream media was successful in destroying Richard Nixon. He contributed greatly to his own demise. But in the end, they removed one of the most effective President’s in our nation’s history. Even liberals are astonished by his real accomplishments. The removal of Richard Nixon from office, resulted in a humiliating defeat in Vietnam. The Democratic congress cut off all funds and blocked every attempt by Gerald Ford to aid South Vietnam. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. In doing so, they threw the sacrifices made by so many to achieve that victory on the scrap heat of history.
God Bless the memory of Richard Nixon. For me he is and always will be the man who brought me home.
TDM
Note:
Just in case you want to check out the “facts” about this, following is a link to the actual Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon:
http://classes.lls.edu/archive/manheimk/371d1/nixonarticles.html
Compare this to what other Presidents have done.
A final note: Democrats know that the Watergate Burglary and the cover-up of that burglary failed to reach the level necessary to justify the impeachement of a President. So they are focused primarily on the so-called enemies list and the absuse of power. What actually happenned is that John Dean brought a list of 200 Democrats he thought worthy of special attention to the IRS. Treasury Secretary George Schultz basically laughed at him, told his staff to ignore the request and locked the list up in a safe. There is no evidence that a single Democrat was actually targeted by the IRS because of Richard Nixon.
On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that the Obama administration did exactly that. The following story in the Weekly Standard provides the details:
In August of 2010, Austian Goolsbee, who was serving as economic advisor to President obama, told reporters that Koch industries doesn’t pay corporate income taxes. President Obama himself was publicly demonizing Charles and David Koch, the owners of Koch Industries for giving money to Tea Party groups. Mark Holden, an attorney for Koch Industries, disputed that claim and asked him if someone in the Obama administraiton had looked at the Koch Brothers tax return.
Just recently IRS Inspector General J. Russell George said in a letter to Republican Sentaor Grassely that his office found four cases where confidential tax records of political donors or candidates for office since 2006, and at least one case of “willful unauthorized access” since 2006. He still refused to identify the people who were targeted:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/15/feds-admit-improper-scrutiny-candidate-donor-tax-r/
So far, no one in the main stream media seems overly concerned.
When you do, I am going to save it for future reference.
If you haven’t done it already (I am late to your blog), I wish you would post your personal knowledge of the Tet Offensive.
I will definitely do an article about the Tet offensive later. The main stream media reporting on the Tet offensive was outrageously inaccurate.