3 June 2005
Stephen T. Banko
Pat Buchanan, Chickenhawk
There is something about the Vietnam War that draws chicken hawks like moths to a flame. They like to appropriate the “lessons of the war” and the patriotism that they celebrate but didn’t have the courage to demonstrate. Patrick Buchanan is a great case in point.He appeared on the June 1 "Today Show" to pillory Mark Felt for having the audacity to snitch on Richard Nixon, Watergate, and the entire ethical sewer that was the Nixon presidency. That should come as no surprise, of course, because Buchanan was part and parcel of the flotsam floating in that sewer. That he should take issue with anyone trying to tell the truth about the moral bankruptcy of that Administration and the thieves, liars and cheats who populated shouldn’t shock anyone. After all, anyone who called on reporters during the Iran-Contra affair “to be Americans first and reporters second” isn’t going to let a little thing like the truth get in the way of his harangue.
Buchanan fancies himself to be a moral authority on the Vietnam War despite the fact that he has never served a day in the military, much less in combat. His lack of service, however, has never stopped him from questioning or challenging the patriotism of anyone else who didn’t serve. When questioned about this apparent contradiction, Buchanan has said that he was rejected by his draft board because he had Reiter’s Syndrome. Reiter’s is a form arthritis usually caused by chlamydia, a venereal disease. (So it is safe to assume that the bombastic Buchanan is actually more a lover than a fighter.)
I guess his embrace of the theory, if not the reality of the Vietnam War, led Buchanan to make this vacuous statement on national television: “The lives of the 58,000 men who died in Vietnam and whose lives were poured down the sewer are on the conscience of Mark Felt.”
Even for a Nixon sycophant like Buchanan, that’s beyond the pall. In his selective prosecution of the failures of Vietnam, Buchanan has conveniently ignored Nixon’s prolonging of the war for his own political gain. How many Americans can we assume died in 1968 – the bloodiest year of the war – when Nixon worked back channels to Nguyen Van Thieu telling him to stay away from the Paris peace negotiations? Nixon’s objective was to prevent Democrats from taking credit for ending the war before the presidential election that year. Nixon used Gen. Claire Chennault’s widow, Anna Chan Chennault to contact the South Vietnamese president and give him assurances that he needn’t bargain with the communists. Nixon, Thieu was told, was committed to winning the war for the south, not appeasing the communists. To his detriment, Thieu believed Nixon and resisted attempts to get him to Paris. Soon after getting elected, Nixon stuck it to Thieu by revealing Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war was nothing more than Vietnamization of the fighting.
The History Channel did a long expose about Nixon and his successful efforts to torpedo the Paris peace talks. That program also theorized that the Watergate burglary was carried out to see if the Democrats knew about Nixon’s subterfuge and if they planned to expose it.
So Buchanan can rail all he wants against Mark Felt and try to pin the ignominy of Vietnam on him but in the end it was Buchanan’s patron, Richard Nixon, who was guilty of treason by working to undermine the Paris Accords for his political advantage.
Do I sound embittered at this? You bet I am. I shed a lot of blood in Vietnam that year but my loss was infinitesimal in comparison to what WE lost. Nixon, Buchanan and company lied and we bled and died.George Santayana once said “the truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who loved it.” Patrick Buchanan remains bound by the hatred and the bias and prejudice that have rendered him more a whine than a voice.
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.