[Peace-discuss] Ending imperial war

[C. G. Estabrook]

Can Obama be forced to do as well as Nixon?

On January 15, 1973, US President Richard Nixon announced the suspension 
of all offensive actions against North Vietnam, to be followed by a 
unilateral withdrawal of all U.S. troops. The Paris Peace Accords on 
"Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam" were signed on January 
27, officially ending direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The 
agreement called for the withdrawal of all U.S. personnel and an 
exchange of prisoners of war. Within South Vietnam, a cease-fire was 
declared (to be overseen by a multi-national, 1,160-man International 
Control Commission force) and both ARVN and PAVN/NLF forces would remain 
in control of the areas they then occupied, effectively partitioning 
South Vietnam.

The signing of the Accords was the main motivation for the awarding of 
the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger and to leading North 
Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. A separate cease-fire had been 
installed in Laos in February. Five days before the signing of the 
agreement in Paris, ex-president Lyndon Johnson died. The first U.S. 
prisoners of war were released by North Vietnam on February 11, and all 
U.S. military personnel were ordered to leave South Vietnam by March 29.

The US war against South Vietnam ended for three principal reasons:

[1] the resistance of the Vietnamese people to invasion and occupation;

[2] the refusal of the American conscript army to continue to fight; and

[3] the revulsion of the US public for the war.

By 1969 about 70% of the US public had come to regard the war as 
"fundamentally wrong and immoral," not "a mistake," largely as a result 
of the impact of student protest on general consciousness. And that mass 
opposition compelled the business community and then the government to 
stop the escalation of the war.


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