In the essay Nixon’s Flawed Search for Peace by Melvin Small, he criticizes some of Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies. Small had a rather bitter view of Richard Nixon suggesting some interesting points about how his policies and procedures did not follow through in the correct way. When Nixon first came in to office he wanted to end the Vietnam war and bring our troops home. Doing this would be difficult for him because he wanted to portray to the American people that we won the war, even though that would be very hard to do considering you were having more troops being sent home every day. Nixon was “convinced that how we end this war will determine the future of the U.S. in the world.” Small really hits the nail on the head describing how
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Lewis has more of a sympathetic view on how Nixon and his administration handled these events, even saying how Nixon was “quite successful” and blaming the defeat on budgetary pressures and political pressures. What we needed in the office was consistency and we weren’t getting that from the U.S. commanders. We had a replacement come in during the year of 1968. As if this is any excuse as to why Nixon lost the war, Sorely suggest that the advisors lacked this major key of consistency that they desperately needed. “Since Tet in 1968, the tasks confronting the new leadership triumvirate were challenging indeed.” General Creighton W. Abrams is a frequently mentioned person throughout this essay, particularly giving us an idea of his character in the very beginning. From my understanding, Abrams was a very aggressive and power hungry man pursuing the use of heavy weapons in the cities. To side with Sorely, he does make a slightly good argument suggesting how there is obviously more than one person that had to do with the decisions of the policies and other issues that formed the path of the war. The president was not making decisions all by himself, and even if he did propose an idea, things had to be agreed on among congress and so on. Also another thing he mentions to defend Nixon is the fact that South Vietnam’s armed forces had expanded tremendously and also became …show more content…
The reason I don’t like Sorely’s essay is because all I seemed to be reading were three short pages of excuses trying to make me feel bad for how Nixon handled the war. The facts weren’t in Sorely’s essay, and they were definitely present in Small’s essay. The documents that are on the previous pages before the essay seem to support Small over Sorely, for the obvious reasons such as no action being taken, not being honest about what policies he planned on implementing, and no support from Americans. Not all supported Small, such as essay number eight how Nixon describes the Cambodian Incursion, and essay number 6 about Nixon advocating his Vietnamization plan. Overall these documents and essays gave me much more knowledge on both sides of the argument about whether or not Nixon could have produced a better outcome than what had
Lewis has more of a sympathetic view on how Nixon and his administration handled these events, even saying how Nixon was “quite successful” and blaming the defeat on budgetary pressures and political pressures. What we needed in the office was consistency and we weren’t getting that from the U.S. commanders. We had a replacement come in during the year of 1968. As if this is any excuse as to why Nixon lost the war, Sorely suggest that the advisors lacked this major key of consistency that they desperately needed. “Since Tet in 1968, the tasks confronting the new leadership triumvirate were challenging indeed.” General Creighton W. Abrams is a frequently mentioned person throughout this essay, particularly giving us an idea of his character in the very beginning. From my understanding, Abrams was a very aggressive and power hungry man pursuing the use of heavy weapons in the cities. To side with Sorely, he does make a slightly good argument suggesting how there is obviously more than one person that had to do with the decisions of the policies and other issues that formed the path of the war. The president was not making decisions all by himself, and even if he did propose an idea, things had to be agreed on among congress and so on. Also another thing he mentions to defend Nixon is the fact that South Vietnam’s armed forces had expanded tremendously and also became …show more content…
The reason I don’t like Sorely’s essay is because all I seemed to be reading were three short pages of excuses trying to make me feel bad for how Nixon handled the war. The facts weren’t in Sorely’s essay, and they were definitely present in Small’s essay. The documents that are on the previous pages before the essay seem to support Small over Sorely, for the obvious reasons such as no action being taken, not being honest about what policies he planned on implementing, and no support from Americans. Not all supported Small, such as essay number eight how Nixon describes the Cambodian Incursion, and essay number 6 about Nixon advocating his Vietnamization plan. Overall these documents and essays gave me much more knowledge on both sides of the argument about whether or not Nixon could have produced a better outcome than what had