CHRISTMAS LESSONS FROM HANOI
MONDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2012 AT 6:41PM
Today’s peaceful Hanoi, alight with Christmas ornaments, was the scene of a decisive battle forty years ago this week, one which the Pentagon prefers to forget. I will be there this week to take part in the restoration of memory and reflect on how wars end.
During the fall of 1972, Jane Fonda and I travelled with the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC) to one hundred cities campaigning for peace in Vietnam and the election of Sen. George McGovern. Fearing the peace movement, a paranoid Richard Nixon instructed Henry Kissinger to float the idea in late October that peace was “at hand.” Nixon won in a landslide, but peace talks