So Barry Goldwater wanted to nuke Vietnam?

[muh_roads]

The family brought this up tonight so I researched it and found this...

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/post_9.html

google Barry Goldwater with nuke and it makes me wonder why Paul wanted to associate himself with him...or was the media lying about Goldwater?

[UnReconstructed]

no, what you found on goldwater is true. i'm not sure why people were feigning over him.

[brandon]

It's true.

[AuH20]

He wanted to defoliate major infiltration routes with tactical nuclear weapons. Goldwater wanted to end the war quickly as opposed to wasting manpower and resources for another 11 years.

[dr. hfn]

ya, lyndon johnson ran a "daisy" ad ONE time with a nuke exploding on america saying goldwater would get america nuked and start a nuclear war.

[KCIndy]

The family brought this up tonight so I researched it and found this...

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/post_9.html

google Barry Goldwater with nuke and it makes me wonder why Paul wanted to associate himself with him...or was the media lying about Goldwater?

From the above-cited article:

Atomic bombs have been used only once in human history. The United States dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945

I think that makes it *twice* that they were used... can't the editorial writer count?



Okay, nitpicking aside, I certainly would not have agreed with Goldwater's view of using nukes to defoliate the forests concealing the North Vietnamese supply routes.

Unfortunately the alternative the U.S. *did* use was arguably just as bad. Ever hear of Agent Orange? How many people, both among our own soldiers as well as the civilian population, died from that horrible carcinogen?

They only ones to profit - literally - from Agent Orange were.... *ahem* stellar U.S. companies Dow and Monsanto.

I can understand Goldwater's desire to end the war quickly. Sadly, he didn't understand we had no business being there in the first place.

[emazur]

Here's what the History Channel has to say:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-h...rticle&id=1373

Goldwater said that the United States should do whatever it took to support U.S. troops in the war and that if the administration was not prepared to "take the war to North Vietnam," it should withdraw. Although Goldwater discussed the possibility of using low-yield nuclear weapons to defoliate infiltration routes in Vietnam, he never actually advocated the use of nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese.

[LibertyEagle]

I don't know guys. The Commies were taking over country after country and were actively involved in trying to overthrow our own form of government. Goldwater wanted to put an end to it and stop pussyfooting around. But, of course TPTB wanted it to drag out, because it benefited their plans.

Oh, that commercial by Johnson was pure and unadulterated BS.

[emazur]

Just finished a great article in Reason:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28337.html

Goldwater had surely earned his reputation as a gunslinger with his proposal to use tactical nukes to defoliate Vietnam, his repeated calls to give NATO armies the right to use atomic weapons on their own, and his constant refrain that U.S. strategists shouldn't let fear of nuclear war keep them from standing up to the Soviet Union. But, as Perlstein notes, Goldwater in this case was a mere echo of the mainstream foreign policy thinking in the Democratic Party. When it came to the Cold War, the two parties were both unremittingly hawkish. Goldwater's decree that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" was merely the Reader's Digest version of Kennedy's Inaugural Day promise that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

The most white-knuckle act of nuclear brinkmanship in American history was Kennedy's blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis. A close second was his nationally televised 1961 speech in which he bluntly threatened to go to war with the Soviets over Berlin, putting long-range bombers on 15 minutes' alert and warning Americans to start building fallout shelters. Perlstein calls the speech "the most terrifying of the Cold War" and adds: "Later Barry Goldwater would say the same kinds of things during the 1964 presidential campaign, and people would call him a madman."

Perlstein is equally merciless when it comes to Vietnam. Goldwater, he notes, insistently and correctly argued that Kennedy and Johnson had gotten the United States far more deeply involved than anyone realized, that we were sliding into an impossible "defensive war" that neither Congress nor the American public had ever authorized. Johnson replied, straight-faced, with the most notorious lie in the history of American politics: "We are not going to send American boys nine or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." As he spoke, his best and brightest advisors were putting the finishing touches on a deployment plan that would have nearly 200,000 American soldiers in Vietnam within a year.

And here's the commercial if anyone's interested:
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/media/daisyspot/

[muh_roads]

I don't know guys. The Commies were taking over country after country and were actively involved in trying to overthrow our own form of government. Goldwater wanted to put an end to it and stop pussyfooting around. But, of course TPTB wanted it to drag out, because it benefited their plans.

Oh, that commercial by Johnson was pure and unadulterated BS.

I view it the other way around. TPTB need to find enemies to go kill to fund the military industrial complex. Back then it was "commies"...today it is "terrorists".

I thought Vietnam wasn't that big of a deal? We just wanted to get in there and "kick some ass". Using the false gulf of tonkin incident as an excuse?


EDIT: btw thanks emazur for your posts.

[UnReconstructed]

Here's an article by Rothbard where he mentions Goldwater and the New American Right that followed after the death of Taft.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard46.html

[Conza88]

Goldwater = neocon.

If only I hadn't bought his book...

You folks do realise that the Soviet Union would collapse inevitably and that in fact the US was propping it up?

And in terms of war, the Soviet Union was far less hostile than the US - i.e empire.

[Aratus]

in the dispute between douglas macArthur and harry S. truman way back in 1951,
i think good ole "barry AuH2O" was a big Mack person... and not too upset that thah
"big mack" had 50 tactical nukes under his U.N police action command way back then...

[LibertyEagle]

Goldwater = neocon.

If only I hadn't bought his book...

Bull$#@! Conza. Goldwater was almost opposite from a neocon. He however wasn't a wimp and didn't believe in letting a country overthrow our own.

You folks do realise that the Soviet Union would collapse inevitably and that in fact the US was propping it up?

The Russian communists had spies in our country, had infiltrated our government, schools and media, tried an end run around our sovereignty by establishing the League of Nations and when that didn't work, the United Nations. Nah, they were no threat.

Yes, it was being propped up by some frickin' traitors over here and was being used by some to execute their agenda. That doesn't change the fact that the Soviets were actively trying to overthrow our form of government.

And in terms of war, the Soviet Union was far less hostile than the US - i.e empire.

Not back then, we weren't. It may not matter to you, Conza, because you're not an American, but some of us didn't want to become part of the USSR.

[Aratus]

true... LE... tis totally true!
what you done just said!!!

[Pericles]

I think a more accurate view of Goldwater's position re: Vietnam would be (A) don't go there, but (B) if you go there, go all out to win. Anything else is a disservice to the country.

Re: Soviet Union - fact is that the SU was engaged in spreading their form of communism as a matter of policy. After WWII, the US had no nuclear weapons, the Berlin Blockade put the US in a panic and started a rearmament program, and the arms race was on. BTW, who detonated the fist H-bomb? (Hint - it was not the US). The notion that the Cold War was the result of US policy is rubbish.

[Unspun]

Bull$#@! Conza. Goldwater was almost opposite from a neocon. He however wasn't a wimp and didn't believe in letting a country overthrow our own.

I don't entirely agree. While I do think that he is better relative to the neoconservatives we have today, he was indeed a typical Cold War Conservative in most senses of the term. He supported large welfare programs and also fed the military industrial complex machine that continued to feed the fear of communism (or whatever enemy that happens to be timely) that spread throughout the world. This, at least to me, is the definition of neoconservatism, or rather as it was touted by Bill Kristol, "compassionate conservative". He had highly controversial views on many things I can agree with, but many I disagree with. This is not to say he was a bad or evil man, but that he drank the kool-aid for which was being served.

This is not to say I completely agree with Conza. Maybe military posturing was necessary, I don't necessarily believe that people wanted to be under Soviet rule, or communist rule for that matter. However, I do believe a lot of the "Red Scare" was trumped up to such a degree that the general psyche of the American mind was behind it to a far greater degree than is generally healthy.

[LibertyEagle]

He did not support large welfare programs. I call BULL$#@! again. And no, he wasn't a neocon. But, if a country is going to attack our own, we damn sure shouldn't sit on our asses and twiddle our thumbs. The USSR was actively trying to overthrow our form of government. What about that do you guys not understand? Now, if you'd like to discuss whether the USSR was being used by TPTB to enact their agenda, well, that's another issue entirely. Heck, Trotsky was bankrolled by some in our own country. Did you ever read the Reece report? How about the Ford Foundation's Gaither's statement about comfortably merging us with the Soviet Union?

[Aratus]

LE knows that its ronnie reagan who was the total FDR democrat in the tyme and clyme
when barry goldwater sr. was a bona 'fide true' blue cloth coat robert taft republican!!!

[Aratus]

LE... people tend to confuse the early years of barry goldwater's life which are before his 1952 senate run with

the tradecoat party switch "young ronnie reagan" made at about the tyme of those bombastic h.u.a.c hearings!

[krazy kaju]

Anyone with any intellectual honesty and knowledge of American political history could tell you that Goldwater did not want to "nuke" Vietnam in the conventional use of the term, but he only suggested in Congress we use small nuclear "bomblets" instead of agent orange to defoliate the jungle. Goldwater wasn't even entirely sure of the idea himself. These bomblets probably would have been similar to the nuclear "bunker busters" we use today.

[acptulsa]

It doesn't take more than a rudimentary knowledge of Richard Milhous Nixon to understand that Goldwater was the side of the G.O.P. to support back in the day...

[Aratus]

yes, there were "davy crockett" small nukes on roaming missles who had their deployments
and small trolley lines, as well as subs and jets who could shoot off or drop a small nuke that had
less of a footprint than the 1947 era "fatman"--- yes... i remember an old filmstrip that was atoms for peace
that i saw in grade school where someone had the bright idea that the ole panama canal was way too
narrow, and we could use small nukes in nicaragua insted of dynomite. go figure! the techie guys!

[Young Paleocon]

I think a more accurate view of Goldwater's position re: Vietnam would be (A) don't go there, but (B) if you go there, go all out to win. Anything else is a disservice to the country.

Re: Soviet Union - fact is that the SU was engaged in spreading their form of communism as a matter of policy. After WWII, the US had no nuclear weapons, the Berlin Blockade put the US in a panic and started a rearmament program, and the arms race was on. BTW, who detonated the fist H-bomb? (Hint - it was not the US). The notion that the Cold War was the result of US policy is rubbish.

I thought Wilson aided the Reds in the Civil War, and weren't we selling Stalin weapons before we entered the war. Didn't we ally ourselves with Stalin to fight....Hitler... Good choices there. Then FDR, Stalin, and Churchill split up Europe. That might not have been as direct as our intervention in other countries, but that sounds like we weren't necessarily isolated from their assent. And LE on the whole fighting the communists thing, shouldn't we have enough trust in capitalism to know that planned economies will always collapse. To me the cold war didn't seem like a war between superpowers, but rather a war between a country that benefited from the vacuum created by the end of WWII and a paraplegic behemoth. Maybe this analysis seems too naive but in retrospect I think it sums up the situation pretty well.

[Pericles]

I thought Wilson aided the Reds in the Civil War........

The American Expeditionary Force Siberia was commanded by Major General William S. Graves and eventually totaled 7,950 officers and enlisted men. The AEF Siberia included the U.S. Army's 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments, plus large numbers of volunteers from the 13th and 62nd Infantry Regiments along with a few from the 12th Infantry Regiment and was not on the side of the Reds .....

[acptulsa]

The American Expeditionary Force Siberia was commanded by Major General William S. Graves and eventually totaled 7,950 officers and enlisted men. The AEF Siberia included the U.S. Army's 27th and 31st Infantry Regiments, plus large numbers of volunteers from the 13th and 62nd Infantry Regiments along with a few from the 12th Infantry Regiment and was not on the side of the Reds .....

...but of the Whites. That said, Wall St. did some interesting contributions and manipulations at the same time...

[Pericles]

Here's an article by Rothbard where he mentions Goldwater and the New American Right that followed after the death of Taft.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard46.html

Why bother to read Goldwater for yourself when you can have Rothbard and Rockwell think for you. After all, it is not like Goldwater left any legacy of his own behind, is it?

[Pericles]

...but of the Whites. That said, Wall St. did some interesting contributions and manipulations at the same time...

The oders were not to take sides, but he also had orders to evacuate the Czechs, which were fighting the Reds, and his protection of the Czechs caused the Reds to think the US was on the side of the Whites, while the US support of the Whites was almost non existent, other than operating the railway.

[Young Paleocon]

Alright, woops on the Civil War one.

[erowe1]

The family brought this up tonight so I researched it and found this...

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/06/post_9.html

google Barry Goldwater with nuke and it makes me wonder why Paul wanted to associate himself with him...or was the media lying about Goldwater?

Did you really have to google that? I thought if there was one single thing everybody knew about Goldwater, that was the one.

When did Ron Paul ever associate himself with Barry Goldwater? What was the context? Goldwater also said a lot of good things that RP agrees with.