50 Years After Hanoi’s Easter Offensive of 1972, Timely Reflections on America’s ‘Loss of National Will’ in Vietnam

‘The United States has a history of tiring with foreign wars and military commitments, and then accepting withdrawals that in retrospect had bad outcomes,’ one conference participant observed.

Via Wikimedia Commons
Henry Kissinger in 1975. Via Wikimedia Commons

A conference harking back half a century to a climactic time in the Battle of Vietnam conjured bitter memories and intimations of an uncertain future for Americans caught up in global conflicts — whether they like it or not.

Speaker after speaker spoke critically of the “Paris Peace” reached by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in January 1973 after a year of fighting and then talking that had decimated the North Vietnamese but sapped the will of the Americans to win.

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