Why is Trump still bombing Iran? Nixon’s Vietnam record offers a clue | Kenneth Roth

Why is Trump still bombing Iran? Nixon’s Vietnam record offers a clue Kenneth Roth Richard Nixon’s strategy was about shielding his own reputation. Now Trump needs a face-saving exit of his own D onald Trump’s struggle to justify continuing his war with Iran reminds me of Richard Nixon’s quest for “peace with honor” in Vietnam. Nixon caused years of death and suffering in pursuit of his elusive goal. How much more devastation will Trump inflict before he cuts his losses and calls off this pointless conflict? Nixon first called for “an honorable end” to the war in his acceptance speech at the 1968 Republican national convention. It became a centerpiece of his presidential campaign and his presidency. As it became clear that the South Vietnamese government could not survive US withdrawal from the war, Nixon sought to defend Washington’s credibility, cynically understood as a decent interval between America’s departure and Saigon’s collapse. To secure that two-year interval – from the Paris peace accords of January 1973 to the fall of Saigon in April 1975 – Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, subjected the people of Vietnam to four years of bombardment, which they extended to neighboring Cambodia and Laos. More than 20,000 American soldiers died during that period. The Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian death toll was many times higher . Which brings us to Trump. Why is he continuing to bomb Iran ? Not to destroy Iran’s long-range missiles. The White House says : “Iran’s ballistic missile capacity is functionally destroyed,” and its missile launch rate has declined dramatically. Not to curtail Iran’s nuclear program. That was “ obliterated ” last June, according to Trump, after 12 days of US and Israeli bombing. Iran is believed still to have 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium buried under nuclear sites at Isfahan and Natanz, but few think Trump would undertake the dangerous mission of putting troops on the ground to retrieve it. Not for regime...