ManicDDaily

Another Time a GOP Politico Directly Contacted a Foreign Government
Re Treaty Negotiations

In 1968, campaigning for president through rubber jowls
Richard Nixon declared he had a secret plan
to win the war,
a secret plan that was sure, he said,
to succeed.

If it was such a great plan,
I thought (in the shadow of my long
hair, school locker, and the lottery for
my older brother), why
didn’t he tell someone, stop
the killing right
away.

What I didn’t get
was that Nixon’s operative word was “win”
(not end),
and that it wasn’t the war
he had a secret plan for, but
the election.

Though he did tell someone
a plan–South Vietnamese
government officials–through a dusky-bosomed
agent (little flower dragon lady), and in his own meeting with them too,
urging absence
from the Paris peace talks, writing
“we are going to win” (meaning again,
the election), promising
more and better
props–

But the war, after Nixon’s election,
slogged on for seven years,
cost twenty thousand more
U.S. lives–
I don’t even know
how many more
Vietnamese,
or the tally
in spirit, limb,
napalm,
skin,
cultivable
land.

Only that I acknowledge freely that it is my ignorance
that does not know these numbers–they are
no secret–

**************************************

A poem of sorts–I’m sorry–in my disgust at all kinds of things right now it is hard to write very poetically–for With Real Toads Tuesday Open Platform.

Further information on Nixon and the “Chennault Affair,” which supposedly led to Nixon’s obsession with the Pentagon Papers (detailing classified information about the U.S. war in Vietnam, with arranging a break-in force to get documents from the Brookings Institution related to LBJ’s bombing halt in 1968 that Nixon thought included information concerning his pre-election interference with the peace process, and which led to the creation of “Plumbers” unit, and eventually the Watergate break-in, can be found in a variety of places.  Here are two:

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/146770

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-08-15/news/bal-a-darker-cloud-falls-over-nixon-commentary-20140814_1_nixon-tapes-the-nixon-watergate

The reference to lottery is to the draft lottery. 

Also, this made me think of pitching my book Nice, which takes place in 1968, is a really cool book–especially for anyone interested in this era–, and can be gotten in paper copy cheaply, or on kindle for 99 cents.