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blog roll
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the fox becomes the hound...,
2007-08-23 21:34:25
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we could use just such a plan right about now...,
2007-08-24 22:48:24
when plagiarizing, it is best to steal from obscure sources and abbreviate often:
Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America.
If Indochina falls, Thailand is put in an almost impossible position. The same is true of Malaya. The same is true of Indonesia. If this whole part of South East Asia goes under Communist domination or Communist influence, Japan, who trades and must trade with this area in order to exist must inevitably be oriented towards the Communist regime.
--Vice-president Richard Nixon, speech, December, 1953
You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. ...
We come to the possible sequence of events, the loss of Indochina, of Burma, of Thailand, of the Peninsula, and Indonesia following, now you begin to talk about
areas that no only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through the loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking about millions
and millions of people. ... It turns the so-called island defensive chain of Japan, Formosa, of the Philippines and to the southward; it moves in to threaten Australia and New Zealand.
It takes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn, will have only one place in the world to go--that is, toward the Communist areas in order to live.
So, the possible consequences of the loss are just incalculable to the free world.
--President Eisenhower, April 7, 1954
We must recognize that whenever any country falls under the domination of Communism, the strength of the Free World--and of America--is by that amount weakened and Communism strengthened. If this process, through our neglect or indifference, should proceed unchecked, our continent would be gradually encircled. Our safety depends upon recognition of the fact that the Communist design for such encirclement must be stopped before it gains momentum-before it is again too late to save the peace.
--President Eisenhower, May 21, 1957
Mr. Brinkley: Mr. President, have you had any reason to doubt this so-called "domino theory," that if South VietNam falls, the rest of Southeast Asia will go behind it?
The President: No, I believe it. I believe it. I think that the struggle is close enough. China is so large, looms so high just beyond the frontiers, that if South Viet-Nam went, it would not only give them an improved geographic position for a guerrilla assault on Malaya but would also give the impression that the wave of the future in Southeast Asia was China and the Communists. So I believe it.
--President Kennedy, September 9th, 1963
Vietnam is a nasty place to fight. But there are no neat and tidy battlefields in the struggle for freedom; there is no 'good' place to die. And it is far better to fight in Vietnam - on China's doorstep - than ... on our own frontiers.
--H. W. Baldwin, New York Times Magazine, February 21,1965
There has been much talk in the United States about the so-called "domino theory"the theory that if South Vietnam should fall, its neighbors would topple one after another. And as I pointed out in a speech I recently made in San Antonio, the threat of Communist domination is not a matter of theory for Asians.
--President Johnson, December 4th, 1967
Now I know them are those who say the domino theory is obsolete. They haven't talked to the dominoes. They should talk to the Thais, to the Malaysians, to the Singaporans, to the Indonesians, to the Filipinos, to the Japanese, and the rest. And if the United States leaves Vietnam in a way that we are humiliated or defeated, not simply speaking in what is called jingoistic terms, but in very practical terms, this will be immensely discouraging to the 300 million people from Japan clear around to Thailand in free Asia; and even more important it will be ominously encouraging to the leaders of Communist China and the Soviet Union who are supporting the North Vietnamese. It will encourage them in their expansionist policies in other areas.
--President Nixon, July 1st, 1970
In trying to drum up support for giving more military aid to Cambodia, President Ford revived at Notre Dame University the other day the old "domino theory": If Cambodia falls to the Communists, it may knock over Thailand, and then maybe the Philippines, and so on until the last domino, the United States, is standing alone in a windy world.
--James Reston, the New York Times, March 19, 1975
:: posted by buermann @ 2007-08-24 04:07:38 CST |
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