THE 'I'M NOT A CROOK' AND HEINZ CHRONICLES

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	• Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power Robert Dallek Harper Perennial, 2007 - 752 pages average customer review:based on 28 reviews view larger image
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Vietnam vs. Iraq

I'm sick and tied of the constant barrage of Bush bashing that occurs in every available venue. Now it's book reveiws! First of all, any comparison made between Vietnam and Iraq, or Nixon and Bush for that matter, is totally ridiculous. Our involvement in Vietnam lasted 10 years and cost 58,000 American lives. The cost in Iraq, though tragic, has been tiny by comparison. The lesson we did not learn from our failure in Vietnam is obvious. When we bugged out of Vietnam millions were murdered in Vietnam and Cambodia.....many more were displaced as refugees. Leaving the Iraqi people to the tender mercies of Al Qaeda and sectarian monsters such as Al Sadr would be the height of cruelty. If Bush and Nixon have anything in common it hasn't got anything to do with "spying on the American people". That's total hogwash straight from the bowels of moveon.org lunatics. Bush, for his faults, has the ability to see the world as it is. The threats are real, not imaginary, or "cooked" up for political gain. Americans will never live down our failure in Vietnam. It was failure of will. We should never, ever, make that mistake again.

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Great choice

This cd was a great choice for lovers of international relations. It is very informative, and the author emphasizes the importance of the writer's presentation of the facts and issues. Nixon and Kissinger come off as unique characters of history, both favorable and not depending on your own personal bias. I recommend this veyr much to those qho love history, politics, or just want to be entertained by a great story.

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THE 'I'M NOT A CROOK' AND HEINZ CHRONICLES

As with many other reviewers I suspect, we lived through each and every day these two were calling the shots at the national level. They were on the TV screen and in the newsmagazines, neither could filter all the truth from getting through, but they tried. While at the same time being pretty much wary of the other, even having insulting names for the other: 'drunken friend', 'meatball mind', 'madman' in oval office, and worst of all, 'Jew boy'. While treating those who reported to them with little to no respect. What a combo these guys were.

This book brings back many memories, and as one who remembers RN as Vice President, the book also helps to make sense of some of the idiotic things he got himself into then, to such extent that Eisenhower was thinking of dropping RN from his second term ticket. I can vividly recall the mock election we ran in high school prior to the election between Nixon and Kennedy, and Nixon won.

Nixon is of course dead, but Kissinger is very much alive: would be interesting to know what Henry really thinks of this book. Has it indeed caused another kicking and ranting tantrum from him. Or does it mirror fact so accurately that he smiles and says, 'yes, that was exactly the way it was'. Only Henry knows about that, but for certain this book rings true for me, who lived each and every day these two were in office, joined at the waist, locked in a personal power struggle. The real tragedy for HK was due to his birth in Germany he could never be elected president, and you know that that was what he desired more than almost anything.

One interesting aspect from real life was that in many ways Henry Kissinger eclipsed RN on a routine basis as far as media coverage, expecially in magazines such as Harpers, and where the weekly newsmagazines were concerned. As Dallek points out Nixon had been around politics for 40 years by time he reached the presidency yet no one really knew him. While Henry, fairly unknown waiting in the wings all those years, once he entered the Nixon White House saw his 'star' rise rapidly, and seemed at times to overshadow RN. Little wonder Nixon had paranoia where HK was concerned. Conversely, second place held little appeal to HK.

Again, as one who lived through these years as a Vietnam era veteran (1961-1967, USN/USMC), I recommend the book, especially concerning these two men tampering with Viet Nam and many lives for their own gain, and hope it holds wide appeal.

One needs books such as this to have any understanding of the 1960's and early 70's. Maybe, just maybe, it will help to keep men such as these two from ever reaching that degree of power ever again. Yeah, right!

Semper Fi.

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Newsflash: Nixon was flawed and paranoid

I'll defer to other reviewers who find this material too derivative. I never liked either of these two and haven't read much about them. (I got the book as a gift.) And I lived outside the country for some of this time period. So I found most of the information itself to be useful. I was, however, annoyed by several tics Dallek displays:

1. He "writes his notes." They're good notes, but the prose bumps along like a chain of 3 x 5 cards. There are many very short quotes--I guess to give a sense of immediacy or truth to the tale. But I thought the effect instead was to impede the flow and compound the impression of a very long strand of snippets. I'd have used (maybe paraphrased) this material without the quotation marks; it's all credited in the endnotes anyway. I don't object to a "just-the-facts" approach, but he happens to pepper his account with occasional drive-by forays into interpretation that don't quite work for me either (see #4).

2. As another reviewer noted, he refers to Kissinger as "Henry" a lot--a whole lot, as if "Henry" were a pronoun. Sometimes this lends a sort of weird intimacy, as if you're part of the Nixon White House or something, but the more dominant impression is one of disrespect or just plain goofiness.

3. He often writes dialogue very confusingly (ditto dueling diary entries)--all within one paragraph.

4. Dallek doesn't give these two credit for **anything**. A few examples:

(a) He approvingly quotes Kissinger on the "monomaniacal obsession of the Nixon White House with public relations" (p. 329). But one might equally well look at this feature as precedent-setting, and possibly a sensible (or at least inevitable) development in light of the growth of the mass media.

(b) He often makes smug criticisms that depend largely on later history. ("The idea that [the collapse of Vietnam] would inflict a decisive defeat on the United States in the Cold War was a gross exaggeration" [pp. 372-373].)

(c) On page 382 he says, "Surely, presidents need to mean what they say in private." Surely, if this were true vast stretches of his book would be meaningless. He posts his own rejoinder two pages later: "Haig accurately read Nixon's pronouncements as `not conviction but rather a "Devil's Advocate" position.'"

(d) One of the book's highlights is the cameo appearance of that 78-year old mass-murdering charmer Mao Tse-Tung (pp. 363-365). His parting words are "Appearances are deceiving." Dallek thinks it may suggest "that the Americans would have to give substance to their friendly words." Without this prompting I suspect that 100 out of 100 readers might have thought that Mao was referring to his own sweet talk.

Well, it's an okay book, because these were very interesting times. There might be better books covering the same terrain.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6

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