ANALYSIS
Aug. 8 was the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation for the crimes of Watergate, a scandal that has captured the imagination of generations of Americans, producing countless articles, books, memoirs and stinging lessons about the dangers of a hubristic chief executive.
The common emphasis on the break-in and cover-up, however, has obscured other, equally important aspects of Nixon’s downfall that should resonate in our own times of “forever wars” and endless U.S. security commitments. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee considered but ultimately voted against an article of impeachment charging Nixon for secretly and illegally bombing neutral Cambodia for 14 months before launching a ground invasion of that country to destroy enemy sanctuaries.
The bombing killed thousands, destabilized Cambodia and did little to improve the prospects for American victory in South Vietnam. In this episode of History As It Happens, historian Carolyn Eisenberg delves into a diplomatic record too often overlooked, which is the subject of her 2024 Bancroft Prize-winning book, “Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia.”
The legacy of waging an undeclared war on a neutral country, provoking nationwide antiwar protests, is particularly important today, Ms. Eisenberg says. U.S. support for Israel in its war against the Hamas militant group in Gaza is a profound moral issue for millions of Americans, she says, just as the destruction in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were decades ago.
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“The people in our country, as a whole, have never come to terms with anything we have done abroad. There is no awareness whatsoever,” Ms. Eisenberg says. The failure of Article IV before the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 contributed to the fostering of an impenetrable climate of unaccountability for U.S. presidents in the foreign policy realm.
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