Ladies and gentlemen, my is jim byron and i have the honor of being the president and ceo of the Richard Nixon foundation, and i want to welcome you to the Richard Nixon library on this very wet day today. Thank you. Today, 50 years after the end of combat operations by American Forces in vietnam, we recognize Vietnam Veterans and the service that they provide to our country in uniform in the 1960s and seventies. And then after coming home, members of their community who went on to be forces for good and. And additionally we remember and pay tribute today to those who never came home or remain missing in action. Youll see throughout todays program, traditional elements of military ceremony represented by different branches of the United States military. And to begin id like to ask United States Army Chaplain William Williams to the invocation. Chaplain williams served in the army for 27 years in both infantry as enlisted man and as a member of the chaplain corps. He is currently the fa
Here at the George University and is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce our third moderator for today, tom shanker. Tom is the director of our project for and National Security in the of media and public affairs, which is part of our Columbian College of arts and sciences. Tom was named to his position in june of 2021. After nearly a quarter century with the New York Times, including 13 years as a pentagon correspond and in covering the depart department of defense overseas combat operations and National Security, he most recently as the deputy washington editor, the times managing coverage of the military diplomacy and Veterans Affairs early in the war in afghanistan, tom was embedded with Army Special Forces at kandahar and subsequently conducted of reporting trips to afghanistan and in iraq. Toms new book is entitled age of danger keeping safe in an era of new superpowers, new and new threats. It will be published on may 9th. Tom we look forward to your panel. Beyond the wa
Minutes. All right, so this next panel is a little different. The first two, in a sense. You had a military power. You had a panel. And this is what i call a disparate panel. Each of these folks represents something quite different. But the theme that brings it together is, postwar vietnam and all the different ways it has evolved. And rather than go through the tedious nature. Long introductions. Keith Washington Posts brilliant Foreign Correspondent man about town currently runs the journalism at the university of hong kong, which is worth its own panel. Right. And hong is a professor of distinction at columbia and. I can tell you, having been to one of her events just the other day, it was completely fascinating for reasons i think well get into, which is what is the nature of todays vietnam and ambassador burckhardt was not an ambassador when i first met him. He was a Junior Service officer who, unlike the rest of his people, actually talked to a reporter, which may have been the r
This attack has made it clear beyond all doubt that the International Communist is willing to use arm invasion to conquer independ nations. An act of aggression such as this. It creates a very real danger to the security of free nation. Harry truman, in his memoirs, said that the decision to fight in korea was the most difficult he ever made. More so than the dropping of the atom bomb. And i suspect thats because he knew at the time and he later learned as he grew older that this was a watershed which changed the nature of the world. One other things that changed the nature of warfare. You know, this korean was fought like World War Two massive armies fighting each other across the hills. But that stopped, turned into an insurgent war. Small groups of people attacking here and there. And since then, of course, never fought an Old Fashioned war. Were always fighting insurgent wars. We also introduced the idea that the the if whats important often is to fight a war. Its important to win
Is peter pritchard. He is former editor in chief of the usa today newspaper and he is former president of the newseum and he is the author of this book killing grace, a vietnam war mystery. Mr. Pritchard, what made you write a novel about the vietnam war . I had dreamed of writing a novel, but then life intervened and i became a newspaper editor and an executive. But when covid hit, i finally i had the time to try to write a novel and i wanted to write something that wasnt really a combat novel. That was more in the vein of quiet or the ugly american. Both of them, both books had great influence without away any spoilers. Whats books synopsis . Two employees in saigon in 1967 at the height of the war are called to the investigate the murder of an american tourist named grace waverly, who whose body is found in the saigon river. And it appears to be a drowning. And she is an antiwar activist who said she came to vietnam as a peace tourist. But her real goal is to help smuggle arms back