oals. The pursuit of military victory in the sense that MacArthur understood it completely crushing the capability for military resistance by the enemy had ceased to be a goal for which political support could be maintained. "Vietnamization" was a policy, and "peace with honor" was a goal, which called for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from a fight which would then be carried on by the South Vietnamese essentially on their own, backed only by U.S. aid and (perhaps) occasional displays of air power. Nixon and Kissinger fell back on "containment" not because any real belief that it was the best approach as Truman had felt but because they felt it could still be made politically palatable.
Finally, Truman and Nixon can be seen in some ways as similar political figures. Both were populists in the sense that they were heartland, "square" personalities (even though Nixon was from California). Both could be (and were) easily sneered at by sophisticates. Both mixed somewhat uncomfortably with the elite Washington e
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