Description:

Nixon Richard 1913 - 1994

Richard Nixon ALS commenting on the 1st Gulf War: "War is bad, but bad peace is worse".

Single page ALS on Richard Nixon letterhead, 7" x 10.5", dated "1-8-91", and signed by Richard Nixon as "Sincerely RN". Accompanied by the postmarked mailing envelope 9.5" x 4" with small surface smudge, and the Newspaper clipping referred to in his letter (clipped from "The Ledger Lakeland", Florida, but originally printed in the "New York Times", Sunday edition), with a handwritten note and date along top edge.

Richard Nixon pens a note to Bill Breseman, about an article he wrote in the "New York Times" regarding the ongoing Gulf crisis in January 1991. His lengthy newspaper article provides his strong opinions about Hussein: "It is time for some straight talk about why 400,000 young Americans spent Christmas in the deserts of Saudi Arabia....We must first be clear what the conflict is not about... If we must resort to military force to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, it will not be a war about democracy". Later: "We are in the Persian Gulf for two major reasons. First Hussein has unlimited ambitions to dominate one of the most important strategic areas in the world...Had we not intervened an international outlaw would today control more than 40 percent of the worlds oil...What happens to the economies of other great industrial nations directly affects the economy of the United States. We can not allow Hussein to blackmail us and our allies into accepting his aggressive goals by giving him a choke hold on our oil lifeline".

Nixon then draws the bigger picture, as he understands that controlling oil interests informs both arms funding and warmongering: "Because [Hussein] has oil he has the means to acquire the weapons he needs for aggression against his neighbors, eventually including nuclear weapons...But we can be sure that if Hussein profits from aggression, other potential aggressors in the world will be tempted to wage war against their neighbors."

In his ALS to Bill Breseman, Nixon sums up his newspaper article. "My views are simple. We all want peace but while war is bad, a bad peace is worse because it will lead to bigger war". Nixon holds a strong view about the domino effect of the war in the middle east thus validating the need to take our US troops away from our home soil and fight abroad. A revealing letter paired with his interesting published commentary.

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