Watergate wasn't the reason Nixon had to resign

#history #philosophy #economics #law #Israel JD Vance has been saying, to my absolute astonishment, some very interesting things lately. First of all, he said, "Israel can't kill its way to security." Now, really that is astonishingly good. That may be the very best summary of Israel's attitude I've ever even heard! Kill everyone, we'll be just fine. Because, of course Israel was placed in the middle of the Muslim world, quite deliberately, by Britain, America and Russia, to keep an eye on them, and to keep them in line. Because after WWI, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed, and the West never wanted another Muslim super-state to arise again in the Middle East that could threaten the West, so the split all the Ottoman Empire up into small Muslim states that would hopefully war against each other, and Israel was going to keep an eye on them, in any case. JD Vance also made another very interesting observation. Apparently unrelated, but, I don't think it is. He said, "If Watergate occurrd today, it would be a 12 hour news story." Which, of course, is exactly what Watergate was! At first, of course. When the break-in was announced in June, 1972, no one really cared much. Richard Nixon was astonishingly popular, the US economy was humming along, the stock market was at record highs, and he had pulled most of the US troops out of South Vietnam, and South Vietnam was still holding on as an independent nation. People cared so little about Watergate, that Richard Nixon won a record landslide in November for reelection, beating George McGovern by 20% in the popular vote, and winning 49 of 50 states! So, when did Watergate become so important? Why, of course, after the Arab oil embargo instituted when Nixon provided a massive airlift of arms to Israel, to avert Golda Meir's threat of using tactical nuclear weapons against the Arab forces. While Israel probably would not have been wiped out as a nation -- the Arabs didn't particularly want the pre-1967 state of Israel anyway -- they would have been forced to give up all or most of the territory they acquired in 1967. Of course, they had to do this anyway, when Jimmy Carter became President, in return for peace with Egypt. And, the resulting Arab oil embargo, totally trashed the US economy, creating a massive scarcity of oil, jacking up its price, leading to gas rationing, economic weakness, inflation and a collapsing stock market.And, the weakness of the US as the result of this also drastically weakened the South Vietnamese government, to the point that it started to collapse, eventually being forced to surrender to North Vietnam a year and a half later, in summer 1975. And, it was only then, with the prospect of defeat in Vietnam, and the reality of total economic disaster, that suddenly Watergate became an issue of "great national signficance". Because, after all, society always needs a legal pretext to destroy great men, doesn't it? They can't just have made mistakes that led to economic and military disaster, quite innocently, out of ignorance or incompetence, can they? They must be great villains, who must be sacrificed! They acted -- gasp!!! -- illegally. And, so, Watergate became a great national scandal for everyone associated with Richard Nixon, and he was forced to resign.