This Friday is the fiftieth anniversary of Henry Kissinger’s Paris Peace Agreement. That agreement supposedly ended the Vietnam War by affirming the right of the Vietnamese nationalists to have a free and independent country in South Vietnam.

Unfortunately, Kissinger’s agreement was not for peace but only for a truce, during which time the Communists in North Vietnam agreed that they would pause their war of conquest. Only in December 1972 did President Richard Nixon finally realize what Kissinger failed to accomplish in his secret negotiations with Hanoi. On Dec. 14, a frustrated Kissinger let the truth slip from his mouth, telling Nixon that the terms of the proposed settlement as of that date were “close to a sell-out.”