"I feel a very heavy moral obligation to evacuate as many deserving Vietnamese as possible." -Ambassador Martin, 1975
Patriots waiting for a helicopter on the roof of the embassy hopeing that the one that just left isn’t the last one.
I remember.
Yeah, I was there in the summer of ‘74 as a civilian contractor, it was becoming a desperate situation then and then dire when the Vietnamization funds were cut by the democrats.
—””I feel a very heavy moral obligation to evacuate as many deserving Vietnamese as possible.”
The number of boat people leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in another country totalled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. Many of the refugees failed to survive the passage, facing danger from pirates, over-crowded boats, and storms. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 200,000 and 400,000 boat people died at sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people
and Biden was already a Senator for 2 years at the time!
I walked into HS sociology class the day after the fall of Saigon, and my instructor had the flag of North Vietnam hung over the chalkboard... I said, “I’m not staying.” My generally liberal classmates of the period rose and left with me.
My father, a Vietnam vet, called the principal and demanded that awful thing be removed. It was. The instructor finished the year and was not rehired. Different times.
If PBS is getting in on this I can’t help but wonder what’s slipping under the radar as we’re all focused on this. Is that infrastructure bill with HR-1 and God knows what else going to get signed into law in the near future be while we’re all looking at Afghanistan?