Posted on 04/30/2025 10:23:02 AM PDT by Rummyfan
We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.
Fifty years ago, April 30, 1975, the world watched in horror and disbelief as the last American helicopter lifted off from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon. South Vietnam had fallen in the manner of Ernest Hemingway, “first gradually, then suddenly”: a decades-long war, a relative peace, and then a mad dash by the North Vietnamese Army that consumed the country in less than a month.
The tragedy was simply breathtaking. And horribly, horribly unnecessary.
What followed was not peace, but darkness. The swift collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (turns out the Domino Theory was true) brought the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia. At least a million were sent to the “re-education camps” in Vietnam alone. Half a million were murdered. Another two million fled this brutal night by sea, on rafts wholly unsuited for the tumultuous ocean, in wild hope that an American aircraft carrier might happen upon them. Close to half a million died in the water.
I remember standing before one of the refugees, one of the countless “boat people” who was resettled to Fort Smith, Arkansas. He was a slight, middle-aged man, with thinning hair and humble dignity. We were in the fellowship hall of my church. I was eight years old. And I remember looking up at the South Vietnamese flag on his lapel and just weeping, and saying over and over “I’m sorry, I’m just so sorry.”
We should all be so sorry.
(Excerpt) Read more at rodmartin.org ...
I believe firmly that from LBJ to Obama, we wanted to sow hate and discontent. After Trump they went after him, then started all over again with the LBJ-Obama then Biden policies. Sow dissent, spent mucho dinero, print more money mo money and mo money.
What to do to thwart that other than the destruction of / eradication of the North Vietnamese regime?!
Indeed. Two million murdered….
My only complaint about about GW is that he didn’t go far enough or hard enough. We should have taken out the Assad butchers while we had the forces in place to do it. Additionally, keep the forces in Iraq and Syria - the jihadis could keep coming and we could keep killing them (a ‘flypaper’ type strategy). Just kill ‘em and kill ‘em till none left to kill. We’re talking about the survival of civilization after all. Is it not worth it?!
Once in either fully commit or get the hell out.
As the British and the Russians and ultimately us too learned, Afghanistan is essentially unconquerable without 100% per cent of the natives, and that has been proven to be impossible to attain too. Leave them to their opium growing and misogyny; but if they sponsor terrorize or provide a haven for same again, bomb them mercilessly and continually.
China had gone communist; the French chased out of Indochina, the Soviets seemingly growing in power monthly. Castro in Cuba on our doorstep. A decision was taken to make a stand. The execution…. Well that’s another matter…. I guarantee you neither Eisenhower nor Nixon would have conducted things as JFK and LBJ did….
The MIC?!
Was it not a worthy and honorable and indeed dutiful goal to get our POWs back?! At whatever cost…..
No better enemy, no worse friend….
Too harsh. Hell just in the last sixty years: LBJ, Carter, and Obozo… and Biden.
A Dem Congress cut off all logistical and combat air support. Plain and simple.
“A Dem Congress cut off all logistical and combat air support.”
Just like they did to IRQ and AFGN’s OCO funding.
I should have clarified it was Congress cutting the funding. I specifically remember the cut in OCO funds in 2007 by the new DEM Congress. It necessitated the 2009 withdrawal from Iraq.
I thought they also cut off jet fuel, tank fuel, ammo of all kinds (for tanks, jets, artillery, grunts), supplies & replacement parts, and everything else a modern military needs, and also any $$ to buy those things from other sources.
They were still hopping mad and smarting from being totally humiliated by Nixon's 49-state sweep in 1972, and along with their Media Legions they perpetuated a loud hue and cry of "WATERGATE! WATERGATE! REMEMBER THE ALAM... I MEAN WATERGATE! THE GOP MUST BE PUNISHED BY VOTING IN THE MOST RADICAL DEMOCRATS POSSIBLE!" and voters complied, and we're still paying for that radical overreach today --- the Dept of Educ, the entire slew of EnviroNazi laws, and much more, were all passed in the next few Congresses.
It was all a radical reaction of revenge for their abject humiliation at the polls in '72.
I still tell younger people today who've heard only "We lost the Vietnam War" that this is a lie. We *won* the war, and then soon after, the Democrats handed South Vietnam over on a silver platter to the enemy. The part that made me so angry was hearing the 'rats crowing afterwards: "See? See!! We *told* you all along that we couldn't win the war. Just like we predicted!"
Military Industrial Complex.
As Lt. Alvarez said during his interview with a Vietnam documentary, he was a war criminal, not POW. There was no formal declaration of war by Congress.
It was a very depressing end to our war.
Of course but they would have come back with another week of bombing and victory too.
[I was able to get back in the Marines after 3 1/2 years out, healing up from my time in Vietnam. In 1975, I was ordered to lead a 105mm howitzer section to set up an antitank blocking position northwest of Saigon (I still have the maps) but that was changed to lead a naval gunfire spot team at Vung Tau. But that was stopped when our plane turned around because of incoming rockets at Tan Son Nhut airport and we landed in Guam instead. I ended up on a ship - the USS Dubuque - doing doughnuts in the Pacific waiting, doing nothing, and then going home.
It was a very depressing end to our war.]
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