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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 ...
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All brought to you by a Dem House and Senate.
Like wise with Afghanistan
It’s surprising the Democrats are not holding celebrations today to commemorate the fall of Saigon and the communist victory over the United States in Vietnam.
The media has always used misleading photos to show the Vietnam military in a bad light.
The media was and is always giving the impression the American military is fleeing South Vietnam in a chaotic panic when it wasn’t even there since South Vietnam fell years after we left, or that Americans were burning that little girl with Napalm although the Americans weren’t involved in the incident, or that all our soldiers did was suffer wounds and defeatism and using Zippos on thatch huts, or that the VC were dominating us and our installations during Tet.
Just like 0’Biden’s withdraw from Afghanistan.
The Cambodian holocaust was a result of the Democrats abandonment of South Vietnam.
In hindsight - what was the best policy on Vietnam the USA could have taken back in 1962?
Do nothing?
There was a ceramic shop in the hobby shop where patrons would carve and paint ceramics.
One very talented lady was Vietnamese, married to a US pilot, a captain.
She was always happy with a smile.
One day that ended.
After the fall of Vietnam, she got word of what had happened to her family.
The Vietcong had tortured and killed every one out to 4th cousins.
Abandoning those who helped us or are relatives of US citizens in Afghanistan will leave them to the same fate.
Every time I see the "peace" symbol, an old liberal from the past, all I can think of, is "you murdering b$$$$$$d."
Their protests caused this abandonment.
We never should have been in either place, but once you are, you don't do this to people.
Why would anyone help us in a future war?
It's a death sentence.
South Vietnam fell because the double-minded and weak Leftist leaders in America had no commitment or intention of doing what it would take to actually win the war.
“the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia”
That’s what it was.
And the Left - Tom Hayden, SDS, Weathermen and other flotsam and jetsam - denied that it would all happen for years before...it did.
Never Forget.
50 years after Saigon and 4 years after Afghanistan - brought to you by the Dems.
> Like wise with Afghanistan. <
Yes, indeed. And that’s one reason I despise George W. Bush. He had all the lessons of Vietnam right in front of him. Yet he repeated LBJ’s foolish mistakes.
But what about Obama, Trump, and Biden? They were all just minor players in W’s tragedy. Just as Nixon and Ford were minor players in LBJ’s tragedy.
Other folks have mentioned the part the Democrats in Congress played. That’s true enough. But the buck stops at who set the tone, and made the rules. LBJ and W.
No brains in the politicians going in, no spines to support our friends in their need to survive.
We did the same to ukraine egging it on, and what will happen next with poor leadership there.
If only it was today and South Vietnam were called Ukraine. The left would be in full throated support of more military aid and direct intervention.
Point being, how times have changed. The once proud “anti-war at all costs” left have turned into “more war at all costs”
Trump derangement and globalism will have that effect, I suppose.
We can despise GW for his ‘ROP’ and for his attempt at nation building, but I dont fault him for taking out the OBL supporting Taliban and getting some payback for 911. If he had not, we might as well have elected Al Gore in 2000.
Never forget the role that POS Biden, then a Senator, had in that defeat.
> I dont fault him for taking out the OBL supporting Taliban and getting some payback for 911 <
Oh, I totally agree. W should have destroyed every last Taliban resource in Afghanistan. Make the bricks bounce. Then make the bricks bounce some more. This could have been done solely by air power and special forces strikes.
W’s great mistake was going the LBJ route: He tried to win the hearts and minds of the population - a population that was stuck in the 8th century, and brainwashed by death cult religion.
That was a fool’s errand, made even worse by his invasion of Iraq. That upset the whole applecart in the region.
I rank W among the three worst US presidents ever. The other two are Wilson and FDR. But FDR as a domestic president only. He was a great wartime leader.
(Sorry. Rant off.)
More like "pro-communist at all costs".
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