Posted on 04/30/2005 1:48:32 AM PDT by smoothsailing
THE spectacular fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, 30 years ago, had Americans glued to their television sets. Millions watched as long lines snaked up stairs at the American Embassy waiting to be rescued by the U.S. military.
It had been barely 10 years since the first U.S. Marine combat troops arrived in Vietnam at Danang. That decade had been punctuated by premature proclamations of victory, promises of "light at the end of the tunnel" and a Tet offensive that effectively destroyed the Viet Cong, but remained a potent Communist propaganda coup in Western media.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Our goal is to mobilize Vietnamese Americans across the US to come to Washington DC to:
-- Show our unity for Human Rights in Vietnam,
-- Show our gratitude to America for affording us the opportunities of this free country,
-- Pay our tribute to Vietnam Veterans,
-- Celebrate the successful campaign for the recognition of the Vietnamese American Heritage and Freedom Flag,
-- Promote Freedom and Democracy in Vietnam.
Nevertheless, I am convinced we will never have much success in presenting a factual account (as has been exhibited by the last generation) through the education system—as the majority who are entrenched and most influential were/are those who opposed the war and continue to impart a skewed and revised interpretation of events—and even if corrected, will take decades before truth can be separated from distortions and falsehoods.
As an aside, I cannot help but wonder how Lipscomb could have overlooked the exceptional contributions of such luminaries as Fonda/Kerry/Kennedy, et. al, in their efforts to end this tragic event, thereby drastically reducing the amount of casualties we [would] have suffered over an extended period of time of our continued involvement—as they are so eager to remind us, of their righteous and selfless conduct which they are convinced (to this day) was instrumental in bringing a quick and “satisfactory” resolution to this conflict? (/sarc)
On a more serious note, I remember this date (30 years ago) vividly, as it was shortly thereafter that (as a Nam Vet) who (was a conservative and an “R” although, having voted in my first eligible election for Johnson, due to a lack of education and knowledge) became so disillusioned and disgusted over the conduct of Ford and others (whose [in]actions basically amounted to the issuance of a “death warrant” for millions) in our government, that I [symbolically] tore up my affiliation with any party and since then, has simply been, an Independent, Conservative, Patriot.
Of the hundred of thousand of South Vietnamese who were thrown in prisons, forced in to “Reeducation Camps,” tortured, executed, or died trying to escape, (and having spent 18 months in country as an Covert Intel Agent and working closely with many Vietnamese) I counted several as close acquaintances and quite a few, as “friends.”
A very black mark on our History and an extremely shameful period which (when whoever is so inclined to characterize our involvement in Iraq—or anywhere else—as yet another “Vietnam) we should not soon forget!
That was not there in Nam. You can't draft the boy next door and tell him it's somehow or other his patriotic duty to go into harms way for some sort of a game. That's why there was zero political supportfor the Vietnam war by 1968. A real war between the US and Noreth Vietnam would have been over by 66.
Look on the bright side.
We killed a million Communist cadre in the field and destroyed their ability to project power for the next generation. Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon and the Indonesian archipelago are free today because of what our people did in Vietnam and what Gen. Suharto did in Indonesia, when he wiped out the PKI.
The North Vietnamese Army that took Saigon was hollowed-out by what we did to their best formations around Khe Sanh and the DMZ in 1968, and again during their 1972 offensive, when B-52's caught their armored columns on the road with nowhere to run. We gutted them.
They won the war, but that's all they won -- and that barely, thanks to the moral cowardice of liberalism and the well-meaning, morally smug, patronizing treachery of people like Clark Clifford, Daniel Ellsburg, Neil Sheehan, and Walter Cronkite, and half-a-hundred liberal Representatives and Senators who denied President Ford's appeal to Congress for medical supplies and ammunition when the South Vietnamese began to run low.
But the war wasn't all on one side of the ledger. We accomplished a few things.
Everone was watching the supposedly "soft and degenerate" Americans and despite the enemy's best efforts (here and abroad), we held out for nearly ten years of difficult and cruel warfare.
South Vietnam was lost but The National Liberation war never occurred again - there were proxie wars, like the use of Cubans in Angola and there was a disastrous direct intervention by the Soviets in Afghanistan, but no more National Liberation wars. We proved ourselves too tough and too determined and when the two sides took neasure of each other in the string of confrontations, concessions, and discussions that finally ended the Cold War, it was the measure of those American combatants that stayed in the eyes of our adversaries.
The successes of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in Vietnam were the real reason for the defeat of communism. Allies knew from our example that we would bleed for their freedom, long after conventional wisdom would have had us quit. In the end, more people wanted us as allies and friends than our adversaries. We proved ourselves as a nation and as a people and those men and women lsited on that black wall in Washington are a large part of the reason nearly all of the world enjoys the freedom instead of communist dictatorship.
Besides, we're not done yet: the more time we spend in Vietnam and the more links we establish, the more we can push that dinosaur government of theirs to free their own people. We still have work to do.
From my speech at the Kerry Lied Rally, 9-12-04:
I want you to know, some of us never questioned the character of the Vietnam veteran. You are the protectors -- the heroes from everyday America who answered your country’s call. And you’ve earned your right to speak, even 35 years later.
Those of us lucky enough to know this new generation of warriors understand they’ve been strengthened by the sacrifices you all made both in Vietnam and later. It’s their reverence for your sacred honor, DESPITE the John Kerrys of the world, that calls them to duty. Their clarity was forged by images of 9-11. But their courage is inspired by you -- Laura Bartholomew Armstrong, 9-12-04.
Read the speech at:
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008229.php
and http://powerlineblog.com/archives/008232.php
We'll work no matter how long it takes, to abolish the myths that our fathers died for a big nothing, and to shed light on traitors like John Kerry.
Though I don't squash with one point in Libscomb's analysis - we should be so lucky to have another vietnam (said judgement rendered w/out further explaining why - perhaps because of editorial limits) - I understand and completely agree with your appraisal that this was a shame we all must carry.
Even as we left in '72, we did so on very favorable terms; the ARVN had by then gained enough experience that they could hold their own if we guaranteed them the hardware - and that is what our Nation did promise to do. That the ensueing NV offensive in '75 ultimately resulted in our dhimmi-controlled Congress reneging on that promise - along with a perfectly justifiable reason for me to point towards the left accusingly - matters little. The consequences of that abandonment is one we all must bear, for it reflects on our Nation as a whole.
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One of the many results of America pulling out of Vietnam, due to US public opinion created by the MSM, is something I've always had a hard time realizing and our media TOTALLY ignored it. The slaughter of S Vietnamese... it's as if they didn't ever exist at all. Hundreds of thousands just slaughtered. And... after all they had been through... the vets knew it and could do nothing. They were being sent home... to a sometimes hostile reception by spitting nitwits who would eventually become college professors. Ah..America.
With at least a half-dozen of wifey's family having been "reeducated," as well as many friends both in the States and many still in VN, I have no illusions about the horrors ultimately visited upon Vietnam (and Cambodia) by the slimey likes of Kerry and Fonda and Kennedy. These people ruined and enslaved and killed millions. How do they sleep at night?
Shameful, indeed. The worst comment every made to me by a Vietnamese person was "Why did America abandon us?"
I don't know how old you are but putting the blame for US public's anti-war sentiment on the media is only barely accurate. Any 18 yo HS senior in 1967-1972 knew kids just a year or two older who were maimed or killed before reaching twenty. Their mothers all knew mothers who lost sons in VN. And both groups knew that even a little money or influence kept you safe. The poor and the working class (America was a country full of Blue Collar workers then) were paying the price in a big way while the middle and wealthy classes were able to avoid most of the loss. The truth about America during that war is that if you were unlucky enough to have a brother/son/yourself sent to fight or eligible to be drafted then the war consumed your family. If you did not, then the war barely made it to your screen. A mother burying her 19 year old son and looking at two more coming up didn't need Peter Jennings to tell her something was seriously wrong.
Thank you for stopping by.
There is no good answer to that one. If a Viet asked me that, I should be embarrassed to death.
Remember when the Gulf War was winding down, and Saddam had loosed his defeated tigers on the Kurds in northern Iraq? His armor came forward and attacked the Peshmergas, driving them back, and his helicopter gunships mauled retreating columns of Kurdish civilians with rockets and heavy machine-gun fire. A news cameraman was with that column and videotaped much of the mayhem from the Kurds' perspective. In particular, there was one Kurdish woman weeping bitterly as she trudged along -- she'd just seen most of her family killed in front of her eyes within the hour by the gunships and tanks, and she wasn't so much crying as wailing her heart out as she walked. She had some English, and when the newsie stuck his camera into her face, she wailed at him, "Where are you Americans? Why don't you help us? Are we not human beings?!" I couldn't look at her; sitting in my comfortable living room in my comfortable house, I felt like a whipped dog. We "won" the Gulf War, but Saddam, may he burn in hell for all eternity, knew how to make the victory hollow by immediately murdering someone else.
I would like to think George Bush the Younger heard that woman's cry, too, and remembered her years later when it was time to make some decisions. I would like to think that, unlike Vietnam, we heard her and went back for her and her people, and for everyone else who had been brutalized and killed by the butcher Saddam.
If the draft had been fairer and the burden spread around more, do you think that it would have changed how you and your neighbors thought about the war?
If the war had been fought by a larger army of enlistees and volunteer reservists, without recourse to the draft, do you think it would have been seen differently by your neighbors?
At any one time, U.S. Army troops in theater never topped about 520,000, plus less than 100,000 Navy and Air Force -- basically the same size force President Bush was able to put together for the Gulf War, with a volunteer military and a reservist and National Guard rear echelon. He amplified the U.S. effort with allied contributions adding up to about 200,000 men, but the U.S. level of effort was about the same as that for Vietnam, and it lasted about six months to a year. The U.S. was engaged at or near those levels for about two years in Vietnam, and another four years, maybe, with troop levels about half that.
The current limits on the size of the military are mostly budgetary and limited only by the willingness of the Crusterati to pay the taxes to pay for it. It's a lot smaller than it was during the Gulf War.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1393409/posts
I attended the "Vietnam and the Iraq War" presentation given at the University of Chicago Law School by Professor Geoffrey Stone 20 January 2005. As a veteran of the Vietnam War from August of 1969 to January of 1971, serving as an infantry squad leader in a mechanized infantry company, and with another unit as a tank commander on an M48A3 tank; I was keenly interested in the form that the lecture might take. After a cursory reading of Professor Stone's curriculum vitae, I suspected that Professor Stone's take on the South East Asian conflict might indicate a general disapproval of the United States war effort. My suspicions were proven correct. The lecture was an attempt to paint the American war effort in Vietnam as misguided at best and an imperialistic effort to establish SE Asian capitalistic hegemony at worst. The antiwar left was portrayed as being noble and idealistic rather than populated by a hard core that actively hoped and worked for a US defeat, the US government as destructive of basic civil liberties in its attempt to monitor their activities, and the North Vietnamese and Vietcong as nationalists who wished to preserve their unique culture against an imperialistic onslaught. He described the South Vietnamese government in terms that were heedless of the South Vietnamese government’s struggle to survive a relentlessly ruthless Communist assault while he stated the South Vietnamese government was engaged in an unwarranted assault on human rights. He neglected to mention ANY of the numerous genocidal atrocities of the Vietcong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA). He described the Tet Offensive as a surprise for the United States in which 1100 American soldiers died and 2300 ARVN soldiers, and not much more about it.
I challenged Professor Stone on the following. The reason that the United States opposed nationwide elections that were to be held in accordance with the 1954 Geneva accords was due to the murder and intimidation campaigns carried out by Ho Chi Minh. This fact is in Professor R. J. Runnel's book Death by Government, in which he cites a low estimate of 15,000 and a high figure of 500,000 people in the “murder by quota” campaign directed by the North Vietnamese Communist Party Politburo that would have made the election a corrupt mockery. This campaign stipulated that 5% of the people living in each village and hamlet had to be liquidated, preferably those identified as members of the "ruling class." All told says Runnel, between 1953 and 1956 it is likely that the Communists killed 195,000 to 865,000 North Vietnamese. These were non combatant men, women, and children, and hardly represent evidence of the moral high ground claimed by many in the antiwar movement. In 1956, high Communist official Nguyen Manh Tuong admitted that "while destroying the landowning class, we condemned numberless old people and children to a horrible death." The same genocidal pattern became the Communists’ standard operating procedure in the South too. This was unequivocally demonstrated by the Hue Massacre, which the press did a great deal to downplay in its reporting of the Tet Offensive of 1968.
I pointed out that the National Liberation Front was the creation of the North Vietnamese Third Party Congress of September 1960, completely directed from North Vietnam. I pointed out that the Tet Offensive of 1968 was a disastrous military defeat for the North Vietnamese and that the VC were almost wiped out by the fighting, and that it took the NVA until 1971 to reestablish a presence using North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. I pointed out how the North Vietnam military senior commanders repeatedly said that they counted on the U.S. antiwar movement to give them the confidence to persevere in the face of their staggering battlefield personnel losses and defeats. I pointed out the antiwar movement prevented the feckless President Lyndon Johnson from granting General Westmoreland's request to enter Laos and cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail or end his policies of publicly announced gradualist escalation. The North Vietnamese knew cutting this trail would severely damage their ability to prosecute the war. Since the North Vietnamese could continue to use the Ho Chi Minh Trail lifeline, the war was needlessly prolonged for the U.S. and contributed significantly to the collapse of South Vietnam. The casualties sustained by the NVA and VC were horrendous, (1.5 million dead) and accorded well with Gen. Ngyuen Giap’s publicly professed disdain for the lives of individuals sacrificed for the greater cause of Communist victory. To this day the anti-war movement as a whole refuses to acknowledge its part in the deaths of millions in Laos and Cambodia and in the subsequent exodus from South East Asia as people fled Communism, nor the imprisonment of thousands in Communist re-education camps and gulags.
When he tried to say that United States should have known it could not put down a local popular insurgency, I pointed out that the final victorious North Vietnamese offensive was a multidivisional, combined arms effort lavishly equipped with Soviet and Chinese supplied tanks, self-propelled artillery, and aircraft. I pointed out to him that it was the type of blitzkrieg that German Panzer General Heinz Guederian would have easily recognized. I said how I didn't recall seeing any barefoot, pajama-clad guerrillas jumping out of those tanks in the newsreel footage that showed them crashing through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon. This spectacle was prompted by the pusillanimous withdrawal of Congressional support for the South Vietnamese government in the wake of the Watergate scandal, which particularly undermined this aspect of President Nixon’s foreign policy. It should be noted that a similar Communist offensive in the spring of 1972 was smashed, largely by US air power; with relatively few US ground troops in place.
There were legions of half-truths and omissions that this professor spoke to in his extremely biased lecture. When I asked him why he left out so much that was favorable to the American effort in Vietnam, he airily dismissed my argument as being just another perspective, but tellingly he did not disagree with the essential truth of what I said.
Professor Stone struck me as just another liberal masquerading as an enlightened academic.
He was totally unable to relate how the situation in Iraq is comparable to the situation in Vietnam, so I volunteered a comparison for him. A seditious near traitorous core of anti-war protesters is trying to undermine U.S. efforts there with half-truths, lies, and distortions. I said that in that respect, the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam are very similar. A significant difference is that thus far the current anti-war movement has not succeeded in manifesting contempt for the American military on the part of the general U.S. public as it did in the Vietnam era.
When I was in Vietnam, I recall many discussions with my fellow soldiers about the course of the war in Vietnam and their feelings about it. Many, if not most felt that "We Gotta Get Outta this Place," to cite a popular song of the time by Eric Burden and the Animals, but for the most part they felt we should do it by fighting the war in a manner calculated to win it. I do not recall anyone ever saying that they felt the North Vietnamese could possibly defeat us on the battlefield, but to a man they were mystified by the U.S. Government’s refusal to fight in a manner that would assure military victory. Even though there was much resentment for the antiwar movement, and some (resentment) toward career professional soldiers, I never saw anyone who did not do his basic duty and many did FAR MORE THAN THAT as a soldier. Nineteen of my friends have their names on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington DC. They deserve to have the full truth told about the effort for which they gave their young lives. The U.S. public is not well served by half-truths and lies by omission about such a significant period in our history, particularly with their relevance toward our present fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Absolutely, even more so in neighborhoods that were not upper middle class, especially the urban areas. The sons of the rich were safe. The closer you got to the Projects level of society the more vulnerable you were.
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If the war had been fought by a larger army of enlistees and volunteer reservists, without recourse to the draft, do you think it would have been seen differently by your neighbors?
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Moot point. They never would have gotten enough volunteers, that's why they had the draft.
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As to your last reference, apples and oranges. The enemy was different. If Saddam's army had been as dedicated and disciplined as Ho's our recent history would not be what it is. Think Tet in '68 and then imagine the insurgents pulling off anything near that scale.
We went to war to win,we never let our country or our buddies down.
I have 11 friends on the Wall.THe story of that time,I believe,is gradually emerging.That has alot to do with the concern and respect our troops recieve today.
Buzzanco, who is a member of the hardcore Left cadre that turned out the day the very first bomb fell in Afghanistan to "protest" against "U.S. Imperialism" with hand-lettered signs that looked like they had been saved up and cherished for 30 years in a closet somewhere, tells a version of the Vietnamese War narrative that is very similar to the pap you describe as having dripped from the lips of Professor Stone.
Countering this garbage will be, it seems, a lifetime avocation for those of us who were old enough at the time to know what was going on. (I was active duty in the Navy from Feb. 1970-Aug. 1972, and in a Reserve intelligence unit later.)
Although some Western writers profess that there was no link between the antiwar movement and KGB Active Measures, the parallelism between the activities of the New Left and the Mobe and well-known Marxist-Leninist models can't be an accident, and the participants can't exculpate themselves from the charge of having accepted direction from the enemies of the United States.
Edward Luttwak, in The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union, argued on p. 62 that the Soviet Union was in ideological decline in the 1960's:
Finally, the network of foreign supporters could only be really effective when the issues which presented themselves were sufficiently dramatic to allow the local Party leadership to enlist the active help of the fellow-travellers first and then, with their cooperation, to mobilize in turn mass support from outside the Party. But when all of these conditions could be satisfied, the results could be impressive indeed, as for example in the worldwide campaign against the American war in Korea (when one widely exploited issue was the accusation that the Americans had resorted to 'germ warfare'). It is symptomatic of the decline of Soviet ideological influence that the worldwide agitation against America's role in the Vietnam War owed much more to the inspiration of the American anti-war movement than to Moscow's leadership and coordination.
Which increases the moral burden of the leadership of these Left groups in the United States for the outcome of the war.
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