Agreed.
The lefties in Congress who did that have much innocent blood on their hands. It is truly shocking that some of them are still in Congrress today!
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
Ping for later reading
The democrats believed/believe that our Vietnamese allies were nothing more than property to be disposed of by their keepers in any way they saw fit. They're not opposed to dictatorships because that's the only way they can stamp out the concept of the individual...but killing them
The Democrats undid the election of 1972 and tossed the Republican party into exile. 1974-80 were dark years for this country at home and abroad. It was a time the Democrats ran the show.
The squealed like castrated pigs when the Gipper stomped them in 1980.
The New York Times, and their lot were partially to blame for the loss. They did everything they could to demean the war effort.
bump
That combined with Lyndon Johnson's gross mismanagement and lack of principles was the deathblow for the Vietnam War. Their behavior was absolutely disgraceful and gave the liberal anti-war scum a victory beyond their wildest dreams.
Nowadays, they point to Vietnam and say, "See, nation-building is impossible. Winning against an insurgency is impossible." Their answer to tyrants like Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, the Khmer Rouge, and Rwanda is to do some token bitching, send them money, and kowtow to their murderous deeds because Vietnam "proved" that such intervention is morally wrong and impossible to change. Liberals are truly disgusting.
Many thousands more must have died trying to escape by sea, but I would assume there is no way to tell how many--people who died on unseaworthy boats (like Elian Gonzalez's mother did trying to get away from another Communist paradise).
The moral to this story is, that America called these brave men to defend our country, from the communist's ambitions. All gave some, some gave all. Each is owed a debt of gratitude by our nation and every one of us who enjoys the freedoms that are their legacy. God bless them all. End of story.
Wasn't Sen Kerry of Mass. one of those Viet Nam war criminals?
We did win the war. The North simply invaded in violation of a treaty.
When they came home, other members of their own generation who were too enlightened to fight spat on, shat on, and slandered them. The elected officials who had hung the vets out to dry, then had the unmitigated gall to solicit their votes, which, with a drop in the voting age, gave the left side of the boomer generation unprecedented power.
The height of esteem in which I hold our Viet Nam veterans is matched only by the depth of my contempt for the protestors. The ideological left is never any good for America, but with the numbers and power they had in this era, they did to American Culture and Society what a swarm of locusts does to a corn field.
The vast majority of contemporary American maladies, be they economic, spiritual, moral or cultural can be laid directly in the lap of the 60's-70's left.
for later read
And .. they've tried to do the same in Iraq - which produced the famous "I voted for it before I voted against it" statement from Kerry.
Is there a statute of limitations timetable on treason?
So now, the traitors of that era want us to recognize communist VN today. Fine. But . .
Precisely because Vietnam has changed for the better, we need to recognize what a profoundly ideological and aggressive totalitarian regime we faced three, four and five decades ago. And out of respect for the evidence of history, we need to recognize what happened in the 1970's and why.
(We need to start at least as early as the 1968 Tet Offensive.)
What the author writes was not unknown at the time.
But the American Press had its eye on the General Giap coveted "Most Valuable Guerrilla" award and they were not to be denied that award.
I say that given the extra years, the tens of thousands of needless deaths of our military and our allied military dead and VN's civilian dead the press scum of that era, the political scum of that era, the academic scum of that era, the Hollywood scum of that era should all be tried for treason.
North Viet Nam's most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite, spooked LBJ with his distorted reporting to the American public beginning in 1968.
I did not serve in Viet Nam and I am not an expert but IMO had LBJ backed U.S. military requests as our troops virtually annihilated the Viet Cong the North clearly would have started serious peace talks -- just as their post war writings admit. But good 'ol Walter, et al. went to work for their Ho in Hanoi.
Same goes for a large part of the media, congress and academia.