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Posted on 01/23/2007 7:48:16 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
It’s said that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. But what if that scene is the Capitol, the deed was voted on in broad daylight and some of the conspirators never left?
In May 1972 Richard Nixon launched Operation Linebacker, an air campaign to stop a new North Vietnamese drive into the South. The bombings (and Linebacker II, carried out with B-52 bombers for eleven days in December) were also intended to bring the North Vietnamese back to the negotiation table. It worked. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January.
It’s no stretch to say that America won the Vietnam War—our part of it, at least. The Accords ended our military involvement, brought our troops home and ended North Vietnam’s war against the South. It’s also no stretch to call it one of the most lopsided victories in military history. The North’s military and infrastructure was so devastated from the Linebacker campaigns that they could barely keep fighting, and though our loss of 58,000 Americans was tragic, the North suffered over 660,000 military deaths, over eleven times as many.
How did we yank defeat from the jaws of such a mighty victory? Two words: Congressional Democrats.
In December the Democratic majority passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, cutting off all military aid to South Vietnam and defunding all U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia. If North Vietnam violated their treaty with us, a treaty bought with the blood of 58,000 young Americans, we would do nothing.
It only took the North three months to make their move. They invaded the central highlands on March 10 and it only took one day for the ARVN units to crumble under the onslaught of armor and heavy artillery fire. As they retreated, streams of civilian refugees mixed in with them in what became known as “the column of tears,” but the enemy kept shelling them anyway.
Saigon fell in fifty days. Almost every American has seen footage of the desperate helicopter evacuation there, but few know the chaos happened because our ambassador waited too long to organize evacuation efforts. He was sure Congress wouldn’t abandon millions to a horrible fate when they could just send the $700 million he was asking for.
Hundreds of thousands were sent to “re-education” camps; many never came out. Laos was made a puppet of the Vietnamese regime and whole Laotian families were put in prison. In nearby Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge took advantage as well. After overthrowing the government they cleared out the cities, moving everyone, even hospital patients, into the countryside to perform forced labor in the fields. A nation of collectivized peasants without a single urban area was their idea of a Maoist paradise. Ironically, when they told all those city dwellers they had to leave their homes, they told them they were being evacuated because the cities would soon be carpet bombed by the Americans.
Under the Khmer Rouge, government workers and their families were slaughtered. So were schoolteachers and other educated professionals; hostility toward intellectuals was so strong that some people were executed merely for wearing eyeglasses. According to a Library of Congress study, other “crimes” punished by execution included having sexual relations (even with your spouse), wearing jewelry, expressing religious sentiments, not working hard enough and grieving too much for dead relatives. To save ammunition, peasant overseers often carried out executions with pickaxes. Between these victims, disease victims and those who were simply worked to death, almost two million people met their deaths in Pol Pot’s killing fields.
Sure, it wasn’t the Congress who killed those people, it was Communists. But we made a promise to the people of Southeast Asia that we’d protect them from this evil. Instead we sold them out and they died in droves.
Today we have another President who wishes to lead us to victory, but is faced with a Democratic Congress that is interested in tucking tail and getting out as soon as possible. Not one to reinvent the wheel, Ted Kennedy has declared that he will block funding for the proposed troop surge and even the Dems who oppose his plan are offering nothing but whining and harping. Our Illinois contingent joined in and embarrassed us all again. Barack Obama said we won’t “baby-sit” the Iraqis. Dick Durbin (who once compared our troops to the Khmer Rouge) sniffed and said the Iraqis “don’t get to call 911.” JFK once promised America would bear any burden and support any friend to ensure the success of liberty. I guess Obama and Durbin think that’s for suckers.
The ground is being prepared to abandon our troops and abandon Iraq to the headchoppers. We can only hope that this time the President and sane members of Congress can take a bite out of crime.
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Silverback's column ping!
If anyone wants on or off my column ping list, please notify me here or by freepmail. These columns run every two weeks.
Good and enjoyable reading.
Hillary Clinton is the main offender and never brought to justice.
If anyone doubts that democrats are more than willing and eager to sacrifice tens of thousands and even millions in order to get their way with this nation, count the aborted once alive unborn children the democrats have sacrificed in order to empower their politican lust. If the American people are not made aware of this fact and the truth then imprinted on their psyches, the media communists/socialist will succeed once again in empowering evil. In fact, their never ceasing service to evil ends makes me believe the media is basically directed by evil. Lack of truth is more prevalent than outright lies, but the media is so talented in serving both to the dumbed down public. And they back it all up with manufactured poll numbers, like the ones being touted currently which are derived by loading the sampling base with democrats over republicans so the outcome reflects the hate the media has ginned up against the President.
Thank you!
Much as it pains me to write this, America has a long history of abandoning allies. Hungarian insurgents in 1956. The Bay of Pigs. Viet Nam. The Nicaraguan Contras. The Northern Alliance. The Marsh Arabs... and now...
Does anyone wonder why Israel needs SELF defense?
have you been getting title ideas from my tagline? :)
What do you mean? I know she was part of the Watergate crew, but what did she specifically do that was related to fleeing from Vietnam?
No, actually Joe Biden and Doris Kearns Goodwin have been writing all my headlines. Why do ask? :-)
Bravo!
Ted Kennedy is proud he did that.
Ted Kennedy is proud he did that.
bttt
Thanks for the bump.
Ping!
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