Posted on 05/11/2015 4:42:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, a moment vividly encapsulated by the frenzied scene of South Vietnamese desperately trying to reach the last helicopter on the roof of the American embassy. April was also the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, when Robert E. Lee capitulated to Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the bloodiest fighting of the Civil War to an end.
The two episodes seemingly have little to do with each other. But each, in its way, illustrates one of the bleakly recurring themes of US military history: When America's armed forces prematurely abandon the field, the results are usually heartbreaking for the people they leave behind.
The Vietnam experience makes the point with aching sorrow. By 1972, the US war against the North Vietnamese communists was being won on the ground; it was lost in Congress and at the Paris peace talks under the political pressure of the antiwar movement. The United States pulled its fighting troops from Vietnam in 1973, then refused to provide its South Vietnamese allies with the economic and military aid they needed to resist Hanoi's onslaught. As disaster loomed, President Ford implored Congress not to turn a blind eye to the "vast human tragedy" about to engulf "our friends in Vietnam and Cambodia."
But hostile lawmakers refused to heed Ford's pleas, and 40 years ago this spring the communists swept to power. What ensued was horrific. "Millions of people lost their lives and tens of millions lost any chance at freedom," Robert F. Turner, co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, recalled in a recent essay. In Cambodia, the fanatical Khmer Rouge slaughtered an estimated 1.7 million men, women, and children. In neighboring South Vietnam, there were hundreds of thousands of additional victims — frantic "boat people" trying to escape by sea, inmates tortured in re-education camps, innumerable others summarily executed or "disappeared."
To the shock of at least some former antiwar activists, more people died in the first two years of Indochina's communist peace than had lost their lives in the 13 years of America's war. Even now Vietnam remains a communist dictatorship, one of the least free places on earth.
When US forces settle in for a long peace after fighting a difficult war — as in (West) Germany and Japan following World War II, or South Korea since the 1950s — their presence has generally nurtured stability, prosperity, and democratic freedoms. When they retreat precipitately — as in Lebanon or Iraq — renewed cruelty and violence predictably fill the vacuum.
And it isn't only overseas that the pattern has been manifested.
In a striking new book, After Appomattox, historian Gregory Downs chronicles the years of military occupation that followed Lee's surrender to Grant in 1865 — a military occupation that was indispensable to the uprooting of slavery and the political empowerment of freed slaves. In the face of Southern white supremacist hostility, it was only the continuing presence of federal troops in the South that could break up remaining pockets of rebellion, establish the right of blacks to vote and seek election, void discriminatory laws, and unilaterally remove disloyal or racist sheriffs and judges from office.
But there were far too few troops to do the job properly. With the end of battlefield fighting, pressure to "bring the boys home" was intense. By the end of 1866, fewer than 25,000 troops remained in the South — down from nearly 1 million at the time Lee surrendered. Meanwhile, a violent white insurgency was spreading, led by a Democratic Party terror group called the Ku Klux Klan. These insurgents "spread across the South," Downs writes, "assassinating Republican leaders and intimidating black voters."
Where the US military held sway, Reconstruction legislatures made remarkable gains — funding schools and hospitals, reforming property and marriage laws, making possible the election to office of more than 1,500 black candidates. But those gains were swept away as it became clear that Washington would not deploy the troops necessary to crush the Klan terror. Public support for continuing the occupation evaporated. By the late 1870s, the troops were effectively gone. Southern Democrats moved ruthlessly to roll back the astonishing progress in black civil rights; in its place they imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, and racial segregation. "Without the fear of federal [military] power," recounts Downs, "a new and bleak era of Jim Crow was dawning."
Military occupation and the prolonged exercise of war powers go against the American grain. The urge to "declare peace and get out" is only too understandable. This season of anniversaries is a reminder that yielding to that urge can come at a terrible price, above all to those who remain after the US military is gone.
BJ Clinton acted as though the war never happened (twenty years after it did); it is indefensible. It told a whole generation of veterans, and the loved ones of those who died there, that it had been for nothing; that the communist regime wasn’t so bad after all.
The war in Vietnam created a cynical skepticism towards government by Americans; BJ Clinton cemented that in place.
2. "Puzzle Palace" doesn't answer squat. Unit, MOS, Duty Station. I've already figured out that if you ever were in the Marine Corps, you barely made it out of boot camp.
Poseurs are a dime a dozen.
Fascinating site. I guess that “Ong My” means “Mr. American”.
I had friends who died in Viet Nam. I also have friends who live there now, Americans and Vietnamese. If you cannot get over your your bitterness against Clinton who really is a third party, I shan't bother you more about it, but just once to say, Viet Nam is the best place in the world for an ego boost for an older American man, especially one who was there in the war.
One quote (2003) from an old soldier who fought the "foreign devils" for 11 years- "The government men came to my village and said our country was being invaded again. I thought it was the Chinese. I did not know different until 1973. Why did the Americans leave? We could not fight them. Why did you leave us with these devils to rule? If the south had won we would all be prosperous now."
A group of adults was having trouble pronouncing my name. I heard the voice of a little girl behind me say something to her brother about Ong My (the American) and the light went on. I said to the adults “Call me Ong My(I don’t have capacity for diacriticals on this keyboard).” That stuck and transferred to the emigre community back home when someone from there turned up here. Now even my grandson calls me that and he is no ways anything but genetic American. It can mean ‘Mr. American,’ ‘the American,’ beautiful grandfather,’ and several other things depending on contest.
You should see those deserted roads now. The bus and truck traffic is incredible. Highway 1, La Rue Sans Joie of the war years is four-laned for maybe 60 miles up from Sai Gon and the work is proceeding north. Already it needs more lanes. More and more people can afford cars which are very expensive because the government taxes engine capacity at steeply rising rates, trying to keep the traffic down while they build out the highway system, but the automobiles and trucks and buses are staying way ahead of the paving and paving is proceeding apace.
When you say nukes don’t work in mountainous or jungle terrain....maybe that’s why we nuked cities, right? duh. Although nukes work best on flat terrain, they work better than conventional bombs in any geography. Remember 1 megaton is equal to one million 2000 pounders. You got one million bombs handy? Nope.
Nukes would have worked in Vietnam. ONE on Hanoi and it would have been over. INSTANTLY. DONE. Billions saved. Years not wasted and most importantly 50, 000 Americans would have been saved from death and hundreds of thousands spared serious injury.
And to think the Russians would have risked total annihilation over a small far away country like North Vietnam is a wrong. Not anymore than the Russians would have nuked us over Cuba, something the Russians have long since admitted they were not going to do.
I am a well known Marine, and you calling me a liar is a serious thing. YOU don’t rate squat from this Marine.
Try concentrating your fire on the LeftWingRegresives instead of attacking U.S. Marines.
Zero proof you ever were a Marine: MOS? Rank? Duty stations?
The mission wasn’t to eradicate Vietnam; it was to rescue the South Vietnamese from the VC and the NVA. Using nuclear weapons would have only killed a whole lot of innocent people and stained our country for all time.
If we had used them, there is no way that the Soviets would not have used them on us - North Vietnam was their client state. You would have killed several thousand Russians as well.
Other than killing hundreds of thousands in cities, nukes would have little effect on the troops in the field - other than make them fight harder.
If you actually ever were a Marine, there was good reason never to put you in charge of anyone.
Really? Couldn't prove it by me. You still can't or won't tell us when you served, what MOS you had, what units, etc. But, no you haven't provided squat and all I've gotten from you is homosexual-oriented threats by private mail.
I have my service history on my personal page - easy, isn't it? If you can't prove you were a Marine, you need to change your name.
If you can't figure out Puzzle Palace and what unit and mos goes there....your dumber than you let on. Attacking other Marines shows a treasonous trait I will be watching....and a call to folks who work Comsec to check up ON YOU and your travels to Communist Vietnam is COMING SOON.
Semper Fi
And no, Puzzle Palace doesn't tell me a thing other than you're not able to substantiate that you ever were an actual Marine.
You have however, provided limitless amusement - do you actually know what Comsec (communications security) means?
Time to take the USMC out of your handle and just call yourself Tomas, ya fake.
Semper Fi, indeed.
Your sad dude. Hope you get better.
Semper Fi
Just try and attack the LeftWingProgressives ...not Marines.
No proof at all that you were ever a Marine. Sad.
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