Agree. On June 19, 1973, the U.S. Congress passed the ase-Church Amendment which forbid any further U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia, effective August 15, 1973. The veto-proof vote was 278-124 in the House and 64-26 in the Senate. The Amendment paved the way for North Vietnam to wage yet another invasion of the South, this time without fear of U.S. bombing. The US effectively stopped funding the South Vietnamese military effort.
We had steady draw down of troops concluding on March 29, 1973 when the last remaining American troops withdrew from Vietnam as President Nixon declares "the day we have all worked and prayed for has finally come." January 27, 1973 marked the last American soldier to die in combat in Vietnam, Lt. Col. William B. Nolde.
The Democrats had bought the Kerry story that the American military was an instrument of the devil. They still believe that. Corollary to that was the belief in the goodness of the enemy.
The Dems didn't buy Kerry's story. They used it as a fig leaf to get out of the war and save their political hides. They wanted to disassociate themselves from Johnson's war, which became Nixon's war. Of course, they don't want to be held responsible for what happened aftre we left and the MSM gives them a pass.
Nixon contributed to this by opening relations with Mao. In a way that was as cynical as Hitler's pact with Stalin.
Nixon was trying to stabilize and regularize relations with the PRC, particularly after the political vacuum of our departure from Vietnam. When Nixon visited China in February 1972, there were around 70,000 US troops in Vietnam.
By dealing with Mao, Nixon gave credence to the McGovernite claim that WE were responsible for the Cold War and that anti-communism was a bugbear. The last statement is the essence of Kerry's testimony. We had falsely held up communism as an evil, when our real purpose was imperial exploitation of the oil resources of the South China Sea etc. That remains the subtext of the DFemocratic oppostion to Reagan's policy, inclduing oppisitin to the communists in the Caribbean, for their total infatuation with Castro. (Never mind that we now know that Castro was weilling to let Cuba be incinerated just so he could get nuclear revenge on the USA. Khrushchev, thank God, knew he was dealing with a raving fanatic. The Left in this country still arein denial of that fact.)