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30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon

By Jeralyn, Section Foreign Affairs
Posted on Sat Apr 30, 2005 at 08:28:12 AM EST
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It was 30 years ago today that Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, who renamed it Ho Chi Minh City.

An estimated three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans were killed during the war....But the legacy of what the Vietnamese call the American War lingers in unexploded ordinance, in wounded veterans and in victims of Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant U.S. troops used to wipe out the jungle foliage that provided cover to their opponents.

....The Vietnamese government blames Agent Orange for the serious health problems of at least one million people. The Vietnam Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims says more than 200,000 Vietnamese live with birth defects, deformities and disease that can be traced to exposure to the chemicals.

Some more stats from the final section of the excellent BBC series, War and Protest: the U.S. in Vietnam, which begins with the period of 1946 to 1964.

An estimated total of 2,122,244 people were killed during the war in Vietnam. Of these, 58,169 were Americans. Of those Americans, 11,465 were teenagers. An estimated 3,650,946 additional people were wounded, of whom 304,000 were Americans. 153,329 Americans were categorized as 'seriously' wounded. That total includes 10,000 amputees.

An estimated 444,000 North Vietnamese and 220,557 South Vietnamese military personnel and 587,000 civilians were killed.

6,727,084 tons of bombs were dropped. This is about two-and-a-half times the total tonnage dropped on Germany during World War II.

3,750 fixed wing aircraft and 4,865 helicopters were lost.

18 million gallons of poisonous chemicals were poured on Vietnam.

The dollar cost of the United States involvement in the war in Vietnam is estimated at $140 billion.

The article also has some key dates and events about the end of U.S. military involvement in Viet Nam (these are direct quotes)

  • The United States Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment on 19 June, 1973. This Act specifically forbade any further US military activity if Southeast Asia, beginning August 15, 1973. It passed by a vote of 278-124 in the House of Representatives and 64-26 in the senate. That vote would have been adequate to override a Presidential veto. The United States stopped its bombing in Cambodia on 14 August, 1973.
  • On 7 November, 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, which required that the President obtain the support of Congress within 90 days of sending American troops abroad.
  • On 8 August, 1974, Richard M Nixon became the first United States President to resign. Gerald Ford became the first US President to hold that office without having been elected to the Presidency or Vice Presidency.
  • On 16 September, 1974, President Ford announced a clemency programme for draft evaders and military deserters. The programme was to run until 31 March, 1975. It required that participants take an oath of allegiance and perform up to two years of community service. About 22,500 people participated in the programme, out of an estimated 124,000 eligible.
  • In December 1974, North Vietnamese military forces attacked Phuoc Long Province in South Vietnam, in violation of the peace treaty. President Ford registered diplomatic protests, but complied with the Congressional ban on all US military activity in Southeast Asia....On 21 January, President Ford, during a press conference, stated the US would not re-enter the war.
  • Between 19 March and 30 March, the North Vietnamese Army captured Quang Tri City, Tam Ky, Hue, Chu Lai and Da Nang. In Da Nang, 100,000 South Vietnamese soldiers surrendered after their commanding officers abandoned them. The North Vietnamese Army started its final push to Saigon on 31 March.
  • President Thieu resigned from office on 21 April, 1975....Two days later, as 100,000 North Vietnamese soldiers advanced on Saigon, President Ford, speaking at Tulane University, said that the war in Vietnam was 'a war that is finished as far as America is concerned'.
  • On 28 April 28, General Duong Van Minh became the new president of South Vietnam. ...On 29 April, 1975, the North Vietnamese Army shelled the Tan Son Nhut air base in Saigon. President Ford ordered the evacuation of all Americans.
  • As the helicopter evacuation got under way, South Vietnamese civilians made their way into the base and started looting. The evacuation was shifted to the American embassy, which was walled in and secured by US Marines in full combat gear.
  • At 8.35 am, 30 April, the last ten Marines were evacuated from the Embassy. The United States was no longer involved in the Vietnamese War. By 11.00 am, the North Vietnamese Flag was flying over the presidential palace in Saigon. President Minh broadcast a message of unconditional surrender. The North Vietnamese Army had completed the campaign, which had been expected to last two years, in 55 days.

I highly recommend the entire BBC series.

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    • 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon | 33 comments (33 topical)
    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#1)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:35 PM EST
    "In addition to ending the draft and so turning the military into a strictly professional force, Vietnam contributed to the advance of militarism, counterintuitively, exactly because the US lost the war. This defeat, deeply disillusioning to America's leadership elites set off a never-concluded debate about the "lessons" to be learned form it. For a newly ascended far right, Vietnam became a just war that the left wing had not had the will or the courage to win... For Reagan and Bush...the central lessons of Vietnam was not that foreign policy had to be more democratic, but the opposite: it had to become ever more the province of national security managers who operated without the close scrutiny of the media, the oversight of congress, oraccountability to an involved public. the result has been the emergence of a coterie of professional militarists who classify everything the do as secret and who have been appointed to senior positions throughout the executive branch." Chalmers Johnson the Sorrows of Empire. Italics are mine Bold is for "Social liberals, defense hawks"

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#2)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:35 PM EST
    My wife works with a South Vietnamese man who, following the fall of Saigon, spent nearly two decades in a reeducation camp ‘learning’ to be a good socialist. He later escaped to the US and is now in his medical residency. Lucky man. Likely the only good to come of that war was the amazing resource of Vietnamese that fled the communists, settled here, and contribute fantastically to our economy.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#3)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:35 PM EST
    piggle, we supported genocide against the citizens of vietnam. most of the west did. and you're surprised that an unpleasant outcome occurred? if you were a vietnamese peasant, who'd have you supported in that war? my friend, reality is not simply "i know a guy", it's a long series of choices, mistakes, and uncomfortable ironies involving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people. the communists in vietnam were right. they were figting foreign invaders. just like you would here. now, put on your thinking cap for a second and imagine an america with a history of foreign intervention like vietnam or anyplace similar. can you imagine what would happen to vietnamese pilots if they'd been shot down bombing denver, or chicago? senator mccain was lucky, the vietnamese would have been roasted on a spit and eaten by rednecks. history is ugly. we've had a great hand in the ugliness. and a great hand in the prettiness. we've also managed to demonize words like communism, socialism, liberal, etc., and throw them all into a pile and point fingers. all communists and socialists are the same, right? so all black people must be the same. and all catholics. and all republicans. just weak, very weak thinking. i've met vietnamese communists who don't want anything to do with throwing people in jail for what they think or for their politics. i've also met american capitalists who think the government should be in the business of making it easier for them to line their pockets. vietnam and that area of the world are still recovering and evolving from the murderous, dimwitted, utterly failed treatment of larger nations and powers. are you surprised they'd be closer to china than us? we tried to annihilate them. that they are friendly to us at all oughtta give you much more faith in them as a people "on the way."

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#4)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    dadler- Wow, you got an amazing amount of crap out of a three-line post. If you have a problem with the content of those three lines, well, bust out with it. I’m not going to defend the reams of garbage you would like to put in my mouth.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#5)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    piggle, reams of garbage? gimme a break. what i did, einstein, was elaborate on the subtext of your post. or do you not believe in subtext? or are all of your posts of less than five lines intellect-free and discerning their meaning a clown's errand? you took your wife's experience with one guy (who i have no doubt suffered) and used it to make a sweeping generalization about a war, an entire country, a generation of its citizens. i don't like that kind of thinking so i responded. kind of the point here, wouldn't you say. next time, tho, i'll try to remember your short posts are to be seen and not thought about or responded to. peace, my friend.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#6)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    The government has functioned by anecdote since Mr. Reagan capitalized on that folksy form of fraud. I know a guy who was a poor businessman who was hounded by an evil empire, was not allowed to make money and create jobs and prosperity, and now thanks to American know-how, he's the acting minister of the oil industry in a leading wave of middle eastern democracy. His name is Chalabi, but you can call him curveball.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#7)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    dadler- “reams of garbage? gimme a break. what i did, einstein, was elaborate on the subtext of your post.” What you did was write five paragraphs about three lines of text. Fantastically inviting me in on some collective guilt over a war that was fought and lost before I was out of diapers. “next time, tho, i'll try to remember your short posts are to be seen and not thought about or responded to.” Get over yourself. I expect you to respond to the text of my post, not the projection of your prototypical conservative (or whatever windmills you're tilting today) as imagined ‘subtext’.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#8)
    by Che's Lounge on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Dadler, Great post. Pigwiggle, 'learning to be a good socialist' You got slapped and you deserved it. Your maoralistic tale was short, but quite understandable. Was this short enough for you?

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#9)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    pig, so now i'm trying to fill you with guilt? jesus h., are you STILL in diapers? how about a sense of inheriting history. btw, i'll assume you didn't own slaves either and won't hold you personally accountable for the legacy of that institution. i'm sure that's a load off for you. and sorry you don't think your own thoughts merit thought in return. tho i never imagined anything but the actual subtext i was picking up. guess you don't think there was any. so we disagree. and i don't know anything about you, whether you're a prototypical conservative or whatever. (tho is entertains me that in replying to my taking offense to your generlizing, you assume i am generalizing about you) i responded to what you wrote. your wife knows a guy. so therefore vietnam is that guy. and the only good thing about vietnam were all the refugees like that guy coming over here. i got it. the subtext was much more interesting.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#10)
    by Ernesto Del Mundo on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    One of the bits of fallout from that war was that the media were barred from the next country we invaded, and it was chosen because it was a slam dunk (Grenada). The media has since been emasculated/embedded and the draft done away with...so massive casualties are now acceptable to a lot of good Americans. The imperial hangover has finally ended and the president can once again sink billions of dollars and thousands of lives into any dubious business venture of his choice w/o having to worry about political ramifications. In other words we have come even further than full circle...

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#11)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Che summed it up pretty well, PW. You attempted to demonize Socialism immediately after the context of the cost of the Vietnam War was provided by TL. That is the equivalent of attempting to justify that cost. But let's just stop assuming and drop the ad hominems and pretexts - you think that U.S. intervention in Vietnam was worthwhile, despite the costs? If yes, why didn't the U.S. prevail? Because of folk singing hippies (aka "bums") used the evil liberal media to thwart the righteous hawks or do you have a more substantial reasoning for it? You see, I don't believe that public opinion ended the war; I believe that our government has been largely unaccountable to the people for some time now. Thus, I would entertain a theory of the latter.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#12)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Tampa, Two things ended the war: first, a vast majority of the Vietnamese people thought Ho Chi Minh was the George Washington of Vietnam so the South Vietnamese government could never be popular - or the country pacified. Neither was the US military capable of winning, partially because of a draft-based army that just wanted to do their tour and get out alive - partially because the political turmoil here kept the military from "bombing them back into the stone age" etc. Second: the increasing politicization, and polarization, of the issue. By the end, a majority of politicians had to be anti-war.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#13)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    JCH - Wrong. TS - Wrong. The war was very winable at a point in late 67 and on into 68. Long about then our political leaders lost their nerve, and the North understood they could win a political solution just by hanging on and killing a few Americans a day, and never getting into a major battle, such as Tet, which the North lost, but such perceptive people as Walter Cronkite pronounced as a loss for the US. The war itself was worthwhile in that it was an extension of the "contanment" policy we had established, and was actually triggered by the South asking us in. And then there was SEATO, and the dominio theory. Just the war itself slowed the expansion and validated the containment strategy. Ernesto - Grenada was invaded because a communist/leftist government was in the process of building a runway with length enough to handle long range bombers, from the USSR. You know that. Dadler - The North systematically came into villages and killed/raped/plundered all who disagreed. Che - Kind of remains you of your namesake when it comes to killing, eh?

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#14)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Jim, I respect you a great deal - but we supported the interims government's scraping of the free elections mandated in the Geneva Accords in 1956 because, as Eisenhower, wrote: 80% of the Vietnamese would have voted for Ho Chi Minh if they were held. This was 30 years ago, and a huge part of my life then - so I will not argue it further now. But bottom line - we lost in Vietnam because we were not on the right side: and they persevered and attritioned us to death. If we do not know this lesson, then Iraq becomes scarier. You cannot win a war with an indigenous insurrection if that insurrection has true support in the population. So make sure the Iraqi government is building a truly democratic base - and isolating the insurrection POLITICALLY or we will not win militarily.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#15)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    JCH - I am very familar myself, and I gather we would have been on opposite sides at that time. I do wonder why you refer to the North as the "right side." Surely you aren't going to say that communism, the re-education camps, etc., was the "right" side. We lost because the media and the activists scared our so-called political leaders into not fighting to win.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#16)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    PPJ is an unapologetic War Corporatist in any context. Besides, I've heard his opinion on it before with General so-and-so and Tet. I hadn't heard PW's. Fleet, I find myself agreeing with you, but all of the garbage and "polls used as evidence" that supposedly reflects the consent/will of people is ultimately moot regardless of its accuracy. Every administration since WWII has had the ability to launch nation building efforts due to the indefinite state of emergency that has given the U.S. president the power of a King. Only the fear of foreign reprisal and economic losses are deterrents. We as citizens get tear gassed and possibly shot (as at Kent State) if we choose to protest en masse. The media doesn't end wars (in any era), it's just a tool to help evil people (and their followers) start them. Whether it be incompatible military mindset/motivation for a drawn out guerrilla war, the terrain, the resolve of the opposition, financial implications / domestic economic consequences, etc, I just don't see MLK or the coalition of broadly diverse groups against the war (which PPJ would edit out of the record) bringing troops home. Vietnam was a proxy battle with foreign Communist interests; it was an exercise in modern nation building rather than classical empire - it was a battlefield in a larger war - their citizens in the middle. Our government has no noble intentions in its nation building today - only War Corporatism for the sake of the short term. My point, Fleet, is that we shouldn't be trying to satiate an occupied people at all - we should hold ourselves and our government to something more noble than "Conservative Values". Americans need to fall out of love with their prejudices, ethnocentrism, and runaway materialism. Leave foreign land and their resources to their people, unless they choose to engage in capitalism with us. The vast majority of them are innocent people with a right to live/not be American, regardless of whether your exclusive religion or "values" tell you otherwise.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#17)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    PPj There is a difference between saying we supported the wrong side; and saying the north was the right. Even saying the North is a little misleading. Millions of supporters of Ho went North to wait for the elections that never came; and then invaded the South when they returned. They never accepted the legitimacy of the division because it was never legitimate. We should have just let the Geneva Process run. None of those end of WWII separations worked well: E and W Germany; N and S Vietnam; N and S Korea. Vietnam was a civil war than occured because we gave support to the side that would have lost the election. We kept the worst kind of corrupt despots in power in Saigon - because they never had a political base to be otherwise. Do not tell me about despots of the North - we are responsible for the ones we create. The "right side" was to stay out of it. Let the Vietnamese elect Ho Chi Minh. Then, if communism failed in Vietnam the way it failed everywhere else so be it. Civil War's are bloody, horrible things. Our's was: Sherman's match to the sea (no rape of villagers and killing of villiage officials there); reconstruction (no re-eduacation going on there); blacklash with the Klu Klux Klan once the North's will to support true populism in the South ended and reconstruction failed. Learn from it brother. It was a horrible political and military defeat for the US that regretfully we deserved. Bring the lessons forward or we will make them again in Iraq.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#18)
    by Ernesto Del Mundo on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Ernesto - Grenada was invaded because a communist/leftist government was in the process of building a runway with length enough to handle long range bombers, from the USSR. You know that.
    Actually, I don't know that, Ronnie Reagan told me it was to save the medical school students there.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#19)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Ernesto - You didn't believe anything else Reagan said, so why that? JCH - What you are basically saying is non-intervention. Works for me, except it doesn't work for containment. The vast majority of the people in the South, and in the north, would have been happy to be left alone. And the North invaded the South, not the reverse. (I hope you aren't going to tell us that the VC were independent rebels.) Our mistake was in not entering the war with clear political will, and then fighting it in 64, 65, 66, 67, etc. in phases." They hit us, we hit them back slightly harder, etc. The only thing such a strategy ever does is get people killed and prolong the fight. When you have clear military advantge, use it immediately. Our failure to not pursue and kill let them regroup and use our own strength - democracy and freedom - against us.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#20)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    I think despite the record, the American people are really not that keen on these aggressive wars. The apparatus that runs the country loves them, lots of profit to Bell Helicopter in Vietnam. We were lucky in Vietnam. After wreaking havoc and killing millions, the Vietnamese let us walk away when we left. They didn't fly airplanes into our buildings or blow up any federal buildings in this country. May have something to do with Buddhism and that culture, I am not sure. I am glad we finally walked away from that war. Vietnam may not be the democratic haven we hope to produce in Iraq, but you can only drop so many bombs and kill so many women and children before our vision of democracy gets a little tarnished.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#21)
    by Dadler on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    jim, it was a war we started. we leveled villages and killed women and children, too, and at a much greater rate than the vietnamese. you don't like the "ism" that replaced western totalitarianism in the area, but for the people there...it was certainly better than being starved to death by the french or bombed into oblivion by us because we had to play tit for tat in some completely dimwitted game of global butchery. if you can't for one second take the perspective of your average vietnamese citizen at the time, those 80 percent who would've voted for ho chi minh (their george washington), then i think you need to work on your powers of imagination. having a solid one makes life much easier to deal with.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#22)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    PPJ The Geneva Accords ending the war with the French required the Vietnamese who backed the French and those who fought the French to disengage for two years until elections could be held. An interim government was set up in the south until the elections could be held There were not, nor was there intended to be, two countrys. The military forces, and the irregular guerillas, moved North across a demilitarized zone. Political parties were allowed to form and act to work toward the elections scheduled for 1956. Diem in the southern part of Vietnam (I still cant call it South Vietnam - that was really a fiction) cancelled the elections, and slaughtered the political activists in the south. Military units that went north came back. Most agree that those units were comprised of folks from the south who went north because of the agreements. The Vietnamese north of the demilitarized zone; and the guerillas to the south never considered themselves two political entities - they were all residents of what was one country until the rebels in the south decided to set up their own government and violate the peace accords. It was no more a case of North Vietnam invading South Vietnam than the United States invading the Confederate States. We didnt recognize the legitimacy of the south here either. Vietnam was one case of containment gone wrong.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#23)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:36 PM EST
    Entered the war with clear political will? The political will was to engage the communist threat and engage/instigate/support a series of wars to tie up the Chinese and Russians. It may have worked in some ways, but if you happen to be an average Vietnamese villager or Nicaraugan peasant or Afghani, the experience could have been devastating or lethal. It's amazing to me that we dropped more bombs in Vietnam than were dropped in WWII and we still have folks like Jim claiming we didn't have the will for war. Self-delusion is a powerful thing.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#24)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:37 PM EST
    TS, et. al. “you think that U.S. intervention in Vietnam was worthwhile, despite the costs?” It is clear to me that none of you actually read my post and were instead waiting to for a brawl with anyone who seemed to even remotely support the war. So I will quote my previous post, perhaps now you can take the time? ‘Likely the only good to come of that war was the amazing resource of Vietnamese that fled’. No, I don’t think it is a proper use of military force to bend the political will of other folks. As I have said before on this very board, if you want to correct a perceived injustice, i.e. the communist takeover of Vietnam, buy a rifle and a plane ticket. My post was about immigration. “You attempted to demonize Socialism immediately after the context of the cost of the Vietnam War was provided by TL. That is the equivalent of attempting to justify that cost.” I don’t need to. Take a page from my book. I’m pro capitalism but I don’t support capitalism where it trumps the rights of individuals. You wont find yourself in the awkward position of supporting murderers like Castro and Luong. “You got slapped and you deserved it.” Che, you writing copy for the WWF now. Look, the shorter the better.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#26)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    JCH writes - "There were not, nor was there intended to be, two countrys." You know, it is amusing for me to watch you give creditability to the North, but not to the South. Can you explain that? I mean, if we were supposed to be fair and balance, wasn't the desire of those in the South equal to those in the North? And if the South killed off its opposition, didn't the North do the same? And, finally, wasn't it the North who invaded the South. JCH, your problem is you are biased towards the politcs and government of the North. You therefore forgive them. CA - We DID NOT enter the war with a clear political will.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#27)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    Ah, to live in your simple world, Jim. You believe we did not enter the war with a clear political will. I believe we did. These are opinions, neither of us can prove who is correct. I think there was a will, but it was not to unite a divided country called Vietnam. Frankly, we could scarcely have cared less about Vietnam before or after our little proxy war with the Communists. After Korea, it was clear to many decision makers in DC that an invasion into a northern communist part of a country that was in the proximity of China might not be a good idea whereas fighting the Chinese and Russians to a standstill and economic disaster through our proxy wars was good politics and economics. Especially if you had stock in Bell, McDonald Douglas et al. Where were you serving during those years, Jim?

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#28)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    I can't remember, does Vietnam have any significant oil reserves? Our political will appears to be like a divining rod for oil reserves. We want to bring democracy and halliburton to countries with oil reserves. Countries without sigificant oil reserves are useful as ideological battlefields and for testing weapon system, but out political will in those areas does not extend to enduring political change. I guess we can think about who is luckier, the Vietnamese who never benefited from our generosity and willingness to help them establish democracy or the Iraqis who are experiencing a little stress with our generous attention.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#29)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    Jim, Please - keep up the thread we were doing so well. (1) north (not North) and south (not South) (2) 80% supported Ho in 1956 by our reckoning - not Ho's so ... (3) the communist's were willing to have elections and were politicing for such and (4) the interim government in Saigon cancelled the elections and declared an independent country, in violation of the peace accords, with US support. LET THE WAR BEGIN. That's my world - your view next. And i already answered the "invasion" thang.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#30)
    by ppjakajim on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    CA - Based on your input it is doubtful you know much about Vietnam except you hated the fact that we went there. Position noted. JCH - No, NORTH and SOUTH. "80% supported Ho in 1956 by our reckoning" Do you have a mouse in your pocket? I think that was an opinon. And you haven't answered the invasion charge. The South wanted to be free from the North. What was wrong with that? I mean besides not giving the North what they wanted.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#31)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    I am happy to note that Jane Fonda is OFF THE HOOK. She went to N. Vietnam in 1972, and John Bolton has said that the war was "LOST" before 1970... ...which is why he didn't serve in a war he supported. That and "not wanting to get shot." Not wanting to get shot? Isn't that COWARDICE? Read 'em and weep, Jim (et al.).

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#32)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:38 PM EST
    "And you haven't answered the invasion charge. The South wanted to be free from the North. What was wrong with that?" Seems like we had a similar problem a while back. Atlanta and Saigon -- not so far apart after all.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#35)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:39 PM EST
    The use of agent orange certainly qualifies as a war crime in my book. It's a shame we haven't learned from that mistake, as we poison the fields of Columbia today. How many Vietnamese were killed? 2 million I believe. For guys like Jim, that's just not fighting to win. We should have destroyed every dam and starved 20 million. Then we'd be "winners". Monstrous.

    Re: 30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon (none / 0) (#36)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:58:39 PM EST
    Jim The 80% was President Eisenhower's opinion - the one on which we based our policy in Vietnam. Got no problem with the south wanting to be separate - our south did the same thing. With the same result. Also have no problem with the fighters from the south who went north by the terms of the Geneva Accords coming back - if it makes you feel better to consider their return an "invasion", go with it.

    30 Year Anniversary of Fall of Saigon | 33 comments (33 topical)