The Vietnamization of Iraq
Here was the Left’s plan for defeat in Iraq, in their own words. I wrote about it in the early days of this blog.
They were planning to get Congress to cut funding, but that turned out to be unnecessary. They got their antiwar candidate, Obama, elected instead. And it didn’t matter that the war was basically won, they managed to lose it anyway.
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Except it’s much, much worse. With Vietnam, “only” the people of Vietnam and Cambodia suffered after our involvement in the war was ended. With Iraq, many more will suffer before this is through, I’m afraid. And although the post-war carnage in neither Vietnam nor Cambodia directly and intimately affected us (although it was dreadful to read and hear about), this time the Islamist terrorists of ISIS would like to make the killings up close and personal.
History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and betrayal, the second time as greater tragedy and betrayal. Sorry, but I fail to see the farce.
Very insightful and also very true.
Beautiful post, Neo. And, horrendously true. The future is a thing of the past. Cheney knew it. Rumsfeld knew it. Rice knew it. Wolfowitz knew it. Bolton and Feith knew it. Their Chief, GWB, knew it and led on that principle. The current crowd denied it. Claimed it was lies our leaders were telling us. That feelings, impulses, desertion of duty and sticking to the Mission we’d victoriously brought(Iraq) was nothing worth following through.
We see the benefits that significant portions of the world are reaping having seen years of Obama’s proud weakness. Sad beyond expressing.
The betrayal of Vietnam did affect some of us neo. In my eighteen months there I served primarily in remote mountaintop locations where there was almost no contact with civilians. But I did get a chance to know a few of the Vietnamese and quickly learned to love and respect them. I even had a grudging respect for the bad guys because they were incredibly brave.
I cried like a baby in April of 1975. And am still haunted by thoughts of what may have happened to those good people.
The situation in ISIL land will impact everyone in the West. Without America strong and leading from the front, a host of bad players will take the hind most.
kaba,
You were deserted by the people and the whores of DC. I admire your service and feel utter contempt for the whores of DC and the zombies that vote more power to them.
Kaba,
My son and I read this book about the MSG’s that were the last to leave Vietnam. What a compelling read. And yes, my heart ached, for those left standing in line, not even realizing the last helicopter flew out.
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Men-Out-Americas-Vietnam/dp/143916102X
One of my enduring memories: A Montagnard patrol came to my location one day. None of them were very large but the smallest was no more than 4’8″ or 4’9″ tall and carrying what I thought to be an old Japanese rifle that was no doubt older and almost as long as he was tall. I managed to learn that he was 14 years old and was begging for cigarettes. I started to tease that he was too young and too short to smoke when the leader grabbed my arm. He told me that the boy was “very, very bad.” and had “crocodiled beaucoup VC”. I shared what few cigarettes I had.
If he survived that young man would be 59 years old today. But the NVA were particularly hard on the Montagnard people and tried to exterminate them.
kaba:
When I wrote “the post-war carnage in neither Vietnam nor Cambodia directly and intimately affected us (although it was dreadful to read and hear about),” I was trying to make it clear that by “carnage directly and intimately affecting us” I meant that the actual violence did not occur on our shores. I absolutely did not mean that it did not affect many of us psychologically and deeply, particularly those who served in Vietnam or knew people who did.
Obama is not anti-war. He has prosecuted wars against a number of sovereign nations. Notably against nations lead by nationalist Muslim leaders. His actions have sponsored the resurrection of imperial (international leftists) Muslims leaders and groups.
That said… Make life, not abortion.
A fall of Vietnam history: “Tears Before the Rain”: eyewitness accounts of the American Bugout.
“CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death.
“Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway, which was gaping open as the plane took off. “There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up, because of the force and speed of the aircraft, the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while, but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off–just like a skydiver…. What was going through my head was, I’ve got to survive this, and at the same time, I’ve got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history, right here and now.”
“In Tears Before the Rain, a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam, Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who, like Mike Marriott, capture the feel of history “right here and now.” We hear the voices of nurses, pilots, television and print media figures, the American Ambassador Graham Martin, the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar, Vietnamese generals, Amerasian children, even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers.
“Through this extraordinary range of perspectives, we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed, from President Thieu’s cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum, (Colonel Le Khac Ly, put in command of the withdrawal, recalls receiving the order: “I opened my eyes large, large, large. I thought I wasn’t hearing clearly”) to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof (“I remember when the bird ascended,” says Stuart Herrington, who left on one of the last helicopters, “It banked, and there was the Embassy, the parking lot, the street lights. And the silence”).
“Touching, heroic, harrowing, and utterly unforgettable, these dramatic narratives illuminate one of the central events of modern history. “It was like being at Waterloo,” concludes Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. “It was so important, so historical. And today it is still very obvious that we Americans have not recovered from Vietnam….Nothing else in my lifetime was as important as that–as important as Vietnam.”
http://preview.tinyurl.com/lptzbw2
The blood of literally millions of human beings, and the misery of hundreds of millions more, is on the hands of the International Left.
May they rot in hell.
Beverly, I completely concur.
I also, with Scott and Beverly. I worked as a volunteer with the church social services to resettle Vietnamese refugees in 1975. All of them had heartbreaking stories,
The democrats hated Nixon and they would do anything to prevent Nixon from having a victory in Vietnam. If they had to sell out our allies in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to screw Nixon, so be it.