Recently, the discussion was about the Tet Offensive and how the events of February, 1968 related to current day situations was posted on this blog here and here.
Possibly now, it is the moment to get ahead of the power curve and discuss the big picture that happened 30 years ago, and see if it may relate to what happens next….
So, Richard Nixon was President. The Democrats had control of the Congress. The President, as he promised in his election campaign was pulling our troops out of ground combat positions, yet left the promise of support for the South Vietnamese Army, using the strategy of “Vietnamization,” a process of turning the war over to the ARVNs, as they were able to handle it.
Effectively, in 1972, our ground combat forces were out, safe advisers left the ARVNs. While the president is the Commander-in-Chief, Congress controls the money (you’d think people would quit accusing the presidents, of any time, of what goes on with the budget, but, once more, I digress). So Congress cut off the funding for the supporting arms and the supplies from America going to South Vietnam. Now, the study of history over the ages shows the winner of wars is the country who has the best logistics and can out-produce the adversary in the fight. When “we” (the Democratic Congress) pulled appropriations from the war support effort for our allies, they sentenced them to loss of the war, and, in many cases, death in a very literal sense.
So in 1975, the NVA rolled into Saigon and raised the North Vietnamese flag in that city. It was over. What next? The Communist rebels in Cambodia, led by Pol Pot now had nothing to fear and a totalitarian government came into power and the killing fields became a part of life, as about 1/2 of the population of Cambodia was killed it’s own.
Why did the conquest of South Vietnam and the mass murders happen across the border? There was no nation with the power to let them know this wasn’t acceptable.
What does this mean today?
We already know there is simmering hate in Iraq between the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds. We have not yet been able to help them understand there’s a better way to solve issues than to murder 75 people a day, using very brutal means.
Add to this, there is at least one neighboring country, Iran, already stirring the pot, for for us to have an ally, let alone a foothold in the region, keeps them in check, unable to carry out their desires to control much of the region. Syria is a player, too, but seem to at least be keeping their head down and themselves out of the media coverage.
So, the time may come, if the Democrats can strong arm their agenda to withdraw, whether by getting the President to acquiesce to this via the “bi-partisan” Iraq Working Committee, or by the pulling of appropriations for any support of our troops. The Department of Defense will end up with no choice to bring the troops hone, or at least out of the battle zone of Iraq.
My prediction: The Sunnis, having been in power for so many years, used to being able to, even as a minority, rape the other cultural groups of the country, literally and figuratively, feeling they have some right to murder and torture as they feel. So, the Sunnis will come back with a vengance at the Kurds and Shiites. Bloodshed…and much of it.
Add to this the military power to the East, the Iranians. They, with their affinity for the Shiites, the majority culture, will now roll across the border and become directly engaged with the Sunnis. Bloodshed.
The Kurds, who have rebuilt much of the infrastructure to the north, and are already prospering from the oil flowing, will most likely get attacked by the Sunnis and Shiites, and the Iranians, as they have valuable resources and are using them.
If we thought we stepped into a hornet’s nest in 2003, we haven’t seen anything that will be like this. The locals of the area will feel empowered to kill and plunder in even more horrific manners and scales than they have, for they now see “we” (and I substantially contribute this to the Democrats and the Liberals) don’t have the stomach for it. Much like asking someone to be an EMT and all they can do at any car accident is to stand by, while people bleed to death, throwing up. Those people, politically, are the Democrats and they, in this scenario, would decide it’s better to legislate against people having car accidents, rather than finding those who can take care of such messy conditions, and wait until things are safe to toss their cookies.
More and more, I am coming to see the Democrats in modern times are the party of death and destruction, with pools of blood running from their hands. They do this, not because it’s the best course of action for the rest of the world, or the country, but so they can ascend to positions of power, where they can rent the Lincoln bedroom out to friends to raise money, so they can buy their way back into power.
I can only figure their deep dissatisfaction with the War on Terror, is they see the revenues of President Bush’s tax cuts flowing towards Iraq, and not into their hands, to bribe the voters of the next election with their largess.
The Democrats and Liberals have never acknowledged they had a part in approximately 3M deaths in SE Asia after 1972. They cannot, for they would have to face their part in mass murder.
They stand on the edge of history and are prepared, with a complete disregard for history, their own, and that of world events, ready to loose the executioners in the Middle East, first, and later in Africa and Europe. They will then turn their face from the horror and go back to their fund raisers, not even consciously aware of their shameful part in the deaths.
My gallows humor would be to think maybe they are thinking of this outcome as a help for the environment, for after all, it’s people and the demands they place on industry, that cause greenhouse gasses and causes desertification and the now, the acidification of the oceans. If we have a few less million of us to cause pollution, let alone perpetuate the species, then we’ll not have to worry about running the air conditioners quite so long at the homes and offices of liberals.
Actually, Curt, the Kurds are pretty much on the sidelines in the age-old blood feuds and religious rivalries. Their only real difficulties lie with the outlaw Sunnis and Shiites causing trouble, and with incursions by the Turks *spit*. As a people group, they are probably closer in ethos to Americans (well, Americans of my grandfathers’ society–you know, self-reliant, responsible, straight dealing, etc.) than any other people in the region including the Israelis.
As I have said, I could live wityh partitioning the country into (mostly) Sunni/Shiite division with the traditional Kurdish lands in Kurdish hands… and the Kurds armed to the teeth, the oilfields made a strict NO-GO zone and the proceeds from the oil–bought at a fair market price of, say, $25-$35/barrel (partly to offset the cost of making the fields secure) by U.S. interests for U.S. use.
It’d be a win/win situation for the U.S. and the Kurds, and the rival Sunni/Shiite regions would be better off than at any time in their recent (say, last 100 years or so) history… if they didn’t spend all their wealth on killing each other.
Oh, arming the Kurds (alone!) to the teeth would have an additional set of benefits:
1. It’d put a stick in Turkey’s eye
2. Provide a reliable source of military to interdict Iranian incursions, should we wish to “contract” a few Saracen brigades for the task
3. Effectively disrupt terrorist efforts based in Iraq aimed at the U.S. (the Sunnis/Shiites would likely be too busy killing each other–a mixed blessing)
4. Free up troops for destabilizing Iran (not regime change, but specops aiding locals would be nice) and to place pressure (beyond the pressure of more cheaply-pumped oil) on the damned Saudis (and yes, I use the word “damned” theologically there).
Well you know the prime movers regarding sustainability and the Deep Ecology movement would support such reductions of the human species. Anything that limits the human effect is good in their view in the long term. Got to give it to them….. they do think ahead!
Sunday, April 3, 2005
Book reminds us of price they paid
GORDON DILLOW
Register columnist
This month will mark the 30th anniversary of a shameful chapter in our nation’s history. Thirty years ago we abandoned a longtime ally, the Republic of (South) Vietnam.
And with it, along with millions of others, we abandoned Quang X. Pham’s dad.
Quang is an old friend of mine, a 40-year-old Mission Viejo businessman who came to the U.S. as a boy refugee from Vietnam and later served as a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His father, Pham Van Hoa, now deceased, was a U.S.-trained South Vietnamese Air Force pilot who spent 12 years in a communist “re-education” camp because he refused to leave his country when the North Vietnamese army swept through South Vietnam in April 1975 – this while America, after investing 58,000 of its own sons’ lives, stood by and washed its hands of the entire bloody and tragic affair.
And even though he became an American who loved his country and served it courageously in uniform, for many years that abandonment rankled Quang’s heart. It rankled mine, too.
Quang has written a new book about his father, and about his own experiences as a refugee who became an American Marine. It’s called “A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey,” published by Ballantine Books (you can get more information at http://www.asenseofduty.com), and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what the Vietnam War meant to some of the people who suffered the most because of it – that is, the people of South Vietnam. It’s powerful, and moving, and in it Quang tries to dispel a myth about Vietnam that still persists.
The myth is that guys like his dad didn’t fight for their country.
“I just want to see South Vietnamese (military men) like my father acknowledged,” Quang told me. “Not made into heroes or anything, but just acknowledged for what they did. I wanted to set the record straight.”
Certainly the casualty numbers tell a story that’s far different from the myth. The South Vietnamese armed forces lost a total of about 250,000 men killed in the war – a number that, as a percentage of national population, was about 50 times greater than American deaths.
And the numbers of the maimed were even greater. Ten years ago, as a reporter for the Register, I went back to Vietnam to cover the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, and everywhere I went I would meet aging former ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers who were missing arms or legs or eyes, many of them reduced to beggary because the communist government offered no pensions or even menial jobs for former ARVNs. When they found out I’d been an American soldier in the war they would often break out yellowed, crumbling, long-hidden South Vietnamese military ID cards and tell me, “I was with you, I was with you.”
And they were.
Now, I know some of my fellow American Vietnam veterans will disagree with me on this subject. They’ll call me up and tell me bitter tales about “Marvin the ARVN,” about South Vietnamese M-16s that were in perfect condition because “they’d never been fired, and were only dropped once,” about South Vietnamese corruption and incompetence and cowardice. Certainly there was no shortage of such things, particularly in the ARVN’s politicized upper ranks.
But don’t tell me – or Quang X. Pham – that 250,000 guys died with no brave men among them. Don’t try to tell guys who got their arms or legs blown off that they didn’t fight hard enough. Don’t think that a lot of guys like Quang’s father didn’t have a sense of duty and honor, even as they lost their war, and their country, and languished in brutal communist prison camps for years and years and years.
In the coming weeks you’ll probably see and hear a lot of retrospectives about the Vietnam War, some of them truthful, many of them media myths perpetuated by people who were never even there – the same sort of myths that even now are being created about the Iraq war and the Americans who’ve been fighting it. More on that in a future column.
But if you think that the Vietnam War was strictly an American war, if you think that the people of South Vietnam weren’t worth fighting for, or with, then I have a suggestion.
Talk to a guy like Quang X. Pham.
And ask him about his dad.
[ed. note: the original article is from The Orange County Register.]