The New York Sun reminds us today that when the anti-war Democrats, riding into power on the back of Watergate, finally cut off funding for the South Vietnamese, there were no American combat troops remaining in South Vietnam. Nixon's Vietnamization had been successful and the South Vietnamese, allies of the United States, and an imperfect capitalist democracy, were holding their own against the North Vietnamese communists. The Sun editorial lays out the Timeline of Defeat and asks crucial questions:
In January 1974, according to a timeline at PBS.org, the North Vietnamese were then "still too weak to launch a full-scale offensive," but had "rebuilt their divisions in the South" and "captured key areas." Watergate was gathering, and on August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned. At this point, there was only a doughty little government in South Vietnam that was standing alone against the combined might of the Soviet Union and the Communist Chinese. And it was prepared to fight on for another generation.
The Congress, however, wasn't prepared to stake them, despite the fact that South Vietnam was our ally in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. In October 1974, the 93rd Congress voted to end foreign aid to Vietnam. President Ford vetoed the measure. Congress, after an election that expanded the Democratic majority by 48 seats in the House and five in the Senate, overrode the veto. In the Spring, the 94th Congress blocked military appropriations for the South Vietnamese. It was not about our GIs. They had long since gone. A country of 50 million individuals who had sided with America and yearned for freedom was cast into the dark night of communist tyranny. [Emphasis mine-SW]
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So what are the Democrats thinking today? Is this the direction in which they want to go? President Bush's threat of a veto appears to have forced them to abandon a timeline for defeat in Iraq. But Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi have made it clear they are going to keep trying. What was it about the Communists that the Democrats wanted to give them Indochina, a region with as many persons as Eastern Europe? And what is it about our Islamist enemies that makes the Democrats so determined to abandon a free Iraq? The tragedy of Vietnam taught that this is the question that needs to be asked and answered and that a default will haunt the politicians now in power for generations, as their own children and the children of our GIs demand to know their motives.
It is impossible to answer the Sun's questions without a consideration of the psychological defenses mobilized by those who executed the first betrayal of our Vietnamese allies and are now contemplating the next betrayal, of our Iraqi friends and allies.
During the Vietnam era, as the war dragged on seemingly without any resolution in sight, as the "light at the end of the tunnel" never materialized, the anti-war movement became more and more desperate and intense. The anti-war movement had been started and manipulated by far left groups with an anti-American, pro-communist agenda. In order to capitalize on America's growing anxiety about our prospects in Vietnam, a campaign was begun to portray the South Vietnamese as corrupt (which they surely were in part) and quasi-fascistic. Photos of the young victim of Napalm and the story of My Lai supported the idea that American GIs were being turned into amoral murderers and torturers; the war was destroying the moral fabric of America and creating monsters. The picture of the summary execution of a Viet Cong prisoner (with no context and no reporting of the atrocities committed on a regular basis by the VC) were important incidents which supported the idea that the South Vietnamese were unworthy of our help; in fact, the South Vietnamese government was considered to be even worse than the North Vietnamese communists, who were presented as anti-colonialist, idealistic freedom fighters.
These ideas were eagerly accepted as adequate rationalizations by those who were primarily concerned about their own vulnerabilities. (It was no coincidence that the anti-war movement dissipated as soon as the draft effectively ended.)
Further, the post war generation was taught that evil resided on the right and that the left was the natural abode of "liberty, fraternity, equality." The equivalence of freedom fighters and anti-colonialists completed the construction of a dialectic that placed most societal "ideals" on the left and most societal "defects" on the right. In such a setting it was natural to accept the demonization of the South Vietnamese without too much close inquiry.
The outcome of such a structured rationalization is that in order to maintain the rationalization (all defenses need to be constantly supported in order to keep unacceptable ideas from emerging from the forbidden unconscious precincts they inhabit) the South Vietnamese government, even after the Americans left, still needed to be seen as evil. It was this that allowed the Democrats to betray our friends and allies and led to the horrors that followed when the communists brought their tender ministrations to the new captives of the South.
We can see the effects of this ongoing demonization in BDS, in the Democrat's insistence on losing the war in Iraq while ignoring the obvious consequences of such a defeat, and in the use of such images and stories as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as attempts to recreate My Lai and the Napalm girl picture; ie, as attempts to delegitimize our efforts in Iraq and demonize the military.
Enough Americans have been able to work through their youthful rationalizations and recognize their responsibility for the terrible treatment we accorded our military and our allies in Southeast Asia and are committed to avoiding a repetition. Yet the base of the Democratic party remains locked in their fantasy creation, that only they are the repositories of all that is good and moral in America; to question the horrors that their behavior has caused and threatens to cause again is tantamount to questioning their very nature. That is unacceptable. It is why a fool like John Edwards can declare there is no war on terror and why a light weight intellect like Nancy Pelosi can deny that al Qaeda has anything to do with Iraq. It is also why the Democrats have boxed themselves into a corner: they must not be seen as anti-military (which so many of them are) and must present their betrayal as an attempt to support the troops, who when not considered murderers and torturers, are considered innocent victims.
Just as with Vietnam, our defeat will have repercussions in the real world with real people; unlike Vietnam, the repercussions will be felt by Americans and our allies in ways which will make the South Vietnamese sacrifices pale in comparison.
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