The Truth about the Vietnam War

When Democrats are in charge                                                “ The Truth about the Vietnam War Transcript 0:00Decades back, in late 1972, South Vietnam and the United States were winning the Vietnam War 0:07decisively by every conceivable measure. That's not just my view. 0:14That was the view of our enemy, the North Vietnamese government officials. 0:19 Victory was apparent when President Nixon ordered the U.S. Air Force 0:23to bomb industrial and military targets in Hanoi, North Vietnam's capital city, 0:29and in Haiphong, its major port city, and we would stop the bombing 0:34 if the North Vietnamese would attend the Paris Peace Talks that they had left earlier. 0:40The North Vietnamese did go back to the Paris Peace talks, and we did stop the bombing as promised. 0:48On January the 23rd, 1973, President Nixon gave a speech to the nation on primetime television 0:56announcing that the Paris Peace Accords had been initialed by the United States, 1:02South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and the Accords would be signed on the 27th. 1:09What the United States and South Vietnam received in those accords was victory. 1:15At the White House, it was called "VV Day," "Victory in Vietnam Day." 1:22The U.S. backed up that victory with a simple pledge within the Paris Peace Accords saying: 1:28should the South require any military hardware to defend itself against any North Vietnam aggression 1:36we would provide replacement aid to the South on a piece-by-piece, one-to-one 1:41replacement, meaning a bullet for a bullet; a helicopter for a helicopter, for all things lost -- 1:48replacement. The advance of communist tyranny had been halted by those accords. 1:55Then it all came apart. And It happened this way: In August of the following year, 1974, 2:03President Nixon resigned his office as a result of what became known as "Watergate." 2:09Three months after his resignation came the November congressional elections and within them 2:14the Democrats won a landslide victory for the new Congress and many of the members used 2:21their new majority to de-fund the military aid the U.S. had promised, piece for piece, 2:30breaking the commitment that we made to the South Vietnamese in Paris to provide whatever 2:36military hardware the South Vietnamese needed in case of aggression from the North. 2:42Put simply and accurately, a majority of Democrats of the 94th Congress 2:48did not keep the word of the United States. 2:53On April the 10th of 1975, President Gerald Ford appealed directly to those members of 3:00the congress in an evening Joint Session, televised to the nation. In that speech he 3:07literally begged the Congress to keep the word of the United States. But as President 3:13Ford delivered his speech, many of the members of the Congress walked out of the chamber. 3:19Many of them had an investment in America's failure in Vietnam. They had participated 3:25in demonstrations against the war for many years. They wouldn't give the aid. 3:33On April the 30th South Vietnam surrendered and Re-education Camps were constructed, 3:40and the phenomenon of the Boat People began. If the South Vietnamese had received the arms 3:46that the United States promised them would the result have been different? 3:51It already had been different. 3:53The North Vietnamese leaders admitted that they were testing the new President, 3:57Gerald Ford, and they took one village after another, then cities, then provinces and our 4:04only response was to go back on our word. The U.S. did not re-supply the South Vietnamese 4:12as we had promised. It was then that the North Vietnamese knew they were on the road to South 4:17Vietnam's capital city, Saigon, that would soon be renamed Ho Chi Minh City. 4:24Former Arkansas Senator William Fulbright, who had been the Chairman of the Senate Foreign 4:29Relations Committee made a public statement about the surrender of South Vietnam. 4:35He said this, "I am no more distressed than I would be about Arkansas losing a football game to Texas." 4:45The U.S. knew that North Vietnam would violate the accords and so we planned for it. 4:50What we did not know was that our own Congress would violate the accords. 4:55And violate them, of all things, on behalf of the North Vietnamese. 5:01That's what happened. 5:04I'm Bruce Herschensohn. This Prager University video—The Truth about the Vietnam War—narrated by Bruce Herschensohn, distills down to 5 minutes: 45 seconds about 50,000 pages of text I've read on the subject.  Today's congressional Democrats are the spawn of those Progressives who came to power in the 94th Congress.  So, Barn Army Truth #14 (The Untied States will never win another war as long as Democrats have any say in its conduct, and for a period of 50 years after the war is won, lest they undo victory." is rooted in these sorry  pages from our history.  They are still at it. I'm indebted to Marc Miller for this catch. ”