Sunday, December 14, 2014

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 videoThe Truth about the Vietnam Warnarrated 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.

14 comments:

Chris in NC said...

Shockingly I was never told that in any class.

Sidwit said...

Not in class or in the news either.

Rodger the Real King of France said...

I lived through it live; will never forget, nor forgive

drew458 said...

This was exactly what happened. It was in the news every day. Seems to me it was more than a full year where we knew the war was won and over. And then the Dems pulled defeat from the mouth of victory, exactly like Obongo did in Iraq. It never changes.

Will the Left come out 30 years from now, as they sort of did after Vietnam, Pol Pot, etc., and say "gosh, I guess we were wrong, we really should have supported fighting communism and tyranny" ... after how many millions were "re-educated" to death? You can see ISIS filling the Pol Pot mass murderer role, right?

I think one reason we "lose the peace" is because we leave too many living enemies when we call it a "win". Don't fight them until they agree to a negotiated surrender. Fight them until they throw down their guns and run screaming, begging for mercy.

rickn8or said...

drew458,whatever else you want to say about the Russians, they understand the way you negotiate with an enemy is with your knee on his chest and your bayonet at his throat.

We seem to have forgotten this.

Anonymous said...

And we mustn't forget that the VietNam war was micro-managed by LBJ and his minion, Robert McNamara, to the point that we would up losing that one. And, of course, LBJ and McNamara were Dumbocrats, so that should tell you alll anyone needs to know why we lost that one. At least, FDR let the military have it's head during WW2, and Truman let the Air Force drop the Atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, if that were to come up, The Ayatollah would throw seventeen kinds of shit fits, and giv the enemy troops full U.S. citizenship. by executive decree, of course.

Scottiebill

TomR, armed in Texas said...

I was there during Tet 68 and saw the war won. I came home to a shitty welcome then got to see Congress throw our victory under the bus. I have never had faith in the Democrats or media since. My anger and hatred have reduced to a low simmer since then due to the aging(healing?) process, but leap back into play whenever I see Hanoi John Kerry, Hanoi Jane Fonda, traitor Bill Ayers, draft dodgers Bill Clinton, Joe Biden or Dick Cheney.

No I will not forget nor forgive either.

Your Creepy Uncle said...

TomR,

That not aging or 'healing'. That's complacency from sitting ambush for too long.

Get your damn eyes back on your sector, Their point man just walked through......

AndyJ said...

TomB, you forgot the most important traitor of the group. Like you, I was there during TET, and saw the destruction that we brought to North Vietnam. And then that asshole Cronkite came back and said that we had lost the war. And all of America believed the most trusted newsman in the country. WE were there and WE saw the truth, then watching TV from home, we wondered if we lived in a parallel universe. I had never been able to watch any news that he read, knowing that it was all lies, just like today. GOD help us.

Anonymous said...

TomR, I'm not exactly sure what Creepy Uncle's point is given the content of your comment, but welcome home, and thank you for your service.

The video is functionally correct, and more. Not only did "we" whip their asses in '72, twice in fact (the Easter Offensive was ultimately a failure as well), they had gotten their asses whipped in '68 and the Viet Cong were losing bad early on as well, hence the infiltration of North Vietnamese units beginning in the late 50's/early 60's. But as to the video, we did in fact abandon an ally in majority possession of the field.

However, the video left out one important fact that contributed hugely to the eventual colapse, that being that our United States forced the Republic of Viet Nam to accept the accords, which included allowing the rat-bastard Communists to remain in possession of the territories they occupied when the "peace" was signed. This would be similar to allowing German forces to stay in place following the Armistice in 1918.

As the old saying goes, what could possibly go wrong with such a scheme as that? Especially inasmuch as our United States cut off resupply to RVN, whilst the Comblock continued to supply the Communist forces widely and wildly.

Nevermind the events in Laos and Cambodia....

Sir H the Comet

Anonymous said...

I grew up in north central Montana and had a close friend who went into VietNam as a Lutheran chaplain and served three tours there. He came out with a chest full of medals, none was Purple Heart. Very lucky, I would say. He eventually retired a a full colonel after some 22 years. As for me, I went in the Navy in 1953 and did 6 years, all on an ice breaker. My friend has not and will not talk about what he went through over there, and I really doubt if even his wife knows, either.

One other thing about VietNam, LBJ and Robert McNamara micro-micro managed that debacle from the get-go. Both are dead now, but they should have bee before they let that fiasco continue.

Scottiebill

BlogDog said...

My late foreign service officer, Vietnam POW father hated McNamara with a passion. He told me, when that bastard was saying that "I wasn't told!" about what was actually happening (later in his life when he was seeking some kind of public redemption), that he (my dad) was there in the pentagon (attached from his position at State) and saw people who *were* telling McNamara the truth and, in my father's words: "He destroyed their careers."
McNamara was as ripe a son of bitch as ever darkened the halls of power.

Merrily said...

I always need the Cliff Notes for history. Copied it for my Facebook. You're always the professor, Rodger!

Billll said...

With 238 years of experience at winning the war and pissing away the peace, you'd think someone running for office would make an issue of this, but no....

Yes, I was there too.

Post a Comment

Just type your name and post as anonymous if you don't have a Blogger profile.