April 30, 1975: Fall of Saigon. An important day for Vietnam, and Vietnamese people around the world
Two weeks later, the US war in South East Asia ended with a whimper on Koh Tang Island.
People from small countries, keep this image in mind.
When a “friendly” bigger country uses you as their proxy war battlefield, this is how it will look when they will evacuate their own and leave you, their good-faith collaborators, to your own fate in the hands of the winning adversary.
Do not trust the superpowers an inch farther than you can throw them. (Do not trust any other country, too; there are no friends in geopolitics, only fair-weather allies of convenience.)
I watched the documentary last night, and felt sad. And I wished the US would spend as much effort saving our citizens as the military spent saving South Vietnamese collaborators in 1975. Then I thought, those who we saved, besides families and friends of American GIs, the generals and captains and inquisitors and spies, were all traitors to their country, and we rescued them. They may have thought they were fighting for god and country, but they were just pawns in the imperialist game.
Good thing we learned our lesson… oh wait
Just read Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse and would strongly recommend it.
This American Life did an excellent story on the U.S. Army’s Center for Lessons Learned, and how, leading up to our misadventures in Iraq, the American Military utterly and entirely failed to look back at prior conflicts to better understand how to proceed in future conflicts (aka wars of aggression). Specifically, they look at a report by <a href=http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=182>Conrad Crane that essentially foretold the issues we’d have following the end of combat operations in the Middle East.
One would think the destruction and lost of life in Vietnam would’ve been a good enough warning to acting without forethought, but hey, when it’s other people’s kids, Let 'Er Rip!
Weren’t we actually promised that Iraq and Afghanistan would not be another Vietnam? And haven’t both played out that way without fail?
It’s maddening.
They’re not as humid though, so it’s totally different.
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