1. The weakness of Nixon due to the Watergate scandal allowed the Left-Wing Democrats to destroy any hope of either the United States living up to its commitments in South Vietnam, or of even allowing the aid that would have allowed the South to defend itself. Starting with the 1974 budget, they refused to allocate another penny, and forbade US military action in or over Indochina. Thus, no airstrikes if the North violated the peace treaty.
They wanted the North to win .and they did.
a. When the Pentagons accountants tried to use a couple of hundred million dollars of unused appropriations left over from 1972 and 1973 to aid the South, Ted Kennedy organized Senators, 43-38, to forbid the expenditure.
David Frum, How We Got Here, p. 305.
2. In the scholarly The Black Book of Communism, Stephane Courtois, et. al. calculate (p. 572) that the Communists immediately shipped between 200,000 and a million to reeducation camps out of a population of 20 million. Execution numbered about 65,000 not counting those who died slowly in the camps.
a. The new Communist Vietnam caused hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to flee their homes, with over 800,000 taking to the high seas in tiny boats.
Commentary magazine, Who Won Vietnam?, May 1994.
3. One marvels at the lack of concern by the Left after the success of their machinations. Linda Ellerbee, commentator for ABC and CBS, made the following joke: These boat people "Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what America did for Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? Clearly they have no more sense over there, than say, Mexicans who keep trying to get into this country even though this country stole large parts of their country from them in the first place."
Best of Notable Quotables 1991 -- Media Research Center
4. Leftist intellectuals such as Susan Sontag was one of a legion of what Paul Hollander identified as political pilgrims who journeyed to Communist countries in search of an earthly paradise, and nearly always persuaded themselves that they had found it. Sure enough, Sontag was struck by the grace, variety, and established identity of the Vietnamese an effectively organized society And she explained why she traveled to North Vietnam: Vietnam offered the key to a systematic criticism of America.
Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, p. 198, 271.
a. Ramsey Clark, LBJs attorney general: You can see no internal conflict in the country .a unity in spirit. I doubt seriously that I could walk in safety in Saigon or the cities and villages of South Vietnam, as I have here Ibid.
b. Novelist Mary McCarthy decided that North Vietnam is preferable to South Vietnam, as she never saw a child with a dirty face, nor beggars, nor prostitutes nor squalor. Wherever you go, you are met with smiles, cheers, hand clapping. Mary McCarthy, The Seventeenth Degree, p. 215, 222.
Confronted with the fact that the North has no free press, she opined that the right to criticize is just another capitalist luxury.
c. McCarthy went on to explain it was Americas fault Until the Americans go home, the self-imposed rationing system in the realm of ideas that limited the [North Vietnamese] diet to what was strictly necessary to the national interest [must remain] Ibid. Of course, after the Americans left, totalitarians continued to be totalitarians.
5. When Nixon responded to a North Vietnamese offensive in 1972 by mining the Haiphong harbor, Democrats unleashed the Nazi comparisons. Congressman Ron Dellums: In the last years of the Second World War, after the Germans knew they were defeated, they went on an orgy of killing will our removal be in the same frenzied manner? Anonymous Author for the Black Panther Newspaper, The Black Panther. In Black Panther 8 no. 9
6. Well never know what JFK would have thought of this, but Democrat Senator Scoop Jackson summed it up nicely: I do not what to see the Democratic Party become a party which gives any aid and comfort whatever to people who applaud Vietcong victories or wave Vietcong flags. Our party has room for hawks and doves, but not for mockingbirds who chirp gleefully at those who are shooting at American boys.
Richard Whalen, Taking Sides, p.177.
a. During a Washington, D.C., anti-war rally, government workers at the Peace Corps seized the building and flew the Vietcong flag from its roof.
Kissinger, The White House Years, p. 514.
7. Today....an anniversary of sorts:
April 30th, 1975 Operation Frequent Wind: Evacuation of the last US personnel from the embassy in Saigon. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them; others committed suicide. In early 1975 the communist launched a massive attack, and Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South. Even though US forces had won every battle, Congress refused: Ford had no choice but to order Operation Frequent Wind.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered after the liberation, and up to 250,000 died in re-education camps. Thousands of boat people tried to flee, and perished at sea.
8. In 1979, Humanitas, the organization of anti-war activist Joan Baez, purchased a newspaper ad that ran in five large circulation dailies, called An Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which ran in part:
Thousands of innocent Vietnamese, many of whose only crimes are those of conscience, are being arrested, detained and tortured in prison and re-education camps The jails are overflowing with thousands upon thousands of detainees People disappear and never return People are used as human mine detectors, clearing live mine fields with their hands and feet. For many, life is hell and death is prayed for. With tragic irony, the cruelty, violence and oppression practiced by foreign powers in your country for more than a century continue today under the present regime.
It was an abiding commitment to fundamental principles of human dignity, freedom and self-determination that motivated so many Americans to oppose the government of South Vietnam and our country's participation in the war. It is that same commitment that compels us to speak out against your brutal disregard of human rights. As in the 60s, we raise our voices now so that your people may live. And a Voice to Sing With -- A Memoir, by Joan Baez
a. Baez mailed the letter to 350 anti-war activists. Among those who refused to sign was Jane Fonda. Your name would mean much more than any other, she told Fonda, in a long letter. Fonda wrote that the add would lend credence to those who believe that Communism is worse than death
Washington Post, Lynn Darling, Joan Baez at 38, June 29, 1979
Last week, one of our members referred to waterboarding as 'dragging out flag through the mud."
I wonder what he thinks of the behavior of the Democrat Party after Viet Nam.....
One looks at the above, and wonders whether the Leftist Democrats acted during the war to save lives....
...or to injure the United States.
They wanted the North to win .and they did.
a. When the Pentagons accountants tried to use a couple of hundred million dollars of unused appropriations left over from 1972 and 1973 to aid the South, Ted Kennedy organized Senators, 43-38, to forbid the expenditure.
David Frum, How We Got Here, p. 305.
2. In the scholarly The Black Book of Communism, Stephane Courtois, et. al. calculate (p. 572) that the Communists immediately shipped between 200,000 and a million to reeducation camps out of a population of 20 million. Execution numbered about 65,000 not counting those who died slowly in the camps.
a. The new Communist Vietnam caused hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to flee their homes, with over 800,000 taking to the high seas in tiny boats.
Commentary magazine, Who Won Vietnam?, May 1994.
3. One marvels at the lack of concern by the Left after the success of their machinations. Linda Ellerbee, commentator for ABC and CBS, made the following joke: These boat people "Why would any Vietnamese come to America after what America did for Vietnam? Don't they remember My Lai, napalm, Sylvester Stallone? Clearly they have no more sense over there, than say, Mexicans who keep trying to get into this country even though this country stole large parts of their country from them in the first place."
Best of Notable Quotables 1991 -- Media Research Center
4. Leftist intellectuals such as Susan Sontag was one of a legion of what Paul Hollander identified as political pilgrims who journeyed to Communist countries in search of an earthly paradise, and nearly always persuaded themselves that they had found it. Sure enough, Sontag was struck by the grace, variety, and established identity of the Vietnamese an effectively organized society And she explained why she traveled to North Vietnam: Vietnam offered the key to a systematic criticism of America.
Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society, p. 198, 271.
a. Ramsey Clark, LBJs attorney general: You can see no internal conflict in the country .a unity in spirit. I doubt seriously that I could walk in safety in Saigon or the cities and villages of South Vietnam, as I have here Ibid.
b. Novelist Mary McCarthy decided that North Vietnam is preferable to South Vietnam, as she never saw a child with a dirty face, nor beggars, nor prostitutes nor squalor. Wherever you go, you are met with smiles, cheers, hand clapping. Mary McCarthy, The Seventeenth Degree, p. 215, 222.
Confronted with the fact that the North has no free press, she opined that the right to criticize is just another capitalist luxury.
c. McCarthy went on to explain it was Americas fault Until the Americans go home, the self-imposed rationing system in the realm of ideas that limited the [North Vietnamese] diet to what was strictly necessary to the national interest [must remain] Ibid. Of course, after the Americans left, totalitarians continued to be totalitarians.
5. When Nixon responded to a North Vietnamese offensive in 1972 by mining the Haiphong harbor, Democrats unleashed the Nazi comparisons. Congressman Ron Dellums: In the last years of the Second World War, after the Germans knew they were defeated, they went on an orgy of killing will our removal be in the same frenzied manner? Anonymous Author for the Black Panther Newspaper, The Black Panther. In Black Panther 8 no. 9
6. Well never know what JFK would have thought of this, but Democrat Senator Scoop Jackson summed it up nicely: I do not what to see the Democratic Party become a party which gives any aid and comfort whatever to people who applaud Vietcong victories or wave Vietcong flags. Our party has room for hawks and doves, but not for mockingbirds who chirp gleefully at those who are shooting at American boys.
Richard Whalen, Taking Sides, p.177.
a. During a Washington, D.C., anti-war rally, government workers at the Peace Corps seized the building and flew the Vietcong flag from its roof.
Kissinger, The White House Years, p. 514.
7. Today....an anniversary of sorts:
April 30th, 1975 Operation Frequent Wind: Evacuation of the last US personnel from the embassy in Saigon. Thousands of desperate Vietnamese gathered at the embassy gate and begged to be taken with them; others committed suicide. In early 1975 the communist launched a massive attack, and Gerald Ford asked for $1 billion in supplemental funds to help the South. Even though US forces had won every battle, Congress refused: Ford had no choice but to order Operation Frequent Wind.
At least 65,000 Vietnamese were murdered after the liberation, and up to 250,000 died in re-education camps. Thousands of boat people tried to flee, and perished at sea.
8. In 1979, Humanitas, the organization of anti-war activist Joan Baez, purchased a newspaper ad that ran in five large circulation dailies, called An Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, which ran in part:
Thousands of innocent Vietnamese, many of whose only crimes are those of conscience, are being arrested, detained and tortured in prison and re-education camps The jails are overflowing with thousands upon thousands of detainees People disappear and never return People are used as human mine detectors, clearing live mine fields with their hands and feet. For many, life is hell and death is prayed for. With tragic irony, the cruelty, violence and oppression practiced by foreign powers in your country for more than a century continue today under the present regime.
It was an abiding commitment to fundamental principles of human dignity, freedom and self-determination that motivated so many Americans to oppose the government of South Vietnam and our country's participation in the war. It is that same commitment that compels us to speak out against your brutal disregard of human rights. As in the 60s, we raise our voices now so that your people may live. And a Voice to Sing With -- A Memoir, by Joan Baez
a. Baez mailed the letter to 350 anti-war activists. Among those who refused to sign was Jane Fonda. Your name would mean much more than any other, she told Fonda, in a long letter. Fonda wrote that the add would lend credence to those who believe that Communism is worse than death
Washington Post, Lynn Darling, Joan Baez at 38, June 29, 1979
Last week, one of our members referred to waterboarding as 'dragging out flag through the mud."
I wonder what he thinks of the behavior of the Democrat Party after Viet Nam.....
One looks at the above, and wonders whether the Leftist Democrats acted during the war to save lives....
...or to injure the United States.
