In 1975 the super majority Democrat Party controlled Congress cut off aid to South Vietnam when the country was fighting for its life. Total betrayal of an ally fight in the field. All to punish Ford for his justifiable pardon of Nixon. Talk about a cowardly behavior. Trump did nothing wrong with Ukraine. Democrats doomed South Vietnam.
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The Myth That Congress Cut Off Funding for South Vietnam | History News Network
$700 Million
A quick, easy check of an old newspaper database shows Laird's cutoff claim to be
false. In the fiscal year running from July 1, 1974, to June 30, 1975, the congressional appropriation for military aid to South Vietnam was $700 million.
Nixon had requested $1.45 billion. Congress cut his aid request, but never cut off aid.
Nixon's successor, President Gerald R. Ford, requested an additional $300 million for Saigon. Democrats saw it as an exercise in political blame-shifting. "The administration knows that the $300 million won't really do anything to prevent ultimate collapse in Vietnam," said Senator and future Vice President Walter F. Mondale, D-Mn., "and it is just trying to shift responsibility of its policy to Congress and the Democrats." Congress didn't approve the supplemental appropriation.
The
Times reported that with National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry "Kissinger's personal prestige tied to peace in Vietnam, his aides have said that he will try to pin the blame for failure there on Congress." He tried to do just that at a March 26, 1975
news conference in which he framed the question facing Congress as "whether it will deliberately destroy an ally by withholding aid from it in its moment of extremity." Three years earlier, in October 1972, the month in which Kissinger publicly proclaimed that "peace is at hand," he privately told the President that their own settlement terms would destroy South Vietnam.
Congressional aid cuts didn't determine the war's final outcome. Saigon's fate was sealed long before, when Nixon forced it accept his settlement terms in January 1973.
As for Laird's "cut off" of funds for Saigon, it just never happened. Even Nixon acknowledged the 1975 military appropriation for Saigon of $700 million (on page 193 of No More Vietnams).
Nixon privately realized that Vietnamization and negotiation would not work as he said they would.
"South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway," he said in private, but never in public. To conceal Vietnamization's failure, Nixon timed the withdrawal of U.S. forces to the 1972 election. This way, California Governor Ronald Reagan could welcome delegates to the Republican National Convention in 1972 with the perfect words to launch the President's reelection campaign: "The last American combat team is on its way home from Vietnam."
To get the North Vietnamese to accept a settlement that, on paper, guaranteed the South's right to free elections, Nixon assured them, through the Soviet Union and China, that if they waited a "decent interval" of a year or two before taking over South Vietnam, he would not intervene. The Communists accepted Nixon's settlement terms because they knew that they didn't have to abide by them and the would get a clear shot at overthrowing the South Vietnamese government if they waited approximately 18 months after Nixon withdrew the last U.S. ground forces. Nixon wanted this "decent interval" to make it look like Saigon's fall wasn't his fault.
