Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause

[Rigby5]

Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause​

We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.​

Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause

We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.

www.rodmartin.org

30 Apr 2025 ~~ By Rod D. Martin

Fifty years ago, April 30, 1975, the world watched in horror and disbelief as the last American helicopter lifted off from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon. South Vietnam had fallen in the manner of Ernest Hemingway, “first gradually, then suddenly”: a decades-long war, a relative peace, and then a mad dash by the North Vietnamese Army that consumed the country in less than a month.
What followed was not peace, but darkness. The swift collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (turns out the Domino Theory was true) brought the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia. At least a million were sent to the “re-education camps” in Vietnam alone. Half a million were murdered. Another two million fled this brutal night by sea, on rafts wholly unsuited for the tumultuous ocean, in wild hope that an American aircraft carrier might happen upon them. Close to half a million died in the water.
The tragedy was simply breathtaking. And horribly, horribly unnecessary.
~Snip~
None of this had to happen. This was not the end of a war, but the culmination of betrayal — a betrayal of an ally, of a cause, and of the very principles America had defended with precious blood and treasure for eight long years.
The received wisdom is that Vietnam was a mistake, a misguided war fought in the wrong place at the wrong time. That narrative is false. The Vietnam War was part of a noble, epic struggle — the same struggle that won the Cold War and saved the whole world from a similar fate. It was a just effort to stop Communist totalitarianism and genocide from consuming yet another corner of the globe. South Vietnam was not a hopeless case. It was a fledgling republic, striving to build a free society in the shadow of Marxist tyranny and under constant assault from within and without. Its people fought with courage and resolve for more than two decades, first with our help.
~Snip~
But with Nixon forced from office, Congress fell into the hands of men more concerned with leftist politics than principle. Nixon won 49 states in 1972. In the aftermath of Watergate, in 1974, Democrats won overwhelming Congressional majorities: almost 300 House seats, and a filibuster-proof 61 in the Senate.
This radicalized majority, driven by post-Watergate bloodlust, slashed military aid to South Vietnam by over 75%, prohibited any American military response to a massive Soviet rearmament of the North, and watched coldly as North Vietnam violated every term of the accords. They wouldn’t even send our allies tires for their Jeeps or gas for their tanks.
Deprived of ammunition, fuel, and the will of its ally, South Vietnam collapsed — not because it lacked heart, but because it was abandoned, by the same Democrat Party that had sent America’s sons to die there just ten years before.
This is the reality the left refuses to confront even half a century later. The fall of Saigon was not inevitable. It was engineered in Washington more than Hanoi. It was not a military defeat — it was a political surrender, the first of many. Over the next five years, Democrats handed 26 countries to the Communists. That’s on top of Carter’s betrayal of the Shah of Iran.
Richard Nixon understood this. Years after, in No More Vietnams, he laid out the real lessons of that conflict, lessons we ignore at our peril. He did not argue that we should never fight again. Quite the contrary. He argued that when America fights, it must fight to win — and that when we make commitments, we must keep them.
~Snip~
Second, we must never send our soldiers to fight unless the cause directly serves vital American interests. In this, Nixon prefigured Trump. But once engaged, we must not allow domestic politics to undercut our efforts. Unity at home is essential. Leadership must resist the temptation to bow to the transient winds of public opinion or the distortions of a hostile press.
Third, America must support its allies fully or not at all. Partial support, tepid commitments, and shifting loyalties invite chaos and death. South Vietnam stood ready to defend itself — with our help. Once we withdrew that help, we ensured their destruction. Nixon rightly saw that as an even greater moral failure than a strategic one.
And fourth, peace is only possible through strength. The idea that we can withdraw from the world, that we can turn our backs on aggression and be left in peace, is a fantasy. Weakness invites conflict. Only credible deterrence, backed by the willingness to act, can maintain stability and peace.
These lessons, learned at tragic cost, should have guided us forward. But they were forgotten. In 2021, Joe Biden gave us a second Saigon, this time in Kabul.

Commentary:
The media was always gave the impression the American military was fleeing South Vietnam in a chaotic panic when it wasn’t even there since South Vietnam fell years after we left, or that Americans were burning that little girl with Napalm although the Americans weren’t involved in the incident, or that all our soldiers did was suffer wounds and defeatism and using Zippos on thatch huts, or that the VC were dominating us and our installations during Tet.
South Vietnam fell because the double-minded and weak Democrat Leftist leaders in America had no commitment or intention of doing what it would take to actually win the war.
Just as Nixon and Ford were minor players in LBJ’s tragic mistake, others have mentioned the part the Democrats as the majority in Congress played.
No brains in the politicians going in, no spines to support our friends in their need to survive. Joey Xi Baidung and his handlers did the same in Afghanistan and to the Ukraine egging it on, and what will happen next with poor leadership there.
Bush '43' should have destroyed every last Taliban resource in Afghanistan. Make the bricks bounce. This could have been done solely by air power and special forces strikes.
W’s great mistake was going the LBJ route: He tried to win the hearts and minds of the population - a population that was stuck in the 8th century, and brainwashed by death cult religion.
That was a fool’s errand, made even worse by his invasion of Iraq. That upset the whole applecart in the region.
I rank W among the three worst US presidents ever. Joey Xi Baidung continues to run first. The other is Woody Wilson.

Seems pretty silly because Ho Chi Minh was a hero to all Vietnamese, for defeating the French.
It was a betrayal for the US to support Diem as dictator.

 

[Rigby5]

What you get is comic book level propaganda which is what you just posted you stupid faggot

The Us was defending an ally not engaging in imperialism and it was the communists NOT the vietnamese you ignorant retard

Wrong.
The Vietnamese and French had worked out an agreement, and were supposed to national elections in 1955.
By supporting the military takeover by Diem, elections were prevented, and the US started an illegal war to support a dictator.

 

[Soupnazi630]

Wrong.
The Vietnamese and French had worked out an agreement, and were supposed to national elections in 1955.
By supporting the military takeover by Diem, elections were prevented, and the US started an illegal war to support a dictator.

Wrong

It was Minh not diem who refused to hold elections.

he siezed power by force and illegally inavded the south, our war against him was legal

 

[Soupnazi630]

Seems pretty silly because Ho Chi Minh was a hero to all Vietnamese, for defeating the French.
It was a betrayal for the US to support Diem as dictator.

Wrong

Minh was ahted by all as a brutal dictator

he had to rule by force you moron

 

[mikegriffith1]

Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause​

We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.​

Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause

We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.

www.rodmartin.org

30 Apr 2025 ~~ By Rod D. Martin

Fifty years ago, April 30, 1975, the world watched in horror and disbelief as the last American helicopter lifted off from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon. South Vietnam had fallen in the manner of Ernest Hemingway, “first gradually, then suddenly”: a decades-long war, a relative peace, and then a mad dash by the North Vietnamese Army that consumed the country in less than a month.
What followed was not peace, but darkness. The swift collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (turns out the Domino Theory was true) brought the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia. At least a million were sent to the “re-education camps” in Vietnam alone. Half a million were murdered. Another two million fled this brutal night by sea, on rafts wholly unsuited for the tumultuous ocean, in wild hope that an American aircraft carrier might happen upon them. Close to half a million died in the water.
The tragedy was simply breathtaking. And horribly, horribly unnecessary.
~Snip~
None of this had to happen. This was not the end of a war, but the culmination of betrayal — a betrayal of an ally, of a cause, and of the very principles America had defended with precious blood and treasure for eight long years.
The received wisdom is that Vietnam was a mistake, a misguided war fought in the wrong place at the wrong time. That narrative is false. The Vietnam War was part of a noble, epic struggle — the same struggle that won the Cold War and saved the whole world from a similar fate. It was a just effort to stop Communist totalitarianism and genocide from consuming yet another corner of the globe. South Vietnam was not a hopeless case. It was a fledgling republic, striving to build a free society in the shadow of Marxist tyranny and under constant assault from within and without. Its people fought with courage and resolve for more than two decades, first with our help.
~Snip~
But with Nixon forced from office, Congress fell into the hands of men more concerned with leftist politics than principle. Nixon won 49 states in 1972. In the aftermath of Watergate, in 1974, Democrats won overwhelming Congressional majorities: almost 300 House seats, and a filibuster-proof 61 in the Senate.
This radicalized majority, driven by post-Watergate bloodlust, slashed military aid to South Vietnam by over 75%, prohibited any American military response to a massive Soviet rearmament of the North, and watched coldly as North Vietnam violated every term of the accords. They wouldn’t even send our allies tires for their Jeeps or gas for their tanks.
Deprived of ammunition, fuel, and the will of its ally, South Vietnam collapsed — not because it lacked heart, but because it was abandoned, by the same Democrat Party that had sent America’s sons to die there just ten years before.
This is the reality the left refuses to confront even half a century later. The fall of Saigon was not inevitable. It was engineered in Washington more than Hanoi. It was not a military defeat — it was a political surrender, the first of many. Over the next five years, Democrats handed 26 countries to the Communists. That’s on top of Carter’s betrayal of the Shah of Iran.
Richard Nixon understood this. Years after, in No More Vietnams, he laid out the real lessons of that conflict, lessons we ignore at our peril. He did not argue that we should never fight again. Quite the contrary. He argued that when America fights, it must fight to win — and that when we make commitments, we must keep them.
~Snip~
Second, we must never send our soldiers to fight unless the cause directly serves vital American interests. In this, Nixon prefigured Trump. But once engaged, we must not allow domestic politics to undercut our efforts. Unity at home is essential. Leadership must resist the temptation to bow to the transient winds of public opinion or the distortions of a hostile press.
Third, America must support its allies fully or not at all. Partial support, tepid commitments, and shifting loyalties invite chaos and death. South Vietnam stood ready to defend itself — with our help. Once we withdrew that help, we ensured their destruction. Nixon rightly saw that as an even greater moral failure than a strategic one.
And fourth, peace is only possible through strength. The idea that we can withdraw from the world, that we can turn our backs on aggression and be left in peace, is a fantasy. Weakness invites conflict. Only credible deterrence, backed by the willingness to act, can maintain stability and peace.
These lessons, learned at tragic cost, should have guided us forward. But they were forgotten. In 2021, Joe Biden gave us a second Saigon, this time in Kabul.

Commentary:
The media was always gave the impression the American military was fleeing South Vietnam in a chaotic panic when it wasn’t even there since South Vietnam fell years after we left, or that Americans were burning that little girl with Napalm although the Americans weren’t involved in the incident, or that all our soldiers did was suffer wounds and defeatism and using Zippos on thatch huts, or that the VC were dominating us and our installations during Tet.
South Vietnam fell because the double-minded and weak Democrat Leftist leaders in America had no commitment or intention of doing what it would take to actually win the war.
Just as Nixon and Ford were minor players in LBJ’s tragic mistake, others have mentioned the part the Democrats as the majority in Congress played.
No brains in the politicians going in, no spines to support our friends in their need to survive. Joey Xi Baidung and his handlers did the same in Afghanistan and to the Ukraine egging it on, and what will happen next with poor leadership there.
Bush '43' should have destroyed every last Taliban resource in Afghanistan. Make the bricks bounce. This could have been done solely by air power and special forces strikes.
W’s great mistake was going the LBJ route: He tried to win the hearts and minds of the population - a population that was stuck in the 8th century, and brainwashed by death cult religion.
That was a fool’s errand, made even worse by his invasion of Iraq. That upset the whole applecart in the region.
I rank W among the three worst US presidents ever. Joey Xi Baidung continues to run first. The other is Woody Wilson.

Great post. The unnecessary fall of South Vietnam is the focus of my new book Reclaiming the Vietnam War: The Betrayal of South Vietnam. I also provide a lot of evidence on this point on my Vietnam War website:

vietnam_war_truth

In January 1973, America forced Communist North Vietnam to sign a ceasefire agreement, after bringing the Hanoi regime to the verge of collapse with Operations Linebacker I and Linebacker II. South Vietnam was independent and stable. But soon Congress, firmly controlled by the Democrats, began to

sites.google.com

One of the longest chapters in my book is titled "The Myth of the Unwinnable War" (chapter 4). I document therein that the war was entirely winnable and that we actually had the war won until Congress began slashing aid to South Vietnam.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The American people, Mike, would not have permitted the creation of a full wartime effort culturally and industrially.

As long as we had no idea what Red China would, it was not possible.

I will read it, but that's where I began, because I have studied it carefully.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Wrong.
The Vietnamese and French had worked out an agreement, and were supposed to national elections in 1955.
By supporting the military takeover by Diem, elections were prevented, and the US started an illegal war to support a dictator.

It is amazing to see this Communist myth repeated in 2025.

First of all, Ho Chi Minh was not the most popular Vietnamese leader after World War II ended. Huynh Phu So, the charismatic founder of the Hoa Hao and of the Vietnamese Democratic Socialist Party, had more followers than did Ho Chi Minh, but the Communists murdered Huynh Phu So in April 1947.

Second, Ho Chi Minh was far more dictatorial and oppressive than Diem.

Third, it was the North Vietnamese who vetoed genuine elections, not the South Vietnamese. During the Geneva Peace Accords negotiations, South Vietnam and the U.S. pushed for UN-supervised reunification elections, but the North Vietnamese vetoed this proposal, which was a major reason that the U.S. and South Vietnam did not sign the Geneva Accords.

Fourth, even then-Senator John F. Kennedy noted that any elections held in North Vietnam in 1956 (not 1955) without UN supervision would be rigged and fraudulent. The idea that Ho Chi Minh and his fellow thugs would have allowed clean elections in North Vietnam is preposterous. South Vietnam was willing to hold UN-supervised elections. North Vietnam was not.

 

[AZrailwhale]

What i get asshole is that Vietnam defeated French Colonialism and US Imperialism.

No it didn't. INDOCHINA; Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia together defeated French colonialism. the USSR and PRC defeated South Vietnam after the ARVNs, SEATO and US forces defeated the Viet Cong and People's Army of Vietnam. North Vietnam sued for peace and signed the Paris Peace Accords promising not to attack the Republic of Vietnam again and violated the treaty a year later after massive Soviet aid.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

This was not factual. "It is amazing to see this Communist myth repeated in 2025."

Part of the agreement was to hold national elections.

They were not held because the leaders of the South were afraid that Ho would win. To say he would not. It is speculation, and the facts don't support it.

 

[Soupnazi630]

This was not factual. "It is amazing to see this Communist myth repeated in 2025."

Part of the agreement was to hold national elections.

They were not held because the leaders of the South were afraid that Ho would win. To say he would not. It is speculation, and the facts don't support it.

WRONG

No one said he would not have won. Whether he would have or would not have is speculative and irrelevant

Minh refused to hold them. He siezed power without bothering to hold elections

 

[Deadstick]

No it didn't. INDOCHINA; Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia together defeated French colonialism. the USSR and PRC defeated South Vietnam after the ARVNs, SEATO and US forces defeated the Viet Cong and People's Army of Vietnam. North Vietnam sued for peace and signed the Paris Peace Accords promising not to attack the Republic of Vietnam again and violated the treaty a year later after massive Soviet aid.

You must be having a laugh, the NVA and NLF defeated the US and their South Vietnamese puppets, get over it.

 

[Doc7505]

You might research the numbers of civilians murdered in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia by direct and indirect action of the US intervention. Hardly noble.

~~~~~~
Rather, why didn't you post it?
True, prior to the fall of the French at Dien Bien Phu, Indo-China the U.S. was in Laos and Nam secretly....
See MAAG-Vietnam and MAC-V.... the differences

Read more:

THE CIA, AIR AMERICA, THE VIETNAM WAR AND U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN THE FIGHTING IN LAOS IN THE 1960s | Facts and Details

factsanddetails.com

xxxxxxxxxx​

Records of the United States Forces in Southeast Asia, 1950-1975

Records of the United States Forces in Southeast Asia, 1950-1975 in the holdings of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. From the Guide to Federal Records in the National Archives of the U.S.

www.archives.gov

xxxxxxxxxx​

MSU Vietnam Group Archive

"Before there was MACV, the senior military command in the RVN, as mentioned before, was (MAAG-Vietnam), which was formed on November 1, 1955, to provide military assistance to South Vietnam. Elements of MAAG-Vietnam, and the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, & Marine Corps specific personnel were gathered up and put together to provide American assistance to the area, helping with the Self-Vietnamese Ministry of Defence, Joint General Staff, the various Corps and, divisional commanders, as well as training centers for their soldiers, to province and district headquarters.
MAAG-Vietnam was disbanded in 1964 (Before our official involvement), and its personnel and responsibilities were absorbed by the new “MAC-V”. The Major was assigned to the 7th Infantry Division “The Hour-Glass” in his prior over-sears tour, the patch is bordered with the dark green of the early Class-A uniform, Which would indicate likely, Korean War service there. Colored-Scarfs were being used to I-D a member from the platoon or squad out in the boonies."

Many were advisory personnel rotated out on TDY basis 90 days in, R&R out to return again.
Main request beside military specialty codes was ability to speak French language.

 

[IM2]

Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause​

We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.​

Fifty Years After Saigon: Remembering the Nobility of a Betrayed Cause

We must remember not just South Vietnam's fall, but why it fell.

www.rodmartin.org

30 Apr 2025 ~~ By Rod D. Martin

Fifty years ago, April 30, 1975, the world watched in horror and disbelief as the last American helicopter lifted off from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon. South Vietnam had fallen in the manner of Ernest Hemingway, “first gradually, then suddenly”: a decades-long war, a relative peace, and then a mad dash by the North Vietnamese Army that consumed the country in less than a month.
What followed was not peace, but darkness. The swift collapse of South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (turns out the Domino Theory was true) brought the subjugation of millions, and the opening act of a Communist bloodbath across Southeast Asia. At least a million were sent to the “re-education camps” in Vietnam alone. Half a million were murdered. Another two million fled this brutal night by sea, on rafts wholly unsuited for the tumultuous ocean, in wild hope that an American aircraft carrier might happen upon them. Close to half a million died in the water.
The tragedy was simply breathtaking. And horribly, horribly unnecessary.
~Snip~
None of this had to happen. This was not the end of a war, but the culmination of betrayal — a betrayal of an ally, of a cause, and of the very principles America had defended with precious blood and treasure for eight long years.
The received wisdom is that Vietnam was a mistake, a misguided war fought in the wrong place at the wrong time. That narrative is false. The Vietnam War was part of a noble, epic struggle — the same struggle that won the Cold War and saved the whole world from a similar fate. It was a just effort to stop Communist totalitarianism and genocide from consuming yet another corner of the globe. South Vietnam was not a hopeless case. It was a fledgling republic, striving to build a free society in the shadow of Marxist tyranny and under constant assault from within and without. Its people fought with courage and resolve for more than two decades, first with our help.
~Snip~
But with Nixon forced from office, Congress fell into the hands of men more concerned with leftist politics than principle. Nixon won 49 states in 1972. In the aftermath of Watergate, in 1974, Democrats won overwhelming Congressional majorities: almost 300 House seats, and a filibuster-proof 61 in the Senate.
This radicalized majority, driven by post-Watergate bloodlust, slashed military aid to South Vietnam by over 75%, prohibited any American military response to a massive Soviet rearmament of the North, and watched coldly as North Vietnam violated every term of the accords. They wouldn’t even send our allies tires for their Jeeps or gas for their tanks.
Deprived of ammunition, fuel, and the will of its ally, South Vietnam collapsed — not because it lacked heart, but because it was abandoned, by the same Democrat Party that had sent America’s sons to die there just ten years before.
This is the reality the left refuses to confront even half a century later. The fall of Saigon was not inevitable. It was engineered in Washington more than Hanoi. It was not a military defeat — it was a political surrender, the first of many. Over the next five years, Democrats handed 26 countries to the Communists. That’s on top of Carter’s betrayal of the Shah of Iran.
Richard Nixon understood this. Years after, in No More Vietnams, he laid out the real lessons of that conflict, lessons we ignore at our peril. He did not argue that we should never fight again. Quite the contrary. He argued that when America fights, it must fight to win — and that when we make commitments, we must keep them.
~Snip~
Second, we must never send our soldiers to fight unless the cause directly serves vital American interests. In this, Nixon prefigured Trump. But once engaged, we must not allow domestic politics to undercut our efforts. Unity at home is essential. Leadership must resist the temptation to bow to the transient winds of public opinion or the distortions of a hostile press.
Third, America must support its allies fully or not at all. Partial support, tepid commitments, and shifting loyalties invite chaos and death. South Vietnam stood ready to defend itself — with our help. Once we withdrew that help, we ensured their destruction. Nixon rightly saw that as an even greater moral failure than a strategic one.
And fourth, peace is only possible through strength. The idea that we can withdraw from the world, that we can turn our backs on aggression and be left in peace, is a fantasy. Weakness invites conflict. Only credible deterrence, backed by the willingness to act, can maintain stability and peace.
These lessons, learned at tragic cost, should have guided us forward. But they were forgotten. In 2021, Joe Biden gave us a second Saigon, this time in Kabul.

Commentary:
The media was always gave the impression the American military was fleeing South Vietnam in a chaotic panic when it wasn’t even there since South Vietnam fell years after we left, or that Americans were burning that little girl with Napalm although the Americans weren’t involved in the incident, or that all our soldiers did was suffer wounds and defeatism and using Zippos on thatch huts, or that the VC were dominating us and our installations during Tet.
South Vietnam fell because the double-minded and weak Democrat Leftist leaders in America had no commitment or intention of doing what it would take to actually win the war.
Just as Nixon and Ford were minor players in LBJ’s tragic mistake, others have mentioned the part the Democrats as the majority in Congress played.
No brains in the politicians going in, no spines to support our friends in their need to survive. Joey Xi Baidung and his handlers did the same in Afghanistan and to the Ukraine egging it on, and what will happen next with poor leadership there.
Bush '43' should have destroyed every last Taliban resource in Afghanistan. Make the bricks bounce. This could have been done solely by air power and special forces strikes.
W’s great mistake was going the LBJ route: He tried to win the hearts and minds of the population - a population that was stuck in the 8th century, and brainwashed by death cult religion.
That was a fool’s errand, made even worse by his invasion of Iraq. That upset the whole applecart in the region.
I rank W among the three worst US presidents ever. Joey Xi Baidung continues to run first. The other is Woody Wilson.

There was no Joey Baidung, and Trymp was and is the worst.

 

[Doc7505]

There was no Joey Baidung, and Trymp was and is the worst.

Indeed, there was H.S. Truman, D. Eisenhower, J.F. Kennedy,
L.B. Johnson, and Nixon...
Maybe you should read up on history....

 

[Doc7505]

There was no Joey Baidung, and Trymp was and is the worst.

~~~~~~
Hmm.... Seems Joey was too busy allowing young black boys and girls rub his blonde hair covered legs and beating Corn-Pop. Then as president unable to sign presidential orders and let others use the auto-pen..

xxxxxxxxxx
​

 

[mikegriffith1]

This was not factual. "It is amazing to see this Communist myth repeated in 2025."

Part of the agreement was to hold national elections.

Sigh. . . . How many times are we going to go over this myth? Again, Hanoi rejected UN-supervised elections at the Geneva Conference in 1954. That was the main reason that the U.S. and South Vietnam did not sign the Geneva peace accords, i.e., the U.S. and South Vietnam did not agree to the elections specified in the peace accords because they did not require UN supervision.

They were not held because the leaders of the South were afraid that Ho would win. To say he would not. It is speculation, and the facts don't support it.

I've explained this before. North Vietnam's population was 2-3 million larger than South Vietnam's, so North Vietnam would have rigged the elections in the North to ensure a victory. South Vietnam was entirely willing to hold elections if they were UN supervised. North Vietnam was not. Even then-Senator John F. Kennedy understood this and opposed holding the rigged elections that North Vietnam said they wanted to hold.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Sigh. . . . How many times are we going to go over this myth? Again, Hanoi rejected UN-supervised elections at the Geneva Conference in 1954. That was the main reason that the U.S. and South Vietnam did not sign the Geneva peace accords, i.e., the U.S. and South Vietnam did not agree to the elections specified in the peace accords because they did not require UN supervision.


I've explained this before. North Vietnam's population was 2-3 million larger than South Vietnam's, so North Vietnam would have rigged the elections in the North to ensure a victory. South Vietnam was entirely willing to hold elections if they were UN supervised. North Vietnam was not. Even then-Senator John F. Kennedy understood this and opposed holding the rigged elections that North Vietnam said they wanted to hold.

It is not a myth.

You are arguing against the agreement to hold elections.

Who was at fault? That is what is up for debate.

 

[Doc7505]

It is not a myth.

You are arguing against the agreement to hold elections.

Who was at fault? That is what is up for debate.

Read more:

The Untold Story of Why the 1956 Vietnam Elections Were Cancelled

Discover the reasons behind the cancellation of the 1956 Vietnam elections and its implications during a pivotal moment in history.

vietnamfocusguide.com

"This article delves into the complex political tensions of the era, the aspirations of leaders like Ho Chi Minh, and the broader context of the Cold War that influenced these historical events."

"The promise of these elections raised hopes for a democratic resolution to Vietnam’s fragmented political landscape. Ho Chi Minh, a charismatic and determined leader, envisioned a unified Vietnam where his vision of communism could flourish. However, the reality of the situation was far more complicated.

"For Ho Chi Minh, the failure to hold the elections was a devastating blow. He had envisioned a Vietnam where every citizen had a say in their government, a stark contrast to the autocratic rule that characterized Diem’s regime. The political landscape continued to deteriorate, leading to a full-scale war that would engulf the nation for the next two decades."
~~~
The cancellation of the 1956 Vietnam elections remains a critical chapter in Vietnam’s history, illustrating the intricate interplay of local and global politics. The legacy of Ho Chi Minh’s vision for a unified, democratic Vietnam was overshadowed by the realities of Cold War politics and the unwillingness of external powers to allow the Vietnamese people to determine their own future. Understanding this context is essential for appreciating the complexities of Vietnam’s past and the enduring quest for democracy in the face of overwhelming odds.

Look to France as the prime suspect...

 

[AZrailwhale]

You must be having a laugh, the NVA and NLF defeated the US and their South Vietnamese puppets, get over it.

Wrong, the VC were destroyed in the Tet offensive and played no further part in the war. The NVA was so badly defeated that North Vietnam sued for peace. Read about the Paris Peace Talks sometime instead of spouting propaganda.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

This is true.