Posted on 05/11/2015 4:42:21 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last month marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, a moment vividly encapsulated by the frenzied scene of South Vietnamese desperately trying to reach the last helicopter on the roof of the American embassy. April was also the 150th anniversary of the surrender at Appomattox, when Robert E. Lee capitulated to Ulysses S. Grant, bringing the bloodiest fighting of the Civil War to an end.
The two episodes seemingly have little to do with each other. But each, in its way, illustrates one of the bleakly recurring themes of US military history: When America's armed forces prematurely abandon the field, the results are usually heartbreaking for the people they leave behind.
The Vietnam experience makes the point with aching sorrow. By 1972, the US war against the North Vietnamese communists was being won on the ground; it was lost in Congress and at the Paris peace talks under the political pressure of the antiwar movement. The United States pulled its fighting troops from Vietnam in 1973, then refused to provide its South Vietnamese allies with the economic and military aid they needed to resist Hanoi's onslaught. As disaster loomed, President Ford implored Congress not to turn a blind eye to the "vast human tragedy" about to engulf "our friends in Vietnam and Cambodia."
But hostile lawmakers refused to heed Ford's pleas, and 40 years ago this spring the communists swept to power. What ensued was horrific. "Millions of people lost their lives and tens of millions lost any chance at freedom," Robert F. Turner, co-founder of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, recalled in a recent essay. In Cambodia, the fanatical Khmer Rouge slaughtered an estimated 1.7 million men, women, and children. In neighboring South Vietnam, there were hundreds of thousands of additional victims — frantic "boat people" trying to escape by sea, inmates tortured in re-education camps, innumerable others summarily executed or "disappeared."
To the shock of at least some former antiwar activists, more people died in the first two years of Indochina's communist peace than had lost their lives in the 13 years of America's war. Even now Vietnam remains a communist dictatorship, one of the least free places on earth.
When US forces settle in for a long peace after fighting a difficult war — as in (West) Germany and Japan following World War II, or South Korea since the 1950s — their presence has generally nurtured stability, prosperity, and democratic freedoms. When they retreat precipitately — as in Lebanon or Iraq — renewed cruelty and violence predictably fill the vacuum.
And it isn't only overseas that the pattern has been manifested.
In a striking new book, After Appomattox, historian Gregory Downs chronicles the years of military occupation that followed Lee's surrender to Grant in 1865 — a military occupation that was indispensable to the uprooting of slavery and the political empowerment of freed slaves. In the face of Southern white supremacist hostility, it was only the continuing presence of federal troops in the South that could break up remaining pockets of rebellion, establish the right of blacks to vote and seek election, void discriminatory laws, and unilaterally remove disloyal or racist sheriffs and judges from office.
But there were far too few troops to do the job properly. With the end of battlefield fighting, pressure to "bring the boys home" was intense. By the end of 1866, fewer than 25,000 troops remained in the South — down from nearly 1 million at the time Lee surrendered. Meanwhile, a violent white insurgency was spreading, led by a Democratic Party terror group called the Ku Klux Klan. These insurgents "spread across the South," Downs writes, "assassinating Republican leaders and intimidating black voters."
Where the US military held sway, Reconstruction legislatures made remarkable gains — funding schools and hospitals, reforming property and marriage laws, making possible the election to office of more than 1,500 black candidates. But those gains were swept away as it became clear that Washington would not deploy the troops necessary to crush the Klan terror. Public support for continuing the occupation evaporated. By the late 1870s, the troops were effectively gone. Southern Democrats moved ruthlessly to roll back the astonishing progress in black civil rights; in its place they imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, and racial segregation. "Without the fear of federal [military] power," recounts Downs, "a new and bleak era of Jim Crow was dawning."
Military occupation and the prolonged exercise of war powers go against the American grain. The urge to "declare peace and get out" is only too understandable. This season of anniversaries is a reminder that yielding to that urge can come at a terrible price, above all to those who remain after the US military is gone.
When US forces settle in for a long peace after fighting a difficult war -- as in (West) Germany and Japan following World War II, or South Korea since the 1950s -- their presence has generally nurtured stability, prosperity, and democratic freedoms. When they retreat precipitately — as in Lebanon or Iraq — renewed cruelty and violence predictably fill the vacuum.
There is a huge difference between the scenarios presented here where U.S. troops "settled in for a long peace" and those where they "retreated precipitately." In the case of Germany and Japan, those nations were effectively destroyed before any military occupation took place. And South Korea wasn't even an occupation as I would use the term (the U.S. didn't topple the Korean government in a military campaign).
The cases of Lebanon and Iraq, along with Vietnam, don't make the case for long-term military occupation at all. In fact, a better case could be made that the U.S. never should have had a military presence there in the first place. You don't fight a half-assed military campaign and then expect to get any results. You're better off if you don't even bother with the military campaign in the first place.
And the reason for this is that people never change. We have to wait for the defeated generation to all but die out in order to change the culture left behind.
Therefore we will never achieve victory In the middle east because we won’t stay long enough to destroy islam as a functioning part of those societies.
Ann Coulter had it right. The only way to win is to conquer their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
Until we have the will to do that we are only fighting a holding action as we retreat and pray for Jesus to come back soon.
Must be a Ron Paul follower, right?
We have an avowed Communist (probably foreign-born, at that) in the White House today, and U.S. citizens have less freedom today than they did 50 years ago. Are you sure we actually won the Cold War?
P.S. I am not a Ron Paul follower.
It was predictable to have the rise of an ISIS after Obama pulled up stakes.
It was progressing on the ground. It was, in fact won in the air. Hanoi was, according to Giap, making preparations for an American Occupation. The big guys were getting their families out of the country. We marched up the hill and then, we marched back down the hill. It was pretty much the same after Tet in 1968. We had won the war by spring 1969 when the last of the VC were crushed and the NVA had all withdrawn. Then we stood down because it wasn't fair and we had to let the NVA take time for some R&R to get back into the game.
Just to engage in a little counter-factual history
A mere 3 years later in 1976, Mao Tse-Dong (as well as Zhu De and Zhou En-lai) would all die in China.
Would new leaders in China (ie. Deng Xiao-ping) have pushed the North to make peace with the South?
People tend to incorrectly view Vietnam as a singular action, unrelated to other world events at the time.
I would differ with that assessment. I go there from time to time and not for business. I hang around in a highway town and take a jaunt or two up or down country. I have many close friends there including a couple of American expatriates, one who has been in Vũng Tàu since '83. My experience is that the Vietnamese have more what I call walking-around freedom than we have here. Of course they do not have the Constitutional protections we have but very few countries have those. They can up and go somewhere at will and the formality of notifying the local gendarmes is still observed- sometimes. They can buy and sell property even though on paper the land all belongs to the government and is leased at tiny, even for Vietnamese, sums. One can build on one's land without government telling one just how far apart the nails must be and just what the composition of the nails must be.
There is the endemic corruption; you have to grease palms for most things but the cost is relatively far less than all the permits and approvals required in our "free" system. The difference here is that our far ore expensive corruption is institutionalized and formalized. You don't have to slip a few dollars to the local police chief before you build something but you have to get permits for everything and will be told what you may build and how you must build it and what your yard must look like.
Speech is much more open now than in say, 1985, and the people still refer to bureaucrats as "Vi Si"(VC). The bộ đội can arrest you for anything at all but it happens probably no more than it does here and there are no SWATs though that may change as the government people try to copy all things American so long as it doesn't cost them their jobs.
Religious freedom is a bit circumscribed but that is changing favorably by fits and starts and by a militant Catholic Church and Buddhists who are taking back some of their properties stolen in '75.
The country is prospering because of general economic freedom. The commiebastards, being Vietnamese, are perceptive and practical, unlike their onetime counterparts in Moscow, and East Europe. They saw that the country would get continually poorer with socialism and collective farming and would become inevitably a province of China so they got off the socialist horse and said produce what you want, build what you want to build.
Gradually the bribery has become less onerous because the production has outstripped the bribe levels and businessmen are becoming more influential than the bureaucrats.
The Vietnamese government and people have made a workable accommodation with reality. A clan based society is unlikely to be able to profit from democracy in that each voter will always vote for the candidate most related to his clan regardless of qualities. That has been illustrated starkly in the Middle East in several instances recently. South Korea seems to be the only example in history that is different.
Actually, I think there are only three countries in the world who have overthrown a tyrannical set of rulers and replaced them with successful democratic/republican systems, with systems that were not more tyrannical than the ones displaced. There is the oldest one, Switzerland. Then there is the American experience and the last is South Korea. The Swiss and American societies at the time of their liberation were both based on individuals, people who had migrated out of class based tyrannical societies into relatively empty lands that had weak control from nominally ruling capitals in other places.I might place the Baltic states in that category but they are not out of the Russian woods yet.
Việt Nam had a version of that experience with outcasts and the more entrepreneurial folks leaving their villages for the wide open spaces of the Mekong Delta. That's why the South is more entrepreneurial and prosperous than the North and has much less interference by the government in day to day affairs.
The Congress elected in 1974 has the blood of millions on its hands. The war was won at Christmas 1972 with the massive bombing and mining harbors. Even the barest follow up in the ensuing years would have kept the South and Cambodia free.
The Vietnam War was a critical part of our opposition to the Soviets and the Chinese. If we had just left the South Vietnamese to their own devices, the Communists would have validated the "National Liberation War" tactic of externally-assisted civil wars and we would have lost control of the lifelines to supply Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia/New Zealand would have been jeopardized.
Geopolitics are not our strong suit.
Don’t forget that the media helped losing the war
Glad to hear that you’re not a paulista - but I was right that you’re not a veteran, right?
We veterans tend to better understand the issues involved with the price for freedom and what happens when we don’t fight.
“They forget or don’t care to know the significance of the Straits of Malacca to our allies.”
A few years ago, I was panning around the globe in Google Earth...and I spotted the Straits of Malacca. Numerous ships were evident in the photo, and I wondered what on earth this was, and why were there so many ships. A little research, and I learned about its importance.
Not once in school (high school or college) had I ever heard a word about the Strait of Malacca.
Those straits control the majority of sea movement around Southeast Asia. Most everyone above the rank of Lieutenant in the naval services know their significance. So did the Soviets.
Meanwhile, the Leftists really worked their hearts out to get the enemy side a victory by re-casting their work as “anti war” instead of “pro-enemy”. The American leadership of the two main leftist fronts (the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice (CPUSA) and the New Mobe (SWP)) worked directly with Hanoi and Moscow and Beijing to develop and direct the propaganda and schedules for demonstrations and other disruptive activities.
Bottom line: how the heck would our country have reacted if we had pro-Nazi or pro-Japanese groups supporting the enemy, complete with communications, funding, etc. actively during WW II?
In the case of Vietnam, whose freedom are you referring to?
And no, I'm not a veteran. And I don't agree with your statement that veterans have any better understanding of issues involved with these issues than anyone else.
Vietnam is prospering because it is slowly displacing Red China as America’s slave colony; they are cheaper labor than Red China, and only selectively opposed to capitalism.
The freedom of the South Vietnamese and our own freedom as well.
Veterans have first-hand experience with the issues, blood in the game, if you will. We know the price involved.
Bystanders don’t.
Have you been there since the war? Opening up to Viet Nam was the only constructive thing Bill Clinton did that wasn’t forced on him by Republicans. And sending Pete Peterson as ambassador was the best appointment he ever made. Not only was Peterson a perfect choice for the time but it kept him out of the Congress. Since then the Vietnamese government has been amenable to pressure from Clinton and then Bush for relaxing the iron fist and allowing freedom. Viet Nam opened up to trade and private farming and the industrious and canny Vietnamese people commenced the path to prosperity. Unfortunately the current President has backslid, probably because he resents any country that desires to be an ally of the USA which is something those commiebastards have aspired to for two decades. The rulers were willing to relax as far as the Americans wanted up to the point that they lose their jobs. There has been a little regression because the pressure for improvement is gone and the occasional backhand from Washington is a real downer in Viet Nam. Nowadays reasserting central control would be very difficult and it is obvious to the ruling party that doing such would destroy the economy which is of much greater concern than it is to other real or nominal Communists. Economic regression would be a dangerous invitation to China to attempt to “reunify” their lost southern province.
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