Saigon falls, 50 years ago today 4/30/75

[Bamaro]

This was momentous and both happy and sad. Happy that this debacle was finally over and sad remembering the 58k dead Americans in an effort that we were constantly lied to about.

 

[JDCrimson]

We raised hell about it back then as we should have.

Think about it, Russia loses this many soldiers in 2-3 months of fighting and nary a domestic protest because it has been squelching.

Could the US become a Russia in the future where we lose our loved ones in a senseless invasion with no right to protest or publicly grieve our lost?

 

[crimsonaudio]

We raised hell about it back then as we should have.

Think about it, Russia loses this many soldiers in 2-3 months of fighting and nary a domestic protest because it has been squelching.

Could the US become a Russia in the future where we lose our loved ones in a senseless invasion with no right to protest or publicly grieve our lost?

Doubtful - the US lost 7,085 KIA in 23 years in the GWOT vs 58,281 KIA in 20 years in Vietnam.

I don't think Americans would tolerate another Vietnam now. I certainly hope they wouldn't.

 

[cbi1972]

58000 seems inconsequential for something like existential crisis like a European nation in ww2 but for a war for sphere of influence, I guess it makes more sense to be bothered by. If I had not already known the number, I would have expected casualties in the millions by the cultural impact in the US. My dad was a hippie and I grew up with a poster on the inside of a closet listing the number dead in Vietnam. He has a DVR 98% full of Fox news shows now...

 

[Bamaro]

The real issue is we lost 58k in a war that we new ahead of time that we would lose.

 

[catsbane]

I have always felt that Vietnam was one of our more altruistic wars, by "our", meaning the American people, not the administration. Who knows what the real motivation of the decision makers was. The American soldier though and the people in so far as the war was supported, were not fighting for sphere of influence, for oil, for hatred's sake or for domination but for the chance for a people to live in freedom. Nothing dishonorable in that.
Given our lack of commitment relative to that of the North Vietnamese government and the corruption in the South that we were also inadvertently supporting, I think it was a mistake.

 

[crimsonaudio]

The real issue is we lost 58k in a war that we new ahead of time that we would lose.

And that we had zero business in being involved in.

 

[Bodhisattva]

Always a sad anniversary in my household. My wife and MIL were very down yesterday. The day their country was officially killed. The beginning of my future FIL's 12 years in a communist reeducation camp. During Lan's formative years, she relays to me how miserable it was having virtually no men of her father's generation around - nearly all taken off to the camps and many never returning. Soon to be replaced by carpetbagger families from the North - loyal communists - who were gifted all the best businesses and houses.

 

[JDCrimson]

Probably so, but at least China is not in control of the Southeast Asia now and likely would be had we not gone to Vietnam.

And that we had zero business in being involved in.

 

[dtgreg]

After WW1, we had a million armed men under Pershing. Our leaders knew that we in America should be in the business of civilian aircraft and automobiles. An army that big has to eat and will find wars to get into. So, we took it apart.

We didn't realize that Europe was too hateful to govern itself. What we couldn't comprehend is that just 20 short years later with fresh memories of the horrors of The Great War, the War To End All Wars, millions dead, Europe would decide to DO IT ALL AGAIN.

We had to build this Frankenstein monster of an Army, Navy and Air Force big and strong enough to defeat the Japs AND the NAZIs AND become Rome and force the lasting peace afterward. Well, like the smart leaders of the 1920s knew, that monster has to eat. Korea and then Vietnam. And wars since.

I don't know what to do, though. Russia, China and others are still threats. Europe is slowly (SLOWLY) getting some kind of feeling of kinship, but, man... The Europeans remind me of the Native tribes here in Alabama. "Yeah, we may hate the White Man, but let's help him stick it to the Creeks. Then we'll deal with him later". What's happiening in Ukraine is the future of Poland, the Baltic States and East Germany but the Poles and Germans are so jealous that they don't mind Ukraine being taken down a peg and their army bled white before it ends. They are just hopeless.

 

[Its On A Slab]

The downside of the all-volunteer military is that there is no accountability in Washington whenever the choice is made to send our men and women into harm's way. Their kids will never have to go face the consequences of the legislator's decision.

It is way too easy to send someone else's kid into battle. I remember all the Tobey Keith chest-beating during the war in Iraq, and the fanboys with their "Let's Roll" t-shirts. I also remember seeing an interview with college-age kids who were über-supporters of the war, and one kid, when asked why he wasn't signing up to go, he said, "Well, I have other priorities."

We still had the draft during Nam, but deferments were the game guys played when they wanted to opt out. The rich and connected didn't have to go, or else they were able to join the Guard...and in those days, Guard units hardly ever got sent. How many did future warhawk Dick Cheney get? He and his "other priorities".

Dubya served in an Air NG unit, flying fighter jets. I remember someone here jokingly posting, "I felt so safe during Vietnam while George Bush was flying sorties over my house."

And I say all of this because the draft ended only days after I turned draft age. I didn't join up to the all-volunteer military because I did have justifiable other priorities. But then again, in the post-Nam world, we really didn't have any military actions to speak of during the years where I would have been drafted anyway.

 

[Tidewater]

And that we had zero business in being involved in.

It is easy to Monday morning quarterback this.
The generation that decided to get involved (Kennedy, and the "Whiz Kids") had witnessed, 25 years prior, Nazi Germany take over Czechoslovakia, inheriting the Skoda works, and put them to work making Panzer and cannons. Then watched the Soviets take over East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria and put the resources of those countries to work on the next Bolshevik conquests.

The Saigon regime was incompetent and corrupt. When I got to this war when I was teaching military history, my editorial comment was "Some governments are so screwed up, that even the US cannot save them." The same applied to Afghanistan. Some governments are too screwed up to be saved.

For me the tragedy is that Hi Chi Minh did not tell the OSS reps that he was a Vietnamese nationalist instead of a communist, but the Sorbonne had exposed him to Marx and he found that horrid philosophy convincing. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese died fighting for what they could have had for free had Ho been more clever. FDR was not a big fan of European empires and was not inclined to let the Europeans re-establish theirs after World War II.

 

[crimsonaudio]

It is easy to Monday morning quarterback this.

I get it, but I'm also one who thinks if you're going to go to war, you go to war. None of the 'hearts and minds' crap or holding back wrt capabilities. What started in Vietnam has poisoned the US military for decades.

If we're not willing to fully wage war, let the country fall.

 

[Tidewater]

I get it, but I'm also one who thinks if you're going to go to war, you go to war. None of the 'hearts and minds' crap or holding back wrt capabilities. What started in Vietnam has poisoned the US military for decades.

If we're not willing to fully wage war, let the country fall.

I agree for the most part. I guess it would depend on when you are talking about. In the late 1950s Ike sent advisors to South Vietnam. That was not the US going to war. It was helping (in a small way) a friend defeat aggression.
Kennedy sent more and a bunch of gear (like M113 Armored Personnel Carriers) and the ARVN started really defeating the VC, so the NVA sent units south.
LBJ sent even more advisors, but the ARVN was losing so LBJ sent Marines/US Army to fight directly for RVN (March 1965).

So it really depends on when you are talking about.
I think deploying US forces without a declaration of war and truly committing the US to winning was the mistake (then again, Europe was the most important region for US interests, so do you pull resources out of Europe to send to Vietnam?).
That or not kicking the RVN to the curb when they rubbed out President Ngo Dinh Diem in 2 NOV 1963. JFK died before he could really incorporate that datapoint into his calculations, but LBJ decided to side with the president-murderers.
Thus, the mistake was between 2 NOV 1963 and 8 MAR 1965.

 

[Bamaro]

“I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.” —President John Kennedy in a televised interview with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963.

“I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.” —Newly inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson at a White House meeting on November 24, 1963 responding to U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. telling him that Vietnam “would go under any day if we don’t do something.”

“We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” —President Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Akron University on October 21, 1964, two weeks before the presidential election.

“We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it. I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.” —Senator George McGovern (D-SD) speaking on the Senate floor on April 25, 1967.

“We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” —General William C. Westmoreland speaking to the National Press Club on November 21, 1967 as part of a Johnson administration effort to shore up sagging public support for the war.

“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” —AP correspondent Peter Arnett quoting a U.S. major on the decision to bomb and shell Ben Tre on February 7, 1968 after Viet Cong forces overran the city in the Mekong Delta forty-five miles south of Saigon during the Tet Offensive.

“For it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.” —Walter Cronkite in an editorial at the close of the CBS Evening News broadcast on February 27, 1968 reporting on what he had learned on a trip to Vietnam in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive.

“We believe that peace is at hand.” —National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger speaking at a White House press conference about the Paris Peace negotiations on October 26, 1972, two weeks before the presidential election.

“During the day on Monday, Washington time, the airport at Saigon came under persistent rocket as well as artillery fire and was effectively closed. The military situation in the area deteriorated rapidly. I therefore ordered the evacuation of all American personnel remaining in South Vietnam.” —President Gerald Ford’s statement announcing the evacuation of United States personnel from the Republic of Vietnam on April 29, 1975.

 

[arthurdawg]

After WW1, we had a million armed men under Pershing. Our leaders knew that we in America should be in the business of civilian aircraft and automobiles. An army that big has to eat and will find wars to get into. So, we took it apart.

We didn't realize that Europe was too hateful to govern itself. What we couldn't comprehend is that just 20 short years later with fresh memories of the horrors of The Great War, the War To End All Wars, millions dead, Europe would decide to DO IT ALL AGAIN.

We had to build this Frankenstein monster of an Army, Navy and Air Force big and strong enough to defeat the Japs AND the NAZIs AND become Rome and force the lasting peace afterward. Well, like the smart leaders of the 1920s knew, that monster has to eat. Korea and then Vietnam. And wars since.

I don't know what to do, though. Russia, China and others are still threats. Europe is slowly (SLOWLY) getting some kind of feeling of kinship, but, man... The Europeans remind me of the Native tribes here in Alabama. "Yeah, we may hate the White Man, but let's help him stick it to the Creeks. Then we'll deal with him later". What's happiening in Ukraine is the future of Poland, the Baltic States and East Germany but the Poles and Germans are so jealous that they don't mind Ukraine being taken down a peg and their army bled white before it ends. They are just hopeless.

Yes... One of my major thoughts on letting the Russkies roll over Ukraine is that once they have rehabbed their military they will take the Baltic Republics. Then Poland. Then the rest of the Warsaw Pact nations. Then Finland... And where does that end with Putin in charge? He would be Stalin...

 

[crimsonaudio]

Yes... One of my major thoughts on letting the Russkies roll over Ukraine is that once they have rehabbed their military they will take the Baltic Republics. Then Poland. Then the rest of the Warsaw Pact nations. Then Finland... And where does that end with Putin in charge? He would be Stalin...

So again the question is asked - what do you want us to do? The Ukrainians are unwilling to utilize all their men of fighting age, so do you want us to send in troops? Just sending guns and missiles won't win this - they are severely out-manned.

No one wants to see Ukraine fall, but what are our options?

And Putin isn't going to attack a NATO country - Poland and Finland aren't happening.

 

[arthurdawg]

So again the question is asked - what do you want us to do? The Ukrainians are unwilling to utilize all their men of fighting age, so do you want us to send in troops? Just sending guns and missiles won't win this - they are severely out-manned.

No one wants to see Ukraine fall, but what are our options?

And Putin isn't going to attack a NATO country - Poland and Finland aren't happening.

I have no answer, just stating the concern. Poland and Finland are but a fever dream, but if we were to withdraw from NATO and the Europe squabbles and fractures...

 

[Tidewater]

I have no answer, just stating the concern. Poland and Finland are but a fever dream, but if we were to withdraw from NATO and the Europe squabbles and fractures...

The US is not going to quit NATO.
Not letting Europeans underfund their own defence any more is not the same thing as quitting NATO.

 

[arthurdawg]

The US is not going to quit NATO.
Not letting Europeans underfund their own defence any more is not the same thing as quitting NATO.

Just thinking of the downstream... I would hope we keep our NATO connections in place.