Take a Deep Breath

Victor Davis Hanson:

What's really the untold story about the Vietnam experience... between 1971 and 1973, 1974, the Vietnamization program actually had worked, and with American air power and supply, there was a viable South Vietnamese government, which was included in the Paris peace talks, and Mr. Kissinger really did have an agreement that there would be a south Korea-like authoritarian government that would have a chance to evolve into something like Korea did today in the south, and it would be protected by the promise of American air power.

And Nixon more or less kept that promise until 1973, '74, until Watergate and the combination of cut off of aid stopped that, and when we decided we would not support it as we had Korea, it fell.

One of the biggest lies about Vietnam was that, well, 'Vietnam must not have been viable,' or it would have survived on its own - well, south Korea can't survive on its own today, that's just the nature of democracies in that part of the world, they need the support and the promises of support from the United States.

... I think everybody in America this memorial day should take a deep breath and look at Fallujah and Najaf and why we're there, and go back and look at Vietnam, because after 1975, look what happens - there was a million boat people, there was a half a million people executed and put into re-education camps, there was the soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there was the soviet inspired revolution in central America, there was the takeover of the American hostages, there was oil embargoes, and there was a terrible national crisis, debate, over that, and it all accrued from that disaster of withdrawing after all that sacrifice and losing Vietnam.