Now the myth of the liberals losing Vietnam. Remember, please, that Richard Nixon (a Republican) withdrew all US troops from Vietnam, and Henry Kissinger, his secretary of state and a Republican, negotiated the terms of the US withdrawal with the North Vietnamese. Those terms were considered a sell-out by the South Vietnamese, and so the USA had to force the South Vietnamese government to accept the deal, by threatening to cut off aid.
Once the war was officially over, the US Congress refused to start it again. You could say that they had a hand in the fall of Saigon, by not authorizing new military action. Or, you could say that the first war having taken so long and achieved so little for the USA, they were reluctant to try fighting it again.
Subsequently to the fall of Saigon, the Khmer Rouge started the massive genocide in Cambodia. However, you cannot tie this to the fall of Vietnam. In fact, virtually all of Cambodia had fallen to the Khmer Rouge long before Vietnam. I was in Pnom Penh in 1973, and already we could hear the Khmer Rouge artillery in the distance. Laos had fallen to the communists quite a few years before Vietnam, so Vietnam did not touch off a spate of falling dominoes.
The USA leaving Vietnam had nothing to do with the genocide in Cambodia. Instead, many historians argue that the USA bombing and invading Cambodia temporarily led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. They were effectively in control of all Cambodia except for the capital city, Phnom Penh, in early 1973 or even 1972. With that control, they COULD have started the genocide much earlier. And then, guess who stopped the genocide? Not the USA, not the UN; it was Vietnam that invaded Cambodia and defeated the Khmer Rouge.
Moreover, the obvious, Thailand did not fall; nor did Malaysia or Indonesia. And today, there is an Intel Corp. integrated circuit factory in Vietnam worth several billions of dollars and the USA doesn't have a habit of allowing such vital technical infrastructure in countries we think could become enemies.
Getting back to those who were responsible for the fall of Vietnam, some of Henry Kissinger's talks with the Chinese were recently declassified, and in one of them you can read him telling Chou En-lai (written Zhou Enlai these days)""and, while we cannot bring a communist government to power, if, as a result of historical conditions, it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
(The URL is www.gwu.edu).
Repezat URL (It's not printing) :(http://www.gwu.edu/
~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB193/
HAK%206-20-72.pdf).
I should note that this is an Adobe file. You will see the section on Vietnam starting on page 28 and running through the conclusion on page 35.
And regarding: "Defeat and loss in Iraq, so that the Democratic party can profit from subverting the success of this war against terrorism ... all for votes!"
This from a history of Vietnam:
October 8, 1972 - The long-standing diplomatic stalemate between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho finally ends as both sides agree to major concessions. The U.S. will allow North Vietnamese troops already in South Vietnam to remain there, while North Vietnam drops its demand for the removal of South Vietnam's President Thieu and the dissolution of his government.
Although Kissinger's staff members privately express concerns over allowing NVA troops to remain in the South, Kissinger rebuffs them, saying, "I want to end this war before the election." (www.historyplace.com/
unitedstates/vietnam/index-
1969.html)
"I want to end this war before the election." now why do you suppose he wanted that???
