Obama And The Fall of Saigon -- George Packer, New Yorker
Almost forty years ago, in April of 1975, as the North Vietnamese Army was sweeping through South Vietnam toward Saigon, President Gerald Ford addressed a joint session of Congress. He asked for seven hundred and twenty-two million dollars in emergency military assistance for the government of South Vietnam. He invoked the dire risk faced by tens of thousands of South Vietnamese, including those affiliated with the United States. In “Last Days in Vietnam,” Rory Kennedy’s gripping new documentary about the fall of South Vietnam and the chaotic U.S. evacuation, Henry Kissinger, who was the Secretary of State, says of Ford, “He had two major concerns. The first was to save as many people as we could. He cared for the human beings involved—that they were not just pawns and, once they had lost their military power, they were abandoned. The second was the honor of America—that we would not be seen at the final agony of South Vietnam as having stabbed it in the back.”
Read more ....
My Comment: A fitting commentary to read after President Obama's speech tonight.
2 comments:
He always thought of himself as Nixonian. A better comparison is Cambodia 1970.
A place, far away in time and space.
With last night's speech and current events being as they are this needs no intro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK8N6DjJccc
Post a Comment