The End in Vietnam, 40 Years On
30th April 2015
There are surprisingly few recollections under way today of the final ignominious chapter of our Vietnam agony, when the U.S. was chased out of Saigon. I wonder if there isn’t a larger subtext here. We not only seem to be re-running the 1960s at home right now (Ferguson, Baltimore, etc), but we seem to be trying to re-run 1970s foreign policy too, with American retreat leading to chaos, instability, and increasing the threat of new wars.
Maybe a few people recall how wrong the left was about what they predicted would take place after the U.S. finally bugged out of southeast Asia. (We didn’t just bug out; we also cut off aid to our friends and allies in the region, degrading their own chances for self-defense and survival.) Let’s recall what leading liberals had to say at the time, especially about Cambodia. Anthony Lewis wrote in the New York Times: “What future possibility could be more terrible that the reality of what is happening in Cambodia now?” It was, Lewis wrote a few weeks later, only our “cultural arrogance” that led us to believe that “our way of life must prevail.” New York Times reporter David Andelman wrote that the vast majority of Cambodians “do not voice any concern about such issues as the shape of a peace or possible postwar reprisals,” while another Times reporter, Sydney Schanberg, wrote that “it is difficult to imagine how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.” Sen. Alan Cranston said that “the ‘bloodbath’ that some people fear after the fighting stops if the [Khmer Rouge] insurgents take over is only conjecture.” The Los Angeles Times said the aid cutoff was “for the good of the suffering Cambodians themselves.” Columnist Joseph Kraft asked, “Does it really matter whether Cambodia goes Communist?” And after South Vietnam followed Cambodia’s fall, the New York Times carried a news story, datelined Phnom Penh, with the headline: “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life.”
I remember that date. It was not a happy time.