The Fall of Saigon, 30 April 1975, and Its Lessons for America in the Middle East

Today, we commemmorate the Fall of Saigon. On April 30, 1975, Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was captured by the People’s Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (the Viet Cong). This marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam into a socialist republic, governed by the Communist Party of Vietnam. Vietnam remains today a country under Communist rule. On April 29, 1975, North Vietnamese forces, under the command of General Van Tien Dung began their final assault on Saigon, attacking South Vietnamese forces, commanded by General Nguyen Van Toan, which suffered heavy artillery bombardment. This bombardment at the Tan Son Nhut Airport killed the last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam : Charles McMahon and Darwin Judge. By the afternoon of the next day, April 30, North Vietnamese troops had occupied the important points of Saigon and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese presidential palace. The South Vietnamese government capitulated shortly afterward. The city was renamed Ho Chí Minh City, after the Democratic Republic's President. The capture of the city was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history. In addition to the flight of refugees, the end of the war and the institution of new rules forcing habitants out into farming areas by the Communists contributed to a decline in the city’s population. In addition, of the 90,000 South Vietnamese who worked for the US, 30,000 were hunted down through abandoned US records and killed. Some 23,000 were able to be evacuated to the US. ~~~~~ The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was a Cold War-era proxy war between the US and Soviet Communist forces in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. It went on from November 1, 1955 -- after the French were driven out at the decisive battle of Dien Bien Phu -- to the fall of Saigon that surrendered Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to Communist forces on April 30, 1975. The war was in large part carried out as a guerrilla war by the Viet Cong, a South Vietnamese Communist common front aided by the North Vietnam Army armed and supported by the Soviet Union, against anti-Communist forces in the region. The North Vietnamese Army engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units to battle. As the war continued, the part of the Viet Cong in the fighting decreased as the role of the NVA grew. US and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The US conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and over time the North Vietnamese airspace became the most heavily defended in the world. The US government viewed American involvement in the war as a way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam -- part of a wider containment strategy, with the stated aim of stopping the unacceptable spread of Communism. According to the US "domino theory," if one state went Communist, other states in the region would follow - putting the Philippines, strategic for the US, at risk. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam under Communist rule. They viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against forces from France and then America, and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a US puppet state. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina. US involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. US involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a US destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft. This was followed by the American Congress passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving the US President authorization to increase the US military presence. Regular US combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. In 1968, the Communists launched the Tet Offensive, which failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government but became the turning point in the war, as it persuaded a large segment of the United States population that its government's claims of making progress toward winning the war were untrue despite many years of massive US military aid to South Vietnam. American disillusionment with the war led to the first domestic peace marches and draft protests, a force that led to President Lyndon Johnson deciding not to seek re-election in 1968. A gradual withdrawal of US ground forces began as part of a policy known as Vietnamization, which aimed to end American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the Communists to the South Vietnamese themselves. Direct US military involvement ended on August 15,1973, as a result of the Case-Church Amendment passed by the US Congress to prohibit further US military activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia unless the President secured congressional approval in advance. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese service members and civilians killed vary from 800,000 to 3.1 million. Some 200,000–300,000 Cambodians, 20,000–200,000 Laotians, and 58,220 US service members died in the conflict. ~~~~~ Dear readers, the Vietnam War damaged the soul of America as no other except the Civil War. It pitted youngsters against parents, brothers and sisters against each other -- in an atmosphere where neutrality was not permitted. A political chasm opened between liberals and conservatives that drove the left farther to the left and the right farther to the right. The chasm has not closed and American politics continues to suffer from the Vietnam era's disease of having to choose a side. For or Against. Right or Wrong. Hawk or Dove. Patriot or Traitor. Today, President Obama is being chased by the ghosts of Vietnam in the Middle East. After the Fall of Saigon, the American military said it would never again fight a war it was not allowed to win. It had learned the lessons of Vietnam -- have a plan that leads to victory or don't engage; air supremacy is vital but ground troops must secure territory; guerrilla wars are best avoided unless a vital US interest is at stake. Read the above history of the US presence in Vietnam and you are reading the history of the US presence in the Middle East in the Obama era -- start with air power, train and arm local armies, send advisors, but no boots on the ground because it is a problem for the local countries to resolve. President Obama has heard this advice from every military leader and Secretary of Defense. But, as in Vietnam, mission creep is inevitable. So, if America has learned anything from Vietnam, it is this. Decide whether the Middle East is a vital interest of the United States. If it is, unleash the military to win the war and suppress the jihadists - and Iran with them, if it is foolish enough to become a combatant. If the Middle East is not an American vital interest -- which I think would be a dangerous concluson -- then withdraw every last US soldier and let the chips fall where they may. But, America and its President must stop wasting American lives and resources in the Middle East in the fundamentally mistaken view that it is not capable of becoming another gut-wrenching Vietnam.