Remembering the fall of Saigon badly

Last night, CNN remembered the fall of Saigon in its own way. The program started out well enough with a feature on what happened to the half-American babies and young children who were rescued from South Vietnam. As one would expect, the answer is, very good things, at least in the case of the individuals profiled.
But then came Bruce Morton. His feature included a clip of fellow relic David Halberstam opining that Vietnam taught us the consequences of sticking our nose is “a war of liberation.” Morton chose to focus on the actions of William Calley at My Lai, which also enabled him to slip in a reference to Abu Ghraib. For Morton, the lesson of Vietnam is that as a people we can be as good or as bad as the next people. And he’s right. If the next people are willing to fight for a decade at great cost to protect another people from the monstrosity of Communism.
Thinking about what happened 30 years ago brought to mind the phrase that made John Kerry famous. The South Vietnamese people were the last to “die” for the massive mistake that was Communism.