For several weeks now, a supposed remark from Joseph Robinette Biden has been making the rounds comparing to the present moment the ignominious fall of Saigon in 1975 (when, incidentally, Senator Biden, “Mister Empathy,” opposed the U.S. taking in Vietnamese refugees who had been on our side in that misbegotten war). Biden is reported to have said, “Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.” By this he means Nixon and Kissinger paid no political price with war-weary Americans for abandoning South Vietnam through a peace treaty that provided a “decent interval” between the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and the collapse of South Vietnam.
If this quote is accurate (and it sounds truthful knowing what we know of Biden), a number of observations need to be lodged. It is not a parallel situation in many important ways. First, Nixon was gone by 1975 when the Saigon collapse occurred. But President Gerald Ford didn’t get the blame because he had asked Congress, in a heartfelt speech before a joint session of Congress, for emergency military aid to South Vietnam (which, unlike Afghanistan, had a functional U.S.-trained army that fought honorably), but Democrats in Congress, with a swollen majority after the 1974 midterm election, voted down. (Among the No votes: Delaware Senator Joseph Robinette Biden.)
Second, there is not going to be a “decent interval” here. There isn’t an “interval” of any kind, and it is already indecent. Everyone can see the comprehensive failure of the Biden Bug Out. The pending question of the moment is whether U.S. forces will stay beyond August 31 to complete the evacuation of Americans and Afghans who worked for us. But then the second-order question is: if we do succeed in evacuating all Americans from Kabul, will the Taliban then attack our forces at the airport? We may be looking at a repeat of Dien Bien Phu (which Biden probably thinks is the name of a restaurant in Kalorama).
Third, the Vietnam debacle did have political consequences—mostly bad ones for Democrats. It didn’t happen all at once, though. There were the killing fields of Cambodia, followed by the “boat people” fleeing Vietnam by the end of the 1970s. As 1980 approached and Jimmy Carter floundered, the foreign policy weakness of liberals was becoming more evident. Recall Ronald Reagan saying in the 1980 campaign that our effort in Vietnam had been “in truth, a noble cause,” which the media thought was an outrage, while more and more Americans thought “damn right.”
The Taliban are worthy successors of the Khmer Rouge, and I’m wondering how much longer it will be before we see from an Afghan leader the kind of letter Cambodia’s former prime minister, Sirik Matak, sent to Henry Kissinger in reply to our offer to evacuate him from the country before the Khmer Rouge completed their takeover:
Dear Excellency and Friend:
I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.
You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on this spot and in my country that I love, no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you.
Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.
Sirik Matak.
The Khmer Rouge captured Matak, shot him in the stomach, and left him to die of his wounds three days later.
Meanwhile, Democrats think things are going just fine. Here’s a news release from the DNC yesterday:
P.S. In 1975, the New York Times ran a story, datelined Phnom Penh, with the headline: “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life.” What’s the over-under line on how soon we’ll see this headline repeated about Afghanistan? (The “new” Taliban, etc. . .)
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