| | Hong, the West knew damn well by 1975 the cruelty the communists were capable of. If people were claiming ignorance of what the communists were capable of by this time, they were either blind, mentally insane, or unwilling to look at reality. That Nixon predicted a massive slaughter if Vietnam would be abandoned was not from some crystal ball he had in the Oval Office. Nixon himself witnessed the cruelty of communist oppression during Hungary's uprising in 1956. The North Vietnamese government between 1953 and 1956 had a 5% execution quota for each village resulting in 150,000 people dead. Eyewitness accounts of summary executions of men, women and children were pouring in from the North during the war. Nguyen Manh Tuong stated at the 1956 National Congress in Hanoi:"It is better to kill 10 innocent people then let one enemy escape"
People knew of the atrocities committed by Mao, Stalin, Kim Il-Sung, Ho Chi Minh etc by this time, actually they knew for a long time before 1975, perhaps they didn't have as accurate a figure as we do now of how many innocent souls were extinguished from this planet, thanks only to people like R.J. Rummels who gave enough of a damn to even make an accurate analysis of the figures that we are now aware of the extent of these democides. Whatever the figures were, the West knew by 1975 whatever it was it was too high. No one could rationally claim ignorance considering the mountain of evidence present at that time. To claim ignorance would be just as bad as denying the Jewish Holocaust of WW2. That the United States and the rest of the western world was in a cold war with the Soviet Union and its proxies immediately after WW2 was not by accident. That Winston Churchill characterized Soviet conquered Eastern Europe as being behind an iron curtain was not born out of conjecture.
There was no excuse. Indochina was abandoned to thugs and criminals and we can thank the Democrats of 1975 for their depraved indifference to Indochina.
As to the victors slaughter their defeated enemies, that was pretty much expected in those countries. South Vietnam would have done the same if they had won.
There was absolutely no comparison between North and South Vietnam. Your assertion the South would've just the same murdered 7.5 million people in Indochina had they had power is utterly ridiculous. You cannot seriously consider them morally equivalent? The North was backed by the Soviet Union, recognized at this time as the most evil empire on the planet. Why did 500,000 Vietnamese try to immediately flee Vietnam when Saigon fell? Why didn't they flee before when the South Vietnamese government was still standing? Where were the South's murder quotas like the NVA had? This assertion the South was morally equivalent to the North is as ridiculous as saying if South Korea had control over the whole Korean peninsula it would be like Kim Jong Il's regime today. One only needs to look at a nighttime satellite to image to see the futility in that argument:
It is interesting that US people always talk about those wars such as Vietnam War as if it were their own war, and that it would be won or loss by a different US policy. It was not.
Hong, thank Galt the US saw fit to meddle in the affairs of foreign civil wars. Had Truman not aided Greece in their civil war with the communists which lead to the communists ultimate defeat, I probably would not be alive today living in the greatest country on this plant. Whoever claims ownership to these proxy wars I really could not give a damn. So long as the country that is more free wins.
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The Vietnam war was...canceled, not lost.
