April 30, 1975. The fall of Saigon.

saigon

Via CNN:

The CIA Air America helicopter bounced as it touched down on an aging apartment building in Saigon.

Its pilot knew there was no room for error. Scores of South Vietnamese were lined up on that rooftop, waiting anxiously to scramble aboard his chopper. They knew 150,000 North Vietnamese troops were just outside the city, ready to pounce.

Delicately working the controls, the pilot reduced power just enough to set down but leaving enough lift in the spinning rotor to keep much of the aircraft’s weight off the rickety roof.

He held steady, while desperate men, women and children, some carrying luggage, hoisted themselves inside the vibrating aircraft. The pilot made sure they stayed clear of the deadly rotor blades while he avoided rooftop antennas that could trigger a crash.

After 15 passengers squeezed into a compartment meant for nine, it was time to go. Very slowly, the pilot raised the aircraft and pointed the helicopter forward. About 40 minutes later, the evacuees landed safely aboard a U.S. Navy ship offshore.

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The iconic photograph of a US helicopter evacuating South Vietnamese nationals from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon as the North Vietnamese Army occupied the city could very well serve as a metaphor for the Obama administration. Its fall and the dominoes of Cambodia and Laos that soon followed marked a virtual eviction of the United States from Southeast Asia. Like Iraq and Afghanistan, this was not something that had to have happened. The fall of Vietnam was contrived by Democrats and the blood of millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians is something that the soul of Senator Frank Church and his fellow travelers are answering for even as we speak.

Defeat in Vietnam unraveled security alliances like the South East Asia Treaty Organization, which was disbanded in 1977, as it became obvious to allies and enemies that the United States could not be counted on in times of trouble. The US military had entered Vietnam as a formidable fighting force and came out broken, divided, and seething with recriminations. On the positive side, it was in better shape than today as we were not providing prisoners at Leavenworth with sex change therapy (in this case a lopitoffomy) or forcing ROTC cadets to parade about in red high heels.

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The misfeasance and malfeasance of the Obama administration will make the aftermath of Vietnam look like Metterenich and Bismarck combined to produce awesomeness.

One of the underlying causes of the 9/11 attack, according to the Commission Report FWIW, the precipitate withdrawal of US troops from Somalia was a prime factor in causing bin Laden to believe that the US would not fight. If that is true, what lessons have our enemies learned over the past six years in which we have been expelled from the Middle East, for all intents and purposes, and Iran has been given a nuclear weapon. At some point in the not too distant future when an Iranian sponsored terror organization sets off an Iranian nuclear weapon in an American city. we will look back on the Obama administration — and Hillary Clinton’s pay-to-play kleptocratic State Department —  as the root cause of the attack.

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