Liberation of Saigon Day, Fall of Saigon Day: lessons & mislessons of America’s begotten & misbegotten war, on the 45th anniversary

45 years ago today, the brave, patriotic, and freedom-loving heroes among the Vietnamese people liberated Saigon, the country’s largest city, in the glorious, long-hoped-for victory over oppression, by defeating the American aggressors, the last of the running-dog, Western, colonialist, imperialist powers—and their traitorous, collaborating, lackey Vietnamese dupes—who had thereby occupied, plundered, and exploited it, and the rest of the country, for well over a century.

45 years ago today, by defeating the brave, heroic, and freedom-loving Americans, the last of the civilized, sophisticated, modernizing, and advanced Western democracies—and their courageous, patriotic, democracy-loving Vietnamese allies—who had been defending Saigon, the country’s largest city, these traitorous, collaborating, lackey Vietnamese dupes of the Red Chinese and Soviet powers captured it, thereby making it, and the rest of the country, the greatest domino to fall in the horrible, long-feared takeover of southeast Asia by the communists, who have thereby occupied, plundered, and exploited it.

In the history of the United States, some of the foreign wars that the US has fought have not been called wars in the US, and some of the foreign military actions that the US has engaged in that really were not wars have been called wars in the US (

more to come on this

Although the US Congress never declared it to be a war—a quaint, hoary requirement of the US Constitution—the American-Vietnam War clearly was such, due at a minimum to these aspects. The number of casualties lost was massive (just on the American side alone, even without taking into consideration those of the country where the war was waged). The treasure expended was huge (just on the American side alone, even without taking into consideration those by the country where the war was waged). And by far most definitively of all, the risk of possible failure that was taken by the US was enormous. This was of course proven beyond doubt by the obvious fact that it suffered total and absolute defeat: the most decisive of all possible failure. Of the seven foreign wars that the US has fought, the American-Vietnam War is one of the six that it has failed to win; in its entire history, the United States has still been victorious in only one of them (

more to come on this

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Colin Powell, who was a US Army officer during all but about the first three years of the almost two-decades-long American-Vietnam War, later wrote that he was haunted by it. He eventually rose to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position in the US military. During this tenure, a list of criteria to be met for considering whether and how military action should be taken by the United States was formulated; it came to be called the Powell Doctrine. One of the first of those criteria is whether there is a clear goal that there is a possibility of winning—an objective that can be attained. While this might seem to be so basic a criterion in need of being met as to be obvious to the point of being trivial, history seems to show that it has not been that obvious. One other of the criteria is whether there’s an exit strategy for assuring that the war wouldn’t continue indefinitely.

Powell later became the US secretary of state. And during that tenure, the US entered into two other wars at the same time. In one of those, the one in Iraq, the policy of “shock & awe” was used—the application of such massive destruction that the opponents would collapse before they would even respond—so that in essence, the war would never even start. It appears not to have worked, because the US was still in that war over eight years later, and except for a two-and-a-half-year lull when it withdrew right after that, it had to send forces back into Iraq, and it appears that this will continue permanently. And in the other war that the US entered into a year and a half earlier, the one in Afghanistan, the United States is still fighting—over eighteen years later. It seems that the criteria of determining what objective could be won and of how to exit once it were won were not met.

Another attempt to learn lessons from the American-Vietnam War was made by journalist David Halberstam in writing his book The Best and the Brightest a few years before the war was finally ended. A key factor that it looks at is the foreign policy devised by academics and intellectuals in President Kennedy’s administration and how those policies played out in Vietnam. Halberstam’s take on that has been summed up as characterizing those best and brightest as insisting on “brilliant policies that defied common sense” and often doing so while career State Department employees were advising against that.

The American people do not seem to ever have come to a consensus on what happened in the war or why. Perhaps we’re not really interested in learning anything from it. It could be that we don’t really think that there’s anything to be learned from it. Maybe we’d like to just stay in our own corners and keep telling ourselves our own separate notions about it. It might be that we’d prefer to forget that there ever was such a war. We can just think of it as a nice tourist destination. We hear they have a fine cuisine there, don’t they?