I am a Vietnam Veteran. I have long ago accepted the brutal reality that my country sent me off to fight a war and then later decided it wasn’t worth it after all.  But the ultimate insult is when the cowards who protested against the war try to cloak themselves with the mantle of self-righteousness.  They arrogantly express pride for being against the war as if this was some great act of courage. It was not.  Which takes more courage, burning your draft card or serving in the military and putting your life on the line?

Those people who celebrated stopping this war seldom, if ever, consider what they accomplished. They paid little or no attention to whom we were fighting in Vietnam and gave zero consideration to what was at risk for the people of South Vietnam.

It was not exactly peace and love in Vietnam after we left. After the fall of Saigon on April 40, 1975, the North Vietnamese communist government took over.  They renamed the country The Socialist Republic of Vietnam.  The communist government implemented a “Re-education” program.  Former military officers and government workers, along with civil servants, capitalists and priests, were imprisoned in brutal work camps.  Actual statistics are illusive, but it is estimated that over 1 million, and possibly as high as 2.5 million, people were imprisoned in these facilities.  An estimated 165,000 or more prisoners died in re-education camps.

One of the consequences was the Vietnamese boat people.  They risked their lives using almost anything that would float to escape the “peace and love” in Vietnam. Somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 of the more than 2 million who tried to escape died in the attempt.

The following article from the Daily Beast tells the story of one person:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/30/remembering-the-fall-of-saigon-and-vietnam-s-mass-boat-people-exodus.html

“Living in Vietnam became unbearable,” remembers another refugee. “We’d forgotten what it was like to have freedom, hope and happiness. Our determination to leave the country strengthened. I was nine months pregnant with my second child when we escaped again…we were given only 24 hours to pack our belongings.”

Did you notice that she described the period of time when the U.S. military was fighting on behalf of the South Vietnamese as a time of “freedom, hope and happiness.” Congratulations, war protestors! You rescued people from suffering under freedom, hope and happiness and gave them a brutal communist regime.  You must be so proud.

The following article from rebirthofreason.com details what happened after we abandoned our friends and allies.

http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/dickeymf/_Years_after_Fall_of_Saigon,_75_Million_Murdered.shtml

We will never know how many people died in Vietnam after the war.  We were too focused on the 57,000-plus Americans who died in the war. It may or may not be the 7.5 million estimated in this article, but it was definitely millions of people.This is not new data and it is not disputed. It is just ignored.

Vietnam has adopted some capitalism lately and things are finally improving, but it remains a very poor country. I talked recently to a Vietnamese janitor from Sacramento who said he sent $50 per month to his family in Vietnam because it made a major difference in their lives.  He explained that $50 a month was a lot of money in Vietnam.  This shocked me, so I did some research and quickly verified that the average monthly income is about $150 per person per month:

http://www.aroundinvietnam.com/money-matters/average-salary.html

Even that $150 is only an average.  Some people make much more and a lot of people earn even less.  I checked on Wikipedia to see how Vietnam’s average monthly wage compares to other countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_wage

This only lists the top 72 countries, so Vietnam isn’t even on the list. Then I compared South Vietnam to South Korea.  We did not abandon South Korea like we did Vietnam. South Korea is number 10 on the list, with an average monthly wage of $2,903.

Obviously, the people in Vietnam and Cambodia paid a terrible price when we decided the war wasn’t worth it after all. Please explain to me why it was so necessary to stop that war? The only people who benefited were the terrified college students who avoided serving in the military.  The 57,000-plus Americans who died in Vietnam did not benefit, because you tossed their sacrifices on the scrap heap of history.

It is a lot easier to protest fighting in a war than it is fighting in one. I still remember getting on the plane returning me to Vietnam for my last combat tour.  I looked around and I saw a lot of men, actually boys, just like me, who did not want to be there.  I saw a lot of men, just like me who were terrified and who wondered if we would ever make it back home.  And then I realized that the real demonstration was by the men who quietly got on that plane and flew back to war. Too bad no one in the main stream media noticed.

As for all the self-righteous, anti-war protestors who continue to pat themselves on the back for having the courage to protest the war:  Congratulations. I hope you are very proud.

TDM