Yesterday, I drafted a piece “Iraq: The Democrats 21st Century Cambodia?” I cross posted the piece at Third World County andI received a comment that linked to an editorial by Gordon Dillow in the Orange County Register from April 2005, which was written 30 years to the month after the final US pullout from South Vietnam.

Don’t take my word for this coming human rights disaster (funny how the Democrats hold themselves up as the champions of this issue, isn’t it?), read about a man and his father in the following editorial, then consider the human wreckage to have and to hold, when we pull out of Iraq, thinking it will stop the Islamofacsists from demanding more and more, until we are nothing left…

This month will mark the 30th anniversary of a shameful chapter in our nation’s history. Thirty years ago we abandoned a longtime ally, the Republic of (South) Vietnam.

And with it, along with millions of others, we abandoned Quang X. Pham’s dad.

Quang is an old friend of mine, a 40-year-old Mission Viejo businessman who came to the U.S. as a boy refugee from Vietnam and later served as a U.S. Marine helicopter pilot in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. His father, Pham Van Hoa, now deceased, was a U.S.-trained South Vietnamese Air Force pilot who spent 12 years in a communist “re-education” camp because he refused to leave his country when the North Vietnamese army swept through South Vietnam in April 1975 – this while America, after investing 58,000 of its own sons’ lives, stood by and washed its hands of the entire bloody and tragic affair.

And even though he became an American who loved his country and served it courageously in uniform, for many years that abandonment rankled Quang’s heart. It rankled mine, too.

Quang has written a new book about his father, and about his own experiences as a refugee who became an American Marine. It’s called “A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey,” published by Ballantine Books (you can get more information at www.asenseofduty.com), and I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand what the Vietnam War meant to some of the people who suffered the most because of it – that is, the people of South Vietnam. It’s powerful, and moving, and in it Quang tries to dispel a myth about Vietnam that still persists.

The myth is that guys like his dad didn’t fight for their country.

“I just want to see South Vietnamese (military men) like my father acknowledged,” Quang told me. “Not made into heroes or anything, but just acknowledged for what they did. I wanted to set the record straight.”

Certainly the casualty numbers tell a story that’s far different from the myth. The South Vietnamese armed forces lost a total of about 250,000 men killed in the war – a number that, as a percentage of national population, was about 50 times greater than American deaths.

And the numbers of the maimed were even greater. Ten years ago, as a reporter for the Register, I went back to Vietnam to cover the 20th anniversary of the end of the war, and everywhere I went I would meet aging former ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) soldiers who were missing arms or legs or eyes, many of them reduced to beggary because the communist government offered no pensions or even menial jobs for former ARVNs. When they found out I’d been an American soldier in the war they would often break out yellowed, crumbling, long-hidden South Vietnamese military ID cards and tell me, “I was with you, I was with you.”

And they were.

Now, I know some of my fellow American Vietnam veterans will disagree with me on this subject. They’ll call me up and tell me bitter tales about “Marvin the ARVN,” about South Vietnamese M-16s that were in perfect condition because “they’d never been fired, and were only dropped once,” about South Vietnamese corruption and incompetence and cowardice. Certainly there was no shortage of such things, particularly in the ARVN’s politicized upper ranks.

But don’t tell me – or Quang X. Pham – that 250,000 guys died with no brave men among them. Don’t try to tell guys who got their arms or legs blown off that they didn’t fight hard enough. Don’t think that a lot of guys like Quang’s father didn’t have a sense of duty and honor, even as they lost their war, and their country, and languished in brutal communist prison camps for years and years and years.

In the coming weeks you’ll probably see and hear a lot of retrospectives about the Vietnam War, some of them truthful, many of them media myths perpetuated by people who were never even there – the same sort of myths that even now are being created about the Iraq war and the Americans who’ve been fighting it. More on that in a future column.

But if you think that the Vietnam War was strictly an American war, if you think that the people of South Vietnam weren’t worth fighting for, or with, then I have a suggestion.

Talk to a guy like Quang X. Pham.

And ask him about his dad.

Read the book. See history throught the eyes of one who has been there and project into the future as to what might be as a result of taking counsel of our fears.

Update 11/17/2206:

From John of Castle Arrgghhh!, an email of an Army Officer, who has had mulitple tour in Iraq. He sees something over there and it says we’re about to do what this post is about, in the minds of the Iraqis, friend and foe alike, from David J. Baer, CPT(P), IN, 3/2/6 IA MiTT Team Chief:

By all means send my note on to his family. Before I got this job on the MiTT, I was a mechanized infantry company commander in southeast Baghdad and I lost two soldiers so I know what it’s like to write letters of condolence and what kind of loss his family must be feeling. You always hear certain people in Congress talk about leaving Iraq because of the horrible casualties we are taking and whatnot. However, they never seem to be the ones with family over here doing the grunt work. And as for casualties, each loss is a blow, but overall we have been extremely lucky to have as few deaths as we have had since 2003. No one in D.C. ever seems to ask guys like me what we think because they know that we would tell them that we have to stay until the job is done. If you want to win in Iraq, you have to take the gloves off like we did in OIF I and OIF II. We were aggressive and violently kinetic. It worked and the bad guys were deathly afraid of us and the people of Iraq respected us. Now we use kid gloves and the bad guys walk all over us and the people of Iraq don’t think they should support us because we may pack up and leave and then they would be the object of reprisals. It’s the hard right (lots of offensive action and firepower and not afraid to use it in a city) or the easy wrong (the kinder, gentler approach to dealing with terrorists to try and avoid casualties). I know which one works and which one doesn’t. I know which one will solve this “problem”. It will break a few eggs, but in the end we will have an omelet that will be passably good and tasty.

How about them apples? Act strong, be respected. Act weak and suffer attacks.

H/T: Third World County reader DC

Trackbacked at: CAstle ARRGGHHH!!!

Recently, the discussion was about the Tet Offensive and how the events of February, 1968 related to current day situations was posted on this blog here and here.

Possibly now, it is the moment to get ahead of the power curve and discuss the big picture that happened 30 years ago, and see if it may relate to what happens next….

So, Richard Nixon was President. The Democrats had control of the Congress. The President, as he promised in his election campaign was pulling our troops out of ground combat positions, yet left the promise of support for the South Vietnamese Army, using the strategy of “Vietnamization,” a process of turning the war over to the ARVNs, as they were able to handle it.

Effectively, in 1972, our ground combat forces were out, safe advisers left the ARVNs. While the president is the Commander-in-Chief, Congress controls the money (you’d think people would quit accusing the presidents, of any time, of what goes on with the budget, but, once more, I digress). So Congress cut off the funding for the supporting arms and the supplies from America going to South Vietnam. Now, the study of history over the ages shows the winner of wars is the country who has the best logistics and can out-produce the adversary in the fight. When “we” (the Democratic Congress) pulled appropriations from the war support effort for our allies, they sentenced them to loss of the war, and, in many cases, death in a very literal sense.

So in 1975, the NVA rolled into Saigon and raised the North Vietnamese flag in that city. It was over. What next? The Communist rebels in Cambodia, led by Pol Pot now had nothing to fear and a totalitarian government came into power and the killing fields became a part of life, as about 1/2 of the population of Cambodia was killed it’s own.

Why did the conquest of South Vietnam and the mass murders happen across the border? There was no nation with the power to let them know this wasn’t acceptable.

What does this mean today?

We already know there is simmering hate in Iraq between the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds. We have not yet been able to help them understand there’s a better way to solve issues than to murder 75 people a day, using very brutal means.

Add to this, there is at least one neighboring country, Iran, already stirring the pot, for for us to have an ally, let alone a foothold in the region, keeps them in check, unable to carry out their desires to control much of the region. Syria is a player, too, but seem to at least be keeping their head down and themselves out of the media coverage.

So, the time may come, if the Democrats can strong arm their agenda to withdraw, whether by getting the President to acquiesce to this via the “bi-partisan” Iraq Working Committee, or by the pulling of appropriations for any support of our troops. The Department of Defense will end up with no choice to bring the troops hone, or at least out of the battle zone of Iraq.

My prediction: The Sunnis, having been in power for so many years, used to being able to, even as a minority, rape the other cultural groups of the country, literally and figuratively, feeling they have some right to murder and torture as they feel. So, the Sunnis will come back with a vengance at the Kurds and Shiites. Bloodshed…and much of it.

Add to this the military power to the East, the Iranians. They, with their affinity for the Shiites, the majority culture, will now roll across the border and become directly engaged with the Sunnis. Bloodshed.

The Kurds, who have rebuilt much of the infrastructure to the north, and are already prospering from the oil flowing, will most likely get attacked by the Sunnis and Shiites, and the Iranians, as they have valuable resources and are using them.

If we thought we stepped into a hornet’s nest in 2003, we haven’t seen anything that will be like this. The locals of the area will feel empowered to kill and plunder in even more horrific manners and scales than they have, for they now see “we” (and I substantially contribute this to the Democrats and the Liberals) don’t have the stomach for it. Much like asking someone to be an EMT and all they can do at any car accident is to stand by, while people bleed to death, throwing up. Those people, politically, are the Democrats and they, in this scenario, would decide it’s better to legislate against people having car accidents, rather than finding those who can take care of such messy conditions, and wait until things are safe to toss their cookies.

More and more, I am coming to see the Democrats in modern times are the party of death and destruction, with pools of blood running from their hands. They do this, not because it’s the best course of action for the rest of the world, or the country, but so they can ascend to positions of power, where they can rent the Lincoln bedroom out to friends to raise money, so they can buy their way back into power.

I can only figure their deep dissatisfaction with the War on Terror, is they see the revenues of President Bush’s tax cuts flowing towards Iraq, and not into their hands, to bribe the voters of the next election with their largess.

The Democrats and Liberals have never acknowledged they had a part in approximately 3M deaths in SE Asia after 1972. They cannot, for they would have to face their part in mass murder.

They stand on the edge of history and are prepared, with a complete disregard for history, their own, and that of world events, ready to loose the executioners in the Middle East, first, and later in Africa and Europe. They will then turn their face from the horror and go back to their fund raisers, not even consciously aware of their shameful part in the deaths.

My gallows humor would be to think maybe they are thinking of this outcome as a help for the environment, for after all, it’s people and the demands they place on industry, that cause greenhouse gasses and causes desertification and the now, the acidification of the oceans. If we have a few less million of us to cause pollution, let alone perpetuate the species, then we’ll not have to worry about running the air conditioners quite so long at the homes and offices of liberals.

Update 14 Nov 2006: See this follow up post, too!

Cross posted at:

Third World County

Trackbacked at:

Eagle Speak

It was Armistice Day at first, but in 1954, President Eisenhower made it “Veteran’s Day.”

Two years ago, as a barely a month old blogger, I posted this.

I still mean it.

I served during the Cold War, and those men who taught me my trade, were Vietnam Vets. Having lived overseas, not as a “brat,” by a civil servant’s son, I grew up with the Special Forces on Okinawa and the Sialors and Marines on Guam. The man across the street most of my beginning days was not an uncle, but he was “Uncle John” to my sisters and I. He had been a Marine in KOrea. One uncle was one of the first C-5 Galaxy navigators, but had flwon with Air-Sea REscue in HU-16s, and later I believe he was in C-141s.

They all had a piece of me knowing I wanted to serve.

I never have been in combat, or any closer than way out in the Med when Khadffi shot missiles at our F-14s, so I stand in awe, and a degree of jeasousness of those who have been there, as I will always wonder how well I had been trained.

In the grand scheme, it took each of us, and all of those who served, whether they stayed stateside the entire time, or ran down the bow ramp of an LCVP, into the surf and onto the sand.

I thank the America taxpayer on this day, for trusting me to protect them. I thank all those who, when by the stroke of fate, did end up in combat, did not shy away and did their duty, regardless of the fear.

It’s been an exciting 13 days. Lots of interesting blogs discovered, many interesting comments read, but…most importantly the overwhelming support fo the people to show that character trait of comapssion, just because it’s for someone they don’t even know, that stood up for them, not even knowing all of us.

All I’d say if take it to the International Date Line! Beth didn’t say which time zone’s 2359 would determine the final bell…

Thank each and every one, whether your name/blog showed up on a Valour-IT team list, or if yu just took up for the cause and pointed people to the donate buttons…

A commenter on VC’s “get out the fund rasing effort” post (heh! she figured out the “viral” tactic) had this to say:

Cass, it isn’t the fundraiser that bugs me. It is the reason, the necessity for it. We should be at peace with these kids home and making lives for themselves and their families. But the call came and they answered. We can do no less than embrace them and help them to have a life. It is a small thing we do, but having been a bedridden grouch myself, and having needed a laptop with Dragon Naturally Speaking, I know how much this means to them.

It wasn’t until two years ago that I was able to get more function in my left arm, and begin to type again, and that was a year after I was injured.

The first thing the Engineer [husband] did was get me a laptop with the software. I didn’t feel so isolated, hurt or angry. And you will never know how much it meant to me to be able to travel beyond my four walls and the terrible pain.

I have since given the laptop back to DELL, and they sent me a replacement, but they did tell me that they would rehab it for resell. I hope it went to one of ours and it gives him or her the
ability and hope to carry on and know that life is good and sweet.

Cricket knows the value. That’s a testimony to the capablity of technology to lend normalcy to a broken body, and more importantly, an almost broken spirit.

In the future, if you meet/learn of someone who has suffered such injuries in life off any battle field, you know are aware of a method to restore some hope, so, spread the word around!

Maybe I should have known better. The Navy Team puts up Marine donation buttons all over the place and tells people to send money their way, and then the marines act like they just boarded USS GATOR and take over the place. They stand in the passagewas, clogging up traffic, eat all the steak and ice cream and then sit around playing cards all day, when they aren’t doing PT, and all the while thinking the sailors owe them something more.

Seriously: Congrats Marines for getting a second wind and stroking past the Army in fine fashion! I’m sure the Powerline Blog listing yesterday (just which pictures did VC email to them?) didn’t hurt at all…..

Hmmmm…maybe it’s time for a “No Zoomie Left Behind” push thru tomorrow…..

If you haven’t hit the auctions, don’t let that stuff get away. After all, it may be Team Navy’s only hope of coming out on top when all the money is counted!

Poster from Murdroc Online

H/T: A commenter on Littel Green Footballs of a CNN Report:

Marine to receive Medal of Honor for Iraq heroism

November 10, 2006

President Bush on Friday will announce that the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, will be awarded posthumously to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham.

In April 2004, Dunham was leading a patrol in an Iraqi town near the Syrian border when the patrol stopped a convoy of cars leaving the scene of an attack on a Marine convoy, according to military and media accounts of the action.

An occupant of one of the cars attacked Dunham and the two fought hand to hand. As they fought, Dunham yelled to fellow Marines, “No, no watch his hand.” The attacker then dropped a grenade on which Dunham threw himself.

Dunham was critically wounded in the explosion and died eight days later at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington.

“His was a selfless act of courage to save his fellow Marines,” Sgt. Maj. Daniel A. Huff of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, was quoted as saying in Marine Corps News that April.

“He new what he was doing,” Lance Cpl. Jason A. Sanders, 21, of McAllester, Oklahoma, who was in Dunham’s company, was quoted as saying by Marine Corps News. “He wanted to save Marines’ lives from that grenade.”

In various media accounts, fellow Marines told how Dunham had extended his enlistment shortly before he died so he could help his comrades.

“We told him he was crazy for coming out here,” Lance Cpl. Mark E. Dean, 22, from Owasso, Oklahoma, said in Marine Corps News. “He decided to come out here and fight with us. All he wanted was to make sure his boys made it back home.”

The Scio, New York, native would have been 25 years old on Friday.

Dunham’s story was told in the book “The Gift of Valor,” written by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips.

Dunham will be the second American to receive the Medal of Honor from service in Iraq.

Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith was the other, honored for action near Baghdad International Airport in April 2003, in which he killed as many as 50 enemy combatants while helping wounded comrades to safety. Smith was the only U.S. soldier killed in the battle.

Great job, to the team and to the many, US and other citizens who have helped out!

Now, let’s shift the focus to getting the other teams over the top!

Best donating link for all services here.

New orders: QUIT GIVING TO THE NAVY!

News Flash: I “dislike” minimums….I like straining to the last moment available. Let’s keep going for only the trrops at the other end of this program win. Word to the wise (meaning the non-Sea Services): The throttle is at Flank III at sea and full military in the high flying go fasts. Next you will fall to the MARINES!

I sure wish I could have lined up the Tampa Bay Lightening Team radio announcer for this moment….

“They shoot , THEY SCORE!”

Oh, yeah the new Army motto for recruiting “Army Strong” went public last night. Does this mean we can roll out the new Navy ad “Navy Stronger” campaign?

Just saying….:)

Good question, however, the correct day to wonder where an Air Force guy went.

Some would call it “AWOL,” but the real term is “UA” for “unathorized absense.”

Last time this happened (Scott O’Grady), it was the MARINES who saved his grounded tail.

How appropriate, on the very day we honor the 231th birthday of the CORPS, that we have to ponder this question. The good news is: We already know how to fix it: Send for the MARINES!

If you’ve seen John, tell him to get back on task and let VC know the MARINES aren’t required to leave the bar and interupt their celebrations!

You’d think he would have come up on distress by now, hollering for th PJs to get him back to the O Club…..