Word: saigon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reassuring. In his press conference, President Ford seemed to believe that the sacrifice of U.S. dead and wounded would be in vain unless Congress voted new military aid to Viet Nam. Many Vietnamese and foreign observers were quick to blame the U.S. for the plight of South Viet Nam. Saigon's ambassador to Washington, Tran Kim Phuong, stated that it is "probably safer to be an ally of the Communists." In a wild-eyed broadside in the New York Times, Sir Robert Thompson, consultant on guerrilla warfare to President Nixon, argued that "a new foreign policy line has already...
...almost certainly a mistake, another self-deception, to assume that President Nguyen Van Thieu could fight the other side to a standstill without U.S. troops or airpower. Even though large numbers of South Vietnamese clearly still wanted to fight the Communists, it might have been far wiser to prod Saigon into a compromise with the Communists...
...breach of the commitment, or that the commitment had to run indefinitely. One thing is evident: continuation of American military aid, even at much higher levels, even with the additional amount requested by the President, could not have basically changed the situation. It might have prolonged Saigon's resistance without a clear end in sight. Cuts in U.S. assistance certainly were a factor (see "The Anatomy of a Debacle," page 16). But this cannot account for the total collapse of Thieu's armies-the corruption, waste, demoralization, the acts of pillage and murder against the very people...
America cannot escape responsibility for Viet Nam. Nor can the recognition of Saigon's own fatal weakness, which is ultimately to blame, assuage the national grief for the Vietnamese in their final agony. But America did not enlist in the war for life. There cannot be an infinite cycle of protests, recrimination and guilt. The U.S. has paid for Viet Nam-many times over. A phase of American history has finished. It is time to begin anew...
...Communist forces rolled toward Saigon and tightened their noose around Phnom-Penh, foreign journalists in those two capitals were caught up in an increasingly complex and tragic story that became more and more difficult to report...