Texas is home to a thriving Vietnamese community. Sadly, since we don’t teach history, many people have no recollection as to what drove these people here who now love America. The answer is the violent insurgency of communism, the same dangerous rhetoric, and actions, that we are witnessing in our country today.
But the fall of Vietnam has a very important relevance to today.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s biography of Gerald Ford, titled When the Center Held was published in 2018. The book clearly articulates that President Ford was a thoroughly good man, a special American, and a greatly underrated president. However, there was a story in the book that was startling.
In 1975, President Ford was left to manage the difficult ending of the Vietnam War. As North Vietnam seized on the opportunity to test American resolve following President Nixon’s resignation, President Ford went to Congress to ask for a relief package to push back on the North Vietnamese to allow American personnel and our allies to evacuate. However, there was one US senator who opposed any such support. The result was the embarrassing and hurried evacuation from the roof of the American embassy and others (CIA station house in picture) in Saigon. This senator reveled in the embarrassment and did everything he could to leverage it politically against Ford.
Despite the efforts of this US senator, President Ford managed to rescue 1,500 South Vietnamese allies prior to the country’s fall. Had President Ford not acted quickly, these people would have been targeted and slaughtered for their support for America. Saving them was a moral obligation.
When they arrived in America, President Ford asked Congress for a package to assist these refugees to integrate into American society. But that troublesome US senator showed up again and torpedoed any support for these shell-shocked refugees. Instead, President Ford had to recruit Christian organizations to offer assistance on a voluntary basis. As he did so, the aforementioned senator belittled those efforts.
What kind of person would oppose President Ford’s tireless work to do the right and humanitarian thing? Who would want to play politics with the well-being of innocent people who stood by America in the tragic Vietnam War?
That US senator? Joe Biden, the same person Obama’s SECDEF once referred to as the person who has been wrong on every single foreign policy issue over the past 40 years.
Joe Biden’s delusional perspective on foreign policy was revealed as vice-president. He asserted that Obama’s insidious decision to withdraw all troops from Iraq would be one of the greatest foreign policy decisions of all time. Biden was okay with sending billions of dollars to the Number One state sponsor of Islamic terrorism, Iran.
And, now, we know about his — and his son’s — nefarious, but profitable, dealings with Russia, Ukraine, and China.
Is there any doubt as to why the Commission on Presidential Debates frantically decided not to discuss foreign policy as a debate topic this evening?
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