Relearning lessons of Vietnam

It's funny how two people can read the same thing and come away with two strikingly different conclusions of it.

Like veteran columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, I, too, read the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine with its 40-year-old memo about Vietnam, which the editors suggest contains lessons about our current quagmire in Iraq.

But, unlike Geyer, I have not allowed revisionist historians to impose their version of Vietnam on me.

In her most recent nationally syndicated column, she writes this about Vietnam: "After the Americans withdrew, in momentary humiliation, from the coasts of Vietnam by ship and helicopter, there were few regional consequences of the foolhardy war. No other country in Asia became communist, as Washington's 'domino theory' had long predicted; in fact, the communist giant, China, followed the Singapore economic model of controlled economic freedom instead of Marxism's state control."

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Trouble is, everything Geyer writes about the aftermath of Vietnam is a lie. Like me, Geyer lived through this history. She is a respected commentator. How could she so mangle such a well-documented period of recent history?

• Few regional consequences? Does this jog your memory? The long-predicted bloodbath in South Vietnam became reality when North Vietnam invaded. Some 600,000 Vietnamese drowned in the South China Sea attempting to escape. Tens of thousands more were imprisoned in "re-education" camps, and millions more were forced to live under unimaginable forms of tyranny for the rest of their lives.

   

• No other country in Asia became communist? An amazing oversight since neighboring Cambodia not only went communist under the Khymer Rouge, but suffered one of the worst genocides in history as a result. Remember the Killing Fields, Georgie Anne? Some 2 million were murdered as a direct result of Pol Pot's policies. His inspirations? Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong.

   

• Did she actually mention China and "controlled economic freedom" in the same breath? In China today there are no individual property rights. There are no "rights" at all – only privileges bestowed upon people through favoritism by government. While China's economy is thriving, it is thriving in the same way the economy did in Adolf Hitler's Germany – through "controlled socialism," or fascism – not "controlled freedom," a gross misnomer if I have ever head one.

Geyer's gross distortion of reality in Vietnam would be bad enough if she were only covering up the 35-year-old genocide of Communists in Southeast Asia. That would be horrific. But her Walter Duranty-style apologia for Pol Pot and his gang has consequences today.

At least Geyer admits that pulling out of Iraq will have grave consequences. But why create a history lesson out of whole cloth unless we are to draw some lessons from it?

Geyer is 72 years old. She was 37 in 1972. She has no excuses for not understanding what happened in the wake of America's tragic withdrawal from Vietnam except an incredibly faulty memory.

There are many younger people living in America today who have no recollection of Vietnam. They could easily be fooled by Geyer's total misrepresentation of reality.

In fact, all of those fighting for us in Iraq today are too young to remember what happened when the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress ordered all U.S. troops home, and then in a fit of pique ordered the end of all military aid to our long-time allies in South Vietnam – setting off the bloodbath.

I would expect Ted Kennedy to try to forget that so he could sleep at night.

I would expect John Kerry to try to forget that so he could revel in his phony "heroics" that helped lead America to that fateful decision.

I would expect Jane Fonda to try to forget that so she could rationalize her treasonous behavior during the war.

But why would an American journalist specializing in foreign affairs overlook history so callously and blatantly? Maybe it has something to do with that Fulbright scholarship to attend the University of Vienna.

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