The paragraph starting with "On Feb. 5, 1975, 22 North Vietnamese - was incomplete. Following is the complete column. Sorry for any inconvenience/confusion. AMERICA'S DAY OF SHAME By Eric Margolis 30 April 2000 NEW YORK - Twenty five years last Sunday, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, ending the 30-year struggle for Vietnam. First France, then America, the world's greatest power, had been defeated by North Vietnam, a backwards but fierce Asian nation of 25 million people. The only thing worse and more wasteful than war is a lost war. Vietnam was the first war America ever lost. With the shame of defeat came national dishonor: America had thrown its faithful allies in Indochina to the wolves. 30 April 1975 was probably the lowest point in America's history. With the wisdom of hindsight, it's clear America's involvement in the long Vietnam War was a disastrous error. But at the time - the tense cold war days of the early 1960's - US military intervention in Indochina made sense. Two aggressive, allied communist powers, the USSR and China, had armed North Vietnam to the teeth and were using it to expand their influence in Southeast Asia. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson all feared the `domino effect:' if South Vietnam fell, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, Burma, Indonesia, South Korea, even India and Japan could be next. And after that, Berlin or the Mideast. We tend to forget that the United States was fighting communism in Vietnam, the most evil political system the world had every known, one that had murdered 100 million of its own citizens and was now threatening the west. I enlisted in the US Army in June, 1967, as America's military involvement in the Indochina war was surging, because I believed - and still believe - the ancient credo of the Roman Republic: it is the duty of every male citizen of a democracy to serve in the military. I could have taken advantage of the unfair system of student deferments by doing a PhD at Britain's Cambridge University, but I chose to volunteer for infantry service in Vietnam. Thirty three years later, I remain prouder of my Regular Army serial number, RA 11824792, than any PhD. But by then, the war was already lost, thanks in large part to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This grand architect of disaster misled both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and plunged the US ever deeper into the Vietnam quagmire. McNamara authored the self-defeating policy of `gradual escalation,' convinced he could slowly punish North Vietnam into ending the war. The arrogant McNamara violated every rule of war; he refused to listen to his military advisors who had warned against massive intervention and gradualism; and totally misjudged the enemy. McNamara proved war is too important to be left to civilians. While the US lacked clear strategy, the ruthless communist regime in Hanoi was determined to conquer South Vietnam, no matter the human and material cost. The North's combined civilian-military leadership under Ho Chi Minh and the brilliant Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap was able to wage war on three distinct levels: tactical, strategic, and informational. Vietnam was the first televised war, a fact grasped by North Vietnam far sooner than Washington. Thanks to McNamara's criminal ineptitude, the war turned into an aimless, fluid conflict of skirmishes, search and destroy missions, and occasional indecisive battles. Increasingly disgusted Americans saw this ugly war on TV and watched the body bags come home. The government failed to make Americans understand why young men, most from the working class, were being drafted and sent to war. The liberal media, academia, and Hollywood stars like Jane Fonda, amplified Hanoi's psychological war effort, helping turn Americans against the war. While walking in Boston in uniform, I was spit on by women and called `baby killer.' At the same time, a draft-dodger, who was later to become president of the United States, was hiding out in England, while far better Americans were dying in Vietnam. As the media war was being lost, North Vietnam, massively aided by the USSR and China, intensified the ground war. The communist Vietcong and Northern regulars were extremely brave, resolute, resourceful fighters. Driven by nationalist passions, and communist discipline, they proved a match for American fire-power. The US inflicted enormous destruction on Vietnam, including defoliation of vast areas with the toxic Agent Orange, and heavy losses on the enemy, but it could not win a decisive victory. At peak deployment, the US had 550,000 soldiers in Vietnam. But of these, only a feeble 10%, or 55,000, were combat units fighting in the field. The rest were rear-area support troops who rarely saw action. The 350,000 Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars in the South, backed by a million transport troops, far outnumbered US field forces. The 450,000 ARVN, or South Vietnamese troops, were used mainly for static defense; only a few elite divisions regularly saw combat, but they fought bravely. Interestingly, more Canadians volunteered for the US armed forces than the number of Americans who fled to Canada to avoid the draft. The war was brutal and dirty. The CIA-led `Phoenix' program assassinated 20,000 underground communist cadres in the south. The communists murdered 100,000 government officials, teachers, and Catholics. Civilians were routinely caught in the cross fire and died in large numbers. But, at the same time, US forces had their hands tied: after contact with an enemy unit, they often had to radio HQ in Saigon before being authorized to fire. Tragically, the US government never fully understood the impact of the growing rivalry between the Soviet Union and China that began in the early 1970's. Had Washington done so, it could have played on this rivalry earlier and accordingly undermined the North's ability to wage war, which, in turn, would have ended the `domino' threat. By 1978, China and Russia were clashing; a year later, Vietnam and China fought a bloody border war. But after the blow of the notorious Tet offensive, which was a military disaster for the communists but a PR triumph, America lost its will to fight. After President Johnson proclaimed there would be no military victory in Vietnam but instead a negotiated settlement, GI's became justifiably demoralized and mutinous. Half the US soldiers in `Nam' were on drugs. No one wanted to risk his life in a war that was officially declared lost. Johnson resigned in disgrace from office. I led a protest mutiny of in my unit over the government's no-win policy. It was left to President Richard Nixon to extricate America from Vietnam. This he tried to do slowly, to prevent South Vietnam's collapse. But after the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, the US Congress, dominated by liberal Democrats, cut off all military aid to embattled South Vietnam, which had managed to resist a series of large North Vietnamese offensives. Hanoi knew the US had abandoned South Vietnam and prepared the coup de grace. As the Roman strategist Tacitus observed two millennia ago, ` a bad peace is even worse than war.' On 5 Feb, 1975, 22 North Vietnamese divisions, backed by hundreds of tanks and heavy guns - more men and tanks than in Gen. Patton's 3rd Army in World War II - attacked the south. After initial resistance, South Vietnam slowly collapsed. On 29 April, in the most humiliating moment in US history, the last Americans fled Indochina, abandoning their Vietnamese allies and brave montagnard fighters to Uncle Ho's firing squads and prison camps. Cambodians were left to the mercies of Pol Pot. An undetermined number of American prisoners were left behind in the rout. The next day, North Vietnamese T-54 tanks entered Saigon. As Henry Kissinger cynically noted, it is more dangerous being America's ally than its enemy. France lost 92,797 dead and 176,369 wounded from 1946-1953. America lost 58,000 killed in action and accidents, and 300,000 wounded. Allies South Korea 4,407 dead; Australia and New Zealand 469. At least 3.6 million Vietnamese civilians and soldiers died on both sides. The US claimed to have killed 800,000 North Vietnamese and one million Vietcong soldiers in battle. Vietnam became a united nation under communist rule. America retreated into 15 years of semi-isolation. But, ironically, while America lost the Vietnam War, it won the peace: the advance of communism in South Asia was permanently halted. The dominos did not fall. Just as ironically, Vietnam, which won the war by titanic sacrifice, ended up losing the peace. Today, communist Vietnam is a political and economic backwater, poor, repressive, and forgotten. There was no light at the end of the Vietnam tunnel. Dedicated to the American, Canadian, and Allied soldiers who fell in Vietnam, fighting for a just cause in a bad war. 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