Jim Guirard: The Two Vietnam Wars

[A DC-area attorney and national security strategist, Jim Guirard was longtime Chief of Staff to former U.S. Senators Allen Ellender and Russell Long. His TrueSpeak.org website focuses on truth-in-language and truth-in-history in public discourse.]

On Friday of last week, much of the establishment media reminded us of the awful 35th anniversary of the so-called "End of the Vietnam War" -- on April 30, 1975. This is only partly true, and now we need to know what the late commentator Paul Harvey would correctly call "the rest of the story."

On Friday and throughout the weekend, familiar pictures were shown of American helicopters lifting people off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon as the South Vietnamese government was collapsing to the invading Communists from the North -- and this was dutifully labeled again as the "first war ever lost by America."

Since this snapshot of so-called "history" is highly misleading, it becomes vital that the entire story of Vietnam and its Cold War aftermath be clearly understood -- so that today's partisan politicians, media commentators and far-Left "Progressives" cannot scam the American public with a variety of false "lessons" of that long-ago conflict and its far-reaching consequences.

Unfortunately, we live in an age when far too little attention is paid to history -- real history. What actually happened back then is often rewritten to satisfy political or ideological appetites of "Scamalot" revisionists -- who may be journalists, or academics, or deceitful governments, or religious zealots, or even occupants of high political office.

Evidence of this deceit can be found in America's failure three months ago to memorialize the actual late-January 1973 end of the Vietnam War -- or, more correctly, the end of "Vietnam One," in which American armed forces fought. That was the twelve-year war which was fought largely by U.S. combat forces and which officially ended with the Paris Peace Accords of January 27, 1973.

But sadly, back in January, we saw not a single historically correct commentary about the end of "Vietnam One" in any major U.S. newspaper. Nor was there any detailed mention by any TV network "talking head" of the historical truth of a badly defeated North Vietnam's exodus from the South. That was the imperfect but largely victorious and now-forgotten end of Vietnam One.

Remembered and loudly acclaimed, instead, is the infamous anniversary date more than two years later of the tragic end of "Vietnam Two" -- which

(a) began in January 1975,

(b) involved no U.S. combat forces at all, and

(c) came to a tragic end on April 30, 1975.

That was when South Vietnam's capital city of Saigon fell to rampaging Soviet-supplied North Vietnamese armies -- and when televised pictures of helicopters rescuing American diplomatic personnel, Marine guards, and friendly South Vietnamese from the U.S. Embassy roof were first burned into our memories.

The deceitful tactic: Loudly and relentlessly propagandize a first-ever "Defeat of America" when, in fact, all American combat units had departed the scene more than two years earlier.