The Democrat-Controlled Congress in 1973-75 Made Sure That South Vietnam and America Lost the Vietnam War

Then-Vice President Gerald Ford addressing Congress on December 6, 1973. During this time under President Nixon, as well as in the future Ford presidency, a Democrat-controlled Congress would do everything they could to undermine the American war effort in Vietnam in order to help the communists. Photo shared in accordance with CC BY-SA 4.0. (via Carl Albert Research and Studies Center)

Estimated reading time: 5-9 minutes

In his influential and meticulously researched book Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam 1973-1975 (2012), George J. Veith explained that the “U.S. Congress’s aid cutbacks and legislation denying fire support were the main culprits in South Vietnam’s demise,” (p. 7-8). Veith then elaborated on this point, saying that “congressional aid reductions were imposed in perverse synchronicity with increased Communist aggression,” (p. 8).

According to Veith, the communists admitted this themselves, since “Communist accounts written after the war trumpet the fact that aid cuts progressively weakened the RVNAF [Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) Air Force], while North Vietnam’s military strength concurrently recovered from the debacle of the 1972 offensive,” (p. 8).

The 1972 offensive referred by Veith is known in history as the Easter Offensive, which took place in the spring of that year. After the exit of the majority of U.S. forces from Vietnam, the North Vietnamese launched the most ambitious military campaign of the war, larger than the 1968 Tet Offensive, in hopes of knocking the South Vietnamese out of the war once and for all.

Despite their ferocity, this campaign by the North Vietnamese, like all of their attempts in the past, failed miserably.

Supported by the remaining U.S. airpower, who stayed behind to fight alongside their Vietnamese brothers in arms, the South Vietnamese, largely on their own, ripped the invading North Vietnamese to pieces, crushing their forces at An Loc, Kontum, Quang Tri, and more. The aftermath left the communist forces drained, decimated, and humiliated.

The Southern victory demonstrated not only the success of Vietnamization (or as I like to call it, Re-Vietnamization), but also dispelled the leftist media and Democrat narrative that the South Vietnamese soldiers were unprofessional, unable, and unwilling to fight. The leftists in America got proven wrong, and this hurt them and angered them deeply.

On the media’s end, they simply did not bother to write about the South’s victories in 1972. This was consistent with the leftist media conduct throughout the war: amplifying, exaggerating, and fabricating the successes of communists, while ignoring, suppressing, and whitewashing the many, many successes of South Vietnam and the U.S.

For Congress, which was led by Democrats, they continued their efforts to defund and bankrupt South Vietnam. Only now they did so at an accelerated pace.

From 1973 to 1975, the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress pushed through resolution after resolution, slashing financial aid to South Vietnam, castrating the political power of President Nixon and then President Ford, until there was nothing left for South Vietnam to run on (Veith 2012: 33-34; 55; 58-59).

Democrat Joe Biden was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 and sworn into office in early 1973. He would spend the next 47 years of his life in government as a career politician. (via U.S. Congress)

At the same time, thanks to the Democrats, the North Vietnamese were given time to rebuild and retry their attempts to conquer the South. Unlike their southern counterparts, the North had reliable allies in China and the USSR who did not hesitate in financing their friend (Sorley 1999: 382).

Following the victory over the communists in the 1972 Easter Offensive, South Vietnamese General Cao Van Vien said that the South was “fully capable of confronting the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] if U.S. support were provided in three vital areas: tactical and strategic air, to include troop transport; sea transport; and the replacement of weapons, materials, and supplies,” (Sorley 1999: 373).

Because of the Democrats, these vital needs were cut off from South Vietnam. By April 30, 1975, the fruits of the Democrats’ treasonous labor would come to fruition with the fall of Saigon.

Lewis Sorley stated the painful truth in his book A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (1999), and this is the fact “that two totalitarian states – the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China – had proved more faithful and reliable as allies than the American democracy…” (p. 373).

If you ask me, I would say that the North Vietnamese had another ally: The Democratic Party.

Concurrent with the USSR’s and China’s consistent funding and support of the North Vietnamese, the Democrats in Congress did everything in their power to turn the tide of the war against South Vietnam and the U.S.

The mainstream media made sure that the communists were glorified and the South Vietnamese were hated. At the same time, Democrat politicians fed off the public exhaustion and anxiety generated by the leftist media, used that antiwar sentiment to elevate themselves to positions of power, and made it their personal mission to bankrupt South Vietnam and ensure a communist victory in Southeast Asia.

Both the Democrats and the leftist media rejoiced when Saigon fell and the communists took over Vietnam. To this day, Democrats and liberal journalists alike try to paint the communists in a positive light, while spitting on the sacrifices of the real heroes like the South Vietnamese and American soldiers.

This is the Democratic Party. This is what they stand for, and it has been going on for much too long.

Whether it be the Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s kowtowing to the North Vietnamese, Bill Clinton being buddy-buddy with communist China and communist Vietnam in the 1990s, Barack Obama surrendering to China, Iran, ISIS, Russia, Syria, and so many more in the 2010s, or Joe Biden and the Democrats surrendering to these same hostile actors (except ISIS, which got destroyed by the Trump administration FYI) while also being a Trojan horse for the radical left in 2020, the story of the Democratic Party in the late 20th and early 21st century is always the same: The Democrats love to surrender to the enemy, and they love to undermine and sabotage America.

It is about time we recognize this. Americans love to forgive and forget, and the Democrats and leftists have exploited that good heart for decades. If we let them do it much longer, we will no longer have a country.

As a person of South Vietnamese descent, I know exactly how it feels to lose your country. It literally happened to us, thanks to the Democrats. This is not a joke. The threat is more real than many of us want to admit.

If the Democrats take power in 2020, America will be a thing of the past, and in whatever socialist wasteland that results, the rulers, overseeing the poverty, death, and misery that is already so rampant in other socialist trash countries right now, will still try to blame their problems on made-up social issues like “toxic masculinity,” “the rise in white supremacy,” and “systemic racism.”

Reject this stupidity, reject this socialism, reject the Democratic Party.

Cited:

Sorley, Lewis. A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Harcourt, Inc. 1999.

Veith, George J. Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam 1973-1975. New York: Encounter Books. 2012.