Submitted by jason gettinger, Jan 25, 2007 10:24

Although Cooper-Church did cut funds for the South Viet govt in 1975, responsible military historians (e.g. the late Richard Bernstein of Cornell and Naval War College) documented that the actual fall of that govt was the result of poor use of the plenty of resources it had. Saigon refused to send best divisions to Central Highlands, so the North Viets turned an early surprise attack into a sustained rout down Highway 1 and the government abandoned the capital. Those who wanted to fight the Viet war by proxy, where there was no US strategic military interest at stake, should ask themselves: would you have supported the war til the last Vietnamese standing? By '75 it was up to the Vietnamese to resolve their own civil war and if people died in the aftermath, they have themselves to blame, not us and not those who prudently decided that we had done enough to try to support a pro-Western govt that never had the mantle of Viet nationalism. CIA officer Lonsdale had it right when he suggested in the '40s that the wisest course would have been to support Ho Chi Minh as a SE Asian Tito (not a democratic reformer certainly).

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