Two Hour Video
A Two Hour Video - Episode 11
NARRATOR: Less than two weeks after the fall of Saigon, the anti-war movement held a “Victory Celebration” in Central Park (May 9, 1970). They were not celebrating the end of the Vietnam War, but the victory of the Communists over the Republic of Vietnam and their own role in what they saw as the defeat of the U.S. and its allies. The Communists did not live up to the moral expectations of the former protestors, so they down played the reports coming out of both Vietnam and Cambodia concerning executions and mass murders in both those countries.
Explanation, Second Indochina War
Besides local scores being settled in Vietnam, as noted by Burns, resistors and Hoi Chanh's were summarily executed in the tens of thousands. Even the dead were not spared, as cemetaries were bulldozed by the victors. In Cambodia, the enemies of the state meriting capital punishment included those wearing eyeglasses on the assumption that the glasses were a symbol of literacy that needed to be exterminated. In the U.S., Gareth Porter was denying the genocide right up through ...date. In the ten years after the war, more people died (not from natural causes) in Indochina than had been killed in the war itself.
When the invading North Vietnamese Army came into Saigon they expected to find a populace suffering from starvation and exploitation. Instead they found a comparatively rich and free society. Freedom was evident in the quanties and varieties of books available in the market, most of which were immediately burned.
Within six months, the Provisional Government was put out to pasture by its Northern sponsors and an influx of carpetbaggers came in to divest the Southerners of the trinkets they had accumulated. Takeover of “abandoned” property.
A boat full of Vietnamese refugees from Guam repatriated themselves and were immediately arrested.
As the complete disregard for human rights became evident, even some hard core American supporters of the Hanoi regime grew cold feet. Joan Baez took out a full page ad xxxxxxxxxxxx but very few of her former colleagues joined her.
Rural New Economic Zones, human mine detectors,
The Communist Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia was a continuation of their aggression/annexation, rather than a punishment of border infractions. By 19.. There were more Vietnamese living in Cambodia and Laos than there were Cambodians and Lao's. The Lao government was completely controlled by ther Vietnamese advisor. In Cambodia, the Vietnamese puppet, Hang Sen, ruled with an iron fist.
In the U.S., Vietnam veterans that had ETSed from the military had gone back to their homes and were minding their own business and raising families. Meanwhile, Hollywood was glorifying the protestors and caricaturing the Vietnam veterans as deranged killers.
Carter gave amnesty to the draft dodgers. Kerry was reissued his awards.
Veterans going to schools hid their service, while academic departments and municipal governments were taken over by the leftists.
Book publishing supporting “orthodox “views. “Revisionism”
Viet Kieu successful in US, Other sides of the story coming out "Ap Bac," "BG Loan", "Pham Xuan Anh"
POW-MIA Bobby Garwood, Flag, Senate Hearings
Boat People, Chinese being forced out.
Second Thoughts Movement
McNamara's Follies
HO
Fall of Soviet Union
Recognition
Expanding Corruption and Human Rights Abuses In SRV
Publication of FRUS
Opening of archives, Hanoi Control of NLF, Chinese, Cuban, even North Korean involvement.
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