[Note: This is a subpost linked to by Vietnam, Israel and the Left’s Delusional Narratives. Feel free to comment but the post might not make much sense without the parent post’s context.]
Delusion:The “peace” movement brought about peace in Indochina.
Reality: This is the most tragic delusion of all. It is the reason I have been putting “peace” in quotation marks. Despite its delusions, the “peace” movement might have been justifiable had it actually produced peace for the people of either Indochina or America. Sadly, it did neither.
The people of Indochina suffered horribly during the final communist invasions and their horrific aftermath. We know at least 165,000 Vietnamese were executed outright in the two years following the fall of Saigon. Another estimated 250,000 died from neglect in the “reeducation” camps. Another two million were made refugees with an unknown loss of life as they fled across seas in tiny boats.
Worse, 1.5 million out of a population of 7 million, 1 in every 5 living Cambodians, would die under Pol Pot’s insanity. The Khmer Rouge murdered 300,000 people outright, and we know this because they took before and after photographs of each and every one of them. You can see them in a museum in Phnom Penh today. The rest they starved to death in an insane attempt to empty the cities and create an agrarian utopia.
It wasn’t just the democides. Soon after we abandoned the people of Indochina and let the communist superpowers take over, the victors fell out among themselves. Border skirmishes broke out immediately, culminating in an invasion of Cambodia by Vietnam followed by an invasion of Vietnam by China. The area would remain mired in unceasing, brutal warfare until the early ’90s.
The aftereffects for America reverberate to this day. The mythology of plucky 3rd worlders armed with nothing but AK-47s and RPGs defeating America’s power has been used by every enemy since to convince their followers that small groups or nations like theirs could take on America and win. Most grimly, it appeared repeatedly in Al Qaeda’s indoctrination materials prior to and after 9/11.
A “peace” that brings totalitarian oppression, impoverishment, mass murder and incessant, bloody military conflict is not a “peace” any humane person would seek. If that is “peace”, most would choose “war”.