In 1954 at the age of 11, I read about the fall of Dien Bien Phu. The Geneva agreement that followed allowed the people in the North to go South and the people in the South to go North. A million went South. A few hundred went North. That said a LOT!
Fast Forward almost 20 years and I was an Army officer in Vietnam in the final days of our presence there. The South Vietnamese military was holding their own as we left. A short 2 years later the South Vietnamese military collapsed because we stopped sending them aid in the partisan fight over the FY1975 budget.
58,000 Americans died and many more were injured in the fight to help these people maintain their freedom. It was all thrown away in a partisan budget battle in the summer of 1974 over the FY75 budget. We threw away and walked away from our allies and our own military in a betrayal of our national character because the majority Political Party at the time wanted to make a point.
It still affects me today – as it affected the Vietnamese nation along with the millions of Cambodians who subsequently died in the bloodbath that followed.