30th Anniversary of the Start of Southeast Asia's Communist Genocide: A Leftist Day of Shame

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon and the start of the genocidal bloodbath that occurred when communist revolutionaries in Vietnam and Cambodia, unchecked by U.S. military might, began the wholesale imposition of Marxist "social justice" on their peoples.

Shortly after Saigon was captured by North Vietnam, one million South Vietnamese residents were forced to move to so-called "New Economic Zones." Re-education camps, a staple of communist regimes, were quickly established. Executions became commonplace.

The implementation of "social justice" in South Vietnam was so "successful," that one million Vietnamese fled their country for the open seas, choosing to risk death by drowning while seeking asylum in other lands, over the imprisonment, starvation, torture and execution that had become official state policy in their native country.

In Cambodia, similar events of far worse magnitude began unfolding two weeks earlier on April 17, 1975 when the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh to begin an attempt at creating a communist Utopia in record time.

Viewing all cities as places corrupted with capitalists, intellectuals and foreign influence, the Khmer Rouge forced the evacuation of Cambodian cities, including Phnom Penh, one of 2.5 million people. Phnom Penh's inhabitants, including hospital patients, were thrown out into the streets at gunpoint and forced to march to the countryside where, if they survived the march, they were made to work the fields-- torture and death and starvation their constant companions as they slaved away.

A British journalist who was observing the forced evacuation of Phnom Penh from the safety of the French embassy had this to say about the evacuation of its hospitals: [the Khmer Rouge] was tipping out patients like garbage in the streets...Bandaged men and women hobbled by the embassy. Wives pushed wounded soldier husbands on hospital beds on wheels, some with serum drips still attached. In five years of war, this is the greatest caravan of human misery I have seen."

Once established, the Khmer Rouge controlled all aspects of human activity. It disallowed freedom of speech, banned religion, eliminated all human rights and forbid ownership, even of one's own clothes. Anyone suspected of having ties to the West or Cambodia's deposed government was summarily executed, as were all their relatives down to second cousins. The Khmer Rouge eliminated all currency, shut down all schools, universities and hospitals. It eliminated professional occupations including law, medicine and engineering. It banned the traditional family. It forbade Cambodians to cook or eat outside a forced communal setting. In short, the Khmer Rouge obliterated, root and branch, the entire socio-economic fabric of Cambodia in an effort to construct a perfect society where all were equal and content.

When the quest for a perfect society ended in 1979, one-third of Cambodia's 1975 population was dead.

Just prior to the U.S. withdrawl from Saigon, NY Times columnist Sydney Schanberg penned a piece titled, "Indochina without Americans: For Most, a Better Life." It reflected the wide-held view of the mainstream media of the time. Schanberg concluded that, "it is difficult to imagine how their [Southeast Asian's] lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone."

Mr. Schanberg's foresight was, like so many other leftists', clouded by reflexive anti-Americanism.

I've spent much of today reading about the wide-spread horror that happened as a result of the U.S. abandoning Southeast Asia to communists. I'm in no mood to mince words--the American far Left caused the defeat of the U.S. in Indochina. The far Left deliberately sapped the will of America to fight and win in Vietnam. It cleverly enlisted the news media, already sympathetic to its cause, into helping destroy a proud nation's will. It deliberately intimidated gutless U.S. government officials into acceptance of military defeat. Its members directly aided our communist enemies-- no surprise there, since the far Left's leadership was composed mainly of communists, just as it is today. It deliberately vilified our brave soldiers, while its loud-mouthed members cowered behind deferments and one-way trips to Canada. It heartily wished for and worked towards our country's defeat, just as it wishes for America's defeat in Iraq today.

It has the blood of Cambodia's killing fields on its hands and it would risk spilling the blood of a million Iraqis if taking that risk guaranteed America's defeat and radical Islam's triumph.

For the far Left, today should be marked as a day of great shame.