[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 51 (Monday, May 1, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Page S3186]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE FALL OF SAIGON

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, on Sunday, the anniversary of the 
fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam conflict, the Washington Post 
carried on its Op-Ed page a thoughtful, healing reflection on those 
events by Senator Kerrey entitled, ``Was It Worth It?'' A hero--and 
casualty--of that conflict, the only Member of Congress ever to have 
received the Congressional Medal of Honor, he might understandably have 
turned his attention to those who did not think so and did not serve. 
Instead he allowed that for a period he had shared the same doubts, but 
had overcome them. As he contemplates the human destruction done by the 
dictatorship that followed, he concludes: ``I believe the cause was 
just and the sacrifice not in vain.'' He is now, as he was then, a 
person of limitless courage.
  I ask that his article be included in the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 30, 2000]

                            Was It Worth It?

                            (By Bob Kerrey)

       The most difficult war of the last century was not Vietnam; 
     it was World War I. In 1943, the year I was born, veterans of 
     the Great War Were remembering the 25th anniversary of their 
     armistice while their sons were fighting in Italy and the 
     Pacific against enemies whose military strength was ignored 
     on account of the bitter memories of the failures of the 
     First World War.
       So, as I remember April 30, 1975, I will also remember Nov. 
     11, 1918, and what happened when America isolated itself from 
     the world. But I will also remember the pride I felt when I 
     sat in joint sessions of Congress listening to Vaclav Havel, 
     Kim Dae Jung, Lech Walesa and Nelson Mandela thank Americans 
     for the sacrifices they made on behalf of their freedom.
       The famous photo of South Vietnamese ascending a stairway 
     to a helicopter on the roof of our Saigon embassy represents 
     both our shame and our honor. The shame is that we, in the 
     end, turned our back on Vietnam and on the sacrifice of more 
     than 58,000 Americans. We succumbed to fatigue and self-
     doubt, we went back on the promise we had made to support the 
     South Vietnamese, and the Communists were able to defeat our 
     allies. The honor is that during the fall of Saigon, we 
     rescued tens of thousands of our South Vietnamese friends, 
     and in the years that followed we welcomed more than a 
     million additional Vietnamese to our shores.
       For a young, college-educated son of the optimistic 
     American heartland, the war taught some valuable lessons. My 
     trip to Vietnam gave me a sense of the immense size and 
     variety of our world. I was also awed by something that still 
     moves me: that Americans would risk their lives for the 
     freedom of another people. At the Philadelphia Naval Hospital 
     I learned that everyone needs America's generosity--even me.
       During the war, I knew the fight for freedom was the core 
     reason for our being in Vietnam. But after the war, as I 
     learned more about our government's decisionmaking in the war 
     years, I became angry. I was angry at the failure of our 
     leaders to tell the truth about what was happening in 
     Vietnam. I was angry at their ignorance about the motives of 
     our North Vietnamese adversaries and the history of Vietnam.
       Our leaders didn't seem to understand the depth of 
     commitment of our adversaries to creating their version of an 
     independent Vietnam. I particularly detested President Nixon 
     for his duplicity in campaigning on a promise to end the war 
     and then, once in office, broadening the war to Cambodia. But 
     time has taught me the sterility of anger. So, as I recently 
     told former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, I 
     forgive our leaders of the Vietnam period.
       I am able to forgive, not out of any great generosity of 
     mine but because the passage of time and the actions of the 
     Communist government of Vietnam proven to me we were fighting 
     on the right side. In their harsh treatment of the Vietnamese 
     people, in denying them medicine and essential consumer 
     goods, and in persecuting religious practice, the Vietnamese 
     Communists in the postwar years proved themselves to be--
     Communists.
       The most eloquent comment on life under Ho Chi Minh's heirs 
     was the flight of millions of Vietnamese who risked death on 
     the high seas rather than live under that regime. If there 
     was to be a trial to determine whether the Vietnam War was 
     worth fighting, I would call the Boat People as my only 
     witness.
       Was the war worth the effort and sacrifice, or was it a 
     mistake? Everyone touched by it must answer that question for 
     himself. When I came home in 1969 and for many years 
     afterward, I did not believe it was worth it. Today, with the 
     passage of time and the experience of seeing both the 
     benefits of freedom won by our sacrifice and the human 
     destruction done by dictatorships, I believe the cause was 
     just and the sacrifice not in vain.

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