'Last Days of Vietnam' by Rory Kennedy

Saturday, we saw 'Last Days of Vietnam', a documentary produced and directed by Rory Kennedy.  It is an extremely important movie -- and also a beautifully organized and presented one.

Official poster for 'Last Days in Vietnam'

The movie uses a mixture of archival footage from various sources with articulate and well-chosen talking heads to tell the story of the fall of Saigon in April, 1975.

The Paris Peace Accords in January, 1973, lead to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Vietnam in the following months.  The subsequent impeachment and resignation in August, 1974, of President Richard Nixon, sufficiently changed the cast of characters who had negotiated the fragile accord.  The North Vietnamese took advantage of the anti-war sentiments and unsettled political atmosphere in the U.S. to violate the Paris Accords and begin encroaching on South Vietnam.

By early April, 1975, it was clear that the Viet Cong was intent on taking Saigon.  Many thought that they were planning to conquer Saigon in time to celebrate Ho Chi Minh's birthday in early May.

Unfortunately, the American ambassador in Saigon, Graham Martin, refused to concede that South Vietnam was lost, and as a result, resisted planning for an orderly evacuation.  

There were initially four viable options for evacuating American citizens, their dependents and the many South Vietnamese who had supported them.  However, Martin's unwillingness to face the situation allowed the three best options to slip away.  That left only the use of helicopters for most of the evacuation.

As the U.S. copes with the fallout from its withdrawal from Iraq and moves ahead with its withdrawal from Afghanistan, it is certainly instructive to reacquaint ourselves with the havoc created by end of our misadventures in Vietnam.

Rory Kennedy's movie is foremost a tale of the heroism and sacrifice in the face of desperation and chaos.  But it is also a cautionary tale, well-told, of unnecessary hardship because those 'in charge' were unwilling to deal with very real consequences.

Ms. Kennedy, a daughter of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, and her editor, Don Kleszy, were at the showing we attended at Sunshine Cinemas.  During the Q. and A. following the movie, Rory Kennedy brought up the way that the South Vietnamese were relocated to the U.S. after the fall of Saigon.  It could provide a useful model for helping to resolve the current immigration mess in the U.S.

For those of you who can't see this documentary in a movie theater near you, look for it on your PBS station sometime in the future (PBS is one of the films producers).  It is a powerful reminder of how U.S. leadership can fail when it is too much swayed by public opinion or preconceived ideas -- especially as we deal with our current views on avoiding foreign entanglements and winding down unwanted wars.