Quotes About South Vietnamese

Like many Americans, I am still haunted by images from the last days of the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. Newscasts showed South Vietnamese desperately trying to scale the walls of our embassy in Saigon to board the last helicopter flights out of the country. The fear in their eyes was chilling.

My own people, the South Vietnamese, had been bombing trade routes used by the Viet Cong rebels. I had not been targeted, of course. I had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Meanwhile, with each day that passes, there is an increasing danger that the GVN's deteriorating relations with the South Vietnamese people will begin to produce a general sag of enthusiasm for continuing the war against the Viet Cong, both among the populace and the armed forces. Should this occur, the likelihood of achieving ultimate U.S. objectives in South Vietnam will have virtually disappeared.

Johnson signed on. He was resolved not to be "the president who saw Southern Asia go the way China went," he said. "I want [the South Vietnamese] to get off their butts and get out into those jungles and whip the hell out of some communists," he said. "And then I want 'em to leave me alone, because I've got some bigger things to do right here at home.

The Marines in Korea never feared 'friendly fire' or artillery coming from the South Koreans - from their allies - like they did later in Vietnam, fighting with the South Vietnamese. The Koreans could be trusted.