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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 6,
1983
PAGE
12
aligning ourselves with a losing cause we may become mired in
another Vietnam. Before makin � that decision, Congress should
remind itself of what happened .!._!!"""'vietnam.
The last American combat forces left Vietnam
10
years ago after
the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement on Jan.
27, 1973••••
Between
1973
and
1975,
Congress cut the arms budget for South
Vietnam by 76%. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, doubled its
shipments of arms to North Vietnam. It is not surprising that in
1975
the North Vietnamese.••rolled into Saigon.
What followed was one of the great tragedies of history. The
"liberators" brought ruthless tyranny. Under the Thieu govern
ment there were some elections, some opposition, some freedom.
Now there is none•••• There were no boat people before the com
munists took over.
Now
110,000
fleeing their liberators have
drowned in the China Sea. Hundreds of thousands have been tor
tured and killed in "re-education" camps. In Cambodia alone over
three million have been murdered and starved to death..••
The choice now is clear.
The Congress can approve President
Reagan's request or reduce it below the level needed by the Sal
vadoran government to defeat the guerrillas. If they oppose the
president's request they can justify their action by proclaiming
that they are preventing the United States from getting bogged
down in another Vietnam. But they cannot escape the responsibil
� for what happens thereafter. When we� out, the communists
will move in ••••
As U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick points out, the most gener
ous excuse for those who cut aid to South Vietnam at a time when
the Soviet Union was increasing its aid to North Vietnam was that
they didn't know what would happen. But now there can be no ex
cuses. When the red tide of blood and steel rolls ove�the �
million people of El Salvador and hundreds of thousands of
refugees clamor to come to the U.S., those who opposed adequate
aid to the ant1-comrmi'nrstgovernment of El Salvador will franti
cally thrash around looking for someone else to blame. But they
will search elsewhere in vain. All they will have to do to see
who is at fault is to look in the mirror.��������-
What an indictment of U.S. policy! Millions of hapless Central Americans
face the prospect of being trapped inside a totalitarian tyranny because
the U.S. is fearful to act.
Additional hundreds of thousands--many
millions if Mexico is overrun--will head north, some as new "boat people,"
into the U.S. if possible.
(How could the U.S. prevent it, really?)
As
Louis Gann of the Hoover Institute in Stanford told me recently, insurrec
tions in Central America present an attractive "side benefit" for the
Soviet Union--the chance to disrupt American society with the sudden inrush
of millions of foreigners.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau