The ideologues of the left whose legacy Obama represents used to chant, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is Gonna Win" at their anti-war rallies. This is what a presidency controlled by them looks like.
"And on the day that Vietnam declared its independence, crowds took to the streets of this city, and Ho Chi Minh evoked the American Declaration of Independence. He said, “All people are created equal. The Creator has endowed them with inviolable rights. Among these rights are the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to the pursuit of happiness.”
The Vietnamese D of I was a shameless pastiche of the American Declaration of Independence in a bid to get the US to back them against France. It was a hollow piece of paper aimed at America, not at the Vietnamese people. It was poor propaganda that unlike the American Declaration was never meant as a statement of ideals for Vietnam.
Once in power, Ho Chi Minh presided over numerous atrocities, including mass murder and torture.
The VC delivered a similar warning to the residents of a hamlet not far from Danang. All were herded before the home of their chief. While they and the chief’s pregnant wife and four children were forced to look on, the chief’s tongue was cut out. Then his genital organs were sliced off and sewn inside his bloody mouth. As he died, the VC went to work on his wife, slashing open her womb. Then, the nine-year-old son: a bamboo lance was rammed through one ear and out the other. Two more of the chief’s children were murdered the same way. The VC did not harm the five-year-old daughter — not physically: they simply left her crying, holding her dead mother’s hand.
General Walt tells of his arrival at a district headquarters the day after it had been overrun by VC and North Vietnamese army troops. Those South Vietnamese soldiers not killed in the battle had been tied up and shot through their mouths or the backs of their heads. Then their wives and children, including a number of two- and three-year-olds, had been brought into the street, disrobed, tortured and finally executed: their throats were cut; they were shot, beheaded, disemboweled. The mutilated bodies were draped on fences and hung with signs telling the rest of the community that if they continued to support the Saigon government and allied forces, they could look forward to the same fate.
This is the monster whom Obama praises. He keeps talking up the Vietnamese American community while completely ignoring why they left and live here.
In another time, the profession of these shared ideals and our common story of throwing off colonialism might have brought us closer together sooner. But instead, Cold War rivalries and fears of communism pulled us into conflict.
"Pulled us" into conflict. And "fears of Communism". Unnecessary ones. Obviously.
Obama has shared ideals with Ho Chi Minh. Americans have none.
At your war memorial not far from here, and with family altars across this country, you remember some 3 million Vietnamese, soldiers and civilians, on both sides, who lost their lives. At our memorial wall in Washington, we can touch the names of 58,315 Americans who gave their lives in the conflict.
One group fought to keep Vietnam free. Another fought to enslave it to Communism. To Obama, they are one and the same.
And no Obama apology speech would be complete without bashing America.
No nation is perfect. Two centuries on, the United States is still striving to live up to our founding ideals. We still deal with our shortcomings -- too much money in our politics, and rising economic inequality, racial bias in our criminal justice system, women still not being paid as much as men doing the same job.
Amazing. Even Obamunism can't seem to fix America.