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Comment by drocer88 | Hacker News Reader

“This is manifestly not Saigon”

Sure looks like it.

Saigon was an actual government that stood for 2 years after the US disengaged. Kabul has proven itself to be an embarrassingly dysfunctional puppet administration. Its been made clear today the US should have left 10 years ago or earlier.

So even worse than Saigon then because after 20 years of support there wasn't even any significant Afghani interest in having any other government than the Taliban.

More like a completely disfunctional government made up of a bunch of warlords of dubious background and character. AFAIK the Talibans massacred any possible opposition/contender around the 9/11 events, leaving effectively no cohesive group behind that could replace them.

Saigon could have stand longer if the US didn’t cut off financial support.

When Saigon began to fall on April 29, 1975, they signaled the start of the US evacuation by playing White Christmas (as sung by Bing Crosby) on AFRN:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Saigon#Operation_Frequ...

I guess these days, it'd be done by a smartphone app (some sort of secure Telegram group or emergency broadcast type message).

It is more that nobody cares if it is Saigon.

Yeah, honestly this kind of navel gazing is super gross. Viewing the Vietnam war through that one moment really centralizes the Vietnam civil war as something American. It causes Americans to fail to examine Vietnam as the multi-decades long brutal nightmare that it was for the Vietnamese and makes it about American failure and shame.

It sublimates the incredible devastation our government wrought, the brutal corrupt colonial puppet government they propped up and the multilateral atrocities committed beneath a made for TV venere of lost American glory.

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