Max Hastings, Vietnam

At Amazon, Max Hastings, Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975.

Mark Bowden, Hue 1968

At Amazon, Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam.

Big West, The Village

At Amazon, Big West, The Village: Fifteen Men Walked In. Eight Walked Out (Commandant's Reading List). 

Kathy Boudin, Weather Underground Terrorist of 1960s and 1970s, Dead at 78 (VIDEO)

She was the mother of Chesa Boudin, the radical San Francisco District Attorney who's up for recall on June 7. She pleaded guilty in 1984 to first-degree robbery and second-degree murder in the shooting death of Brink's security guard Peter Paige in the Weather Underground's 1981 armored truck robbery, in Rockland County, New York.

Chesa was raised by the notorious, violent Weather Underground militants Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Kathy Boudin, a "model prisoner," served 22 years behind bars at New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She was paroled in 2003.

As the New York Times reports, "Kathy Boudin, Radical Imprisoned in a Fatal Robbery, Dies at 78":

She had a role in the Brink’s heist by the Weather Underground that left two police officers dead. But she became a model prisoner and, after being freed, helped former inmates.

Kathy Boudin, who as a member of the radical Weather Underground of the 1960s and ’70s took part in the murderous 1981 holdup of a Brink’s armored truck and then, in prison and after being freed two decades later, helped inmates struggling to get their lives on track, died on Sunday in New York. She was 78.

The cause was cancer, said Zayd Dohrn, whose family adopted Ms. Boudin’s son, Chesa Boudin.

On a March day in 1970, Ms. Boudin was showering at a townhouse on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village when an explosion collapsed the walls around her. She and fellow extremists had been making bombs there, the intended target believed to have been the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey. Three of them were killed on the spot. A naked Ms. Boudin managed to scramble away with a colleague and found clothes and brief refuge at the home of a woman living down the block.

She then disappeared.

Within a few years, so did the Weather Underground. A breakaway faction of the leftist Students for a Democratic Society, it called itself Weatherman, borrowing from “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” a 1965 Bob Dylan song with the lyric “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” The name evolved into Weather Underground.

In that era of turbulence over civil rights and the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War, the group set off bombs at the United States Capitol, New York City Police Headquarters and other buildings. If anything, it was more adept at issuing long manifestoes, laden and leaden with references to Karl Marx, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, and asserting the world’s “main struggle” as being that “between U.S. imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it.”

With the Weather Underground fading by the mid-1970s as the war ended, its leaders, one by one, emerged from hiding to face the legal consequences of having been on the F.B.I.’s most-wanted list.

Not Ms. Boudin (pronounced boo-DEEN). “The very status of being underground was an identity for me,” she recalled years later in interviews with The New Yorker at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, N.Y., where she came to be imprisoned. She continued: “I was making a difference in no way, so then I elevated to great importance the fact that I was underground.”

That ended in October 1981, when she teamed up with armed men from another radical group, the Black Liberation Army, to hold up a Brink’s truck in Rockland County, N.Y., making off with $1.6 million. During the stickup, the gunmen killed a security guard, Peter Paige. They transferred the cash to a U-Haul truck that was waiting roughly a mile away. Ms. Boudin was in the cab of the truck, a 38-year-old white woman serving as a decoy to confound police officers searching for Black men.

The U-Haul was stopped by the police at a roadblock. Ms. Boudin, who carried no weapon, immediately surrendered, hands in the air. But gunmen jumped from the back of the truck and opened fire, killing Sgt. Edward J. O’Grady and Officer Waverly L. Brown. Though some accused her of surrendering as a tactic to get the police to lower their weapons before being attacked, Ms. Boudin insisted that that was not the case.

Not Ms. Boudin (pronounced boo-DEEN). “The very status of being underground was an identity for me,” she recalled years later in interviews with The New Yorker at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, N.Y., where she came to be imprisoned. She continued: “I was making a difference in no way, so then I elevated to great importance the fact that I was underground.”

That ended in October 1981, when she teamed up with armed men from another radical group, the Black Liberation Army, to hold up a Brink’s truck in Rockland County, N.Y., making off with $1.6 million. During the stickup, the gunmen killed a security guard, Peter Paige. They transferred the cash to a U-Haul truck that was waiting roughly a mile away. Ms. Boudin was in the cab of the truck, a 38-year-old white woman serving as a decoy to confound police officers searching for Black men.

The U-Haul was stopped by the police at a roadblock. Ms. Boudin, who carried no weapon, immediately surrendered, hands in the air. But gunmen jumped from the back of the truck and opened fire, killing Sgt. Edward J. O’Grady and Officer Waverly L. Brown. Though some accused her of surrendering as a tactic to get the police to lower their weapons before being attacked, Ms. Boudin insisted that that was not the case.

At her sentencing, she turned to the victims’ relatives. “I know that anything I say now will sound hollow, but I extend to you my deepest sympathy,” she said. “I feel real pain.” As for her motives, “I was there out of my commitment to the Black liberation struggle and its underground movement. I am a white person who does not want the crimes committed against Black people to be carried in my name.”

She proved to be a model prisoner at Bedford Hills, mentoring other inmates, attending to those with AIDS, writing poetry and expressing remorse for her role in the Brink’s robbery deaths...

Shoot, she was *such* a model prisoner that even William F. Buckley, the august founder of National Review, wrote a letter to the parole board supporting her release. 

Still more here.

The video at top is a "Brave New Films" hagiography. 

Searching in vain, I found not a single television news report on her death by any of the so-called mainstream broadcast, cable, or streaming outlets. 

I did find, miraculously, an old "CBS Sunday Morning" segment (here) on the 1970 townhouse explosion in Greenwich Village, which killed three Weather Underground bomb-makers, Diana Oughton, Ted Gold, and Terry Robbin. As reported at the Times' story here, Kathy Boudin was on scene, escaped, and went to ground after her three comrades blew themselves up. 

This television news blackout is no surprise: President Barack Obama was a known associate of Bill Ayers during the latter's post-Weathermen university professor's life; and indeed, Obama launched his 1995 Illinois state senate campaign at a meet-and-greet at Ayers' house in Chicago.

Not a word of this will be brought up by our irretrievably corrupted legacy news outlets, lest the Democrats' chances in 2022 and 2024 be further deep-sixed by the "resurfacing" of "old news" reports on the party's most esteemed Democrat Party president in modern history, who was"palling around with terrorists."

Shoot, the current Democrat-Media-Disinformation-Complex beats Winston Smith's "memory hole" operations seen in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four --- and that's no joke.

ADDED: From Gail Heriot, at Instapundit, "THE BRINK’S ROBBERY/TRIPLE MURDER WAS ON THIS DAY IN [OCTOBER 20] 1981":

Please keep in your thoughts Brink’s guard Peter Paige and Nyack police officers Edward O’Grady and Waverly Brown (who was Nyack’s first African-American officer). All three were murdered in the course of the 1981 Brink’s heist. Also remember Brink’s guard Joseph Trombino, who was seriously wounded, but survived, only to be killed twenty years later on 9/11.

The perpetrators were six members of the Black Liberation Army and four former members of Weather Underground who had since formed the May 19th Communist Organization.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the trial of the first three defendants (one from the BLA and two from the M19CO)...

Still more at Instapundit. 

Mark Atwood Lawrence, The End of Ambition

At Amazon, Mark Atwood Lawrence, The End of Ambition: The United States and the Third World in the Vietnam Era.

Graham Greene, The Quiet American

*BUMPED.*I

'm just seeing that this book is something of a collector's item.

An older used Bantam paperback is going for more than a brand new Penguin classics edition.

At Amazon, the Bantam paperback, Graham Greene, The Quiet American.

And the Penguin classic is here.

Deportation Threat Shows Vietnamese Age Divide in Orange County

At LAT, "Among Vietnamese, a generational divide arises in fight against deportation threat":

In his 85 years, Lan Hoang has many times seen and heard about the power of communism to stir passions on the streets of Little Saigon.

There was the time a video store owner displayed the flag of communist Vietnam and an image of Ho Chi Minh, causing thousands of angry residents to protest. Ten years ago, hundreds of people hoisting signs gathered outside a Westminster newspaper that published a photo of a foot spa bearing the colors and stripes of the anti-communist South Vietnamese flag, calling it a desecration.

But when Hoang turned up to a protest in the neighborhood against the Trump administration’s recent threats to deport Vietnamese immigrants with criminal convictions back to their homeland, he was surprised by the apparently tepid response by older immigrants. Usually the most fervently anti-communist, only a handful showed up.

“Everyone was shouting and I looked around, wondering, ‘Where are the people my age?’ ” said the retired records clerk from Santa Ana, who said he was shocked by the White House’s move. “It’s so inspiring to see the youth taking action. They are well-educated, well-organized. I only wish that the others who have been visible for many years were here to support them.”

After word spread about a renewed push by the Department of Homeland Security to get Vietnam to accept more deportees, some people saw it as a mistake by the Trump administration given the GOP’s fading strength in Orange County and the historical support that the Republican Party has gotten from Vietnamese Americans.

But in a community where many older residents oppose undocumented immigration and younger ones tend to lean left politically, the controversy is just the latest to underscore the generational divide among those of Vietnamese descent.

“So many of our lives are in limbo. And do we get any support from our own community? Very little if you’re talking about the elders. What happened to all the voices speaking out for anti-communism? Why haven’t they mobilized?” said Tung Nguyen, 40, a Santa Ana activist who has served time in prison and helped lead protests in Little Saigon. “If they really care about human rights violations, well, violations are happening, not just in Vietnam but right here in our backyard.”

Earlier this month, Trump administration officials met with their counterparts from Hanoi to talk about a pact the two countries signed in 2008, under President George W. Bush, that protected the Vietnamese who came to the U.S. before July 12, 1995, from deportation.

More than 8,000 Vietnamese residents in the U.S. who escaped their homeland but later committed crimes — even minor ones for which they have served time — would be at risk of deportation if officials succeed in changing the agreement. Overall, since 1998, more than 9,000 Vietnamese immigrants have received a final order of removal, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Kim Bui, a 19-year-old sales clerk at an Anaheim snack shop, said members of her parents’ generation and older tend to be “no-shows” when the topic is immigration and deportations.

“I think these issues have a stigma to them. The older people are heavily Republican and they’re very focused on traditional values,” said Bui, who grew up in Orange County. “They are happy to talk about injustice in their homeland and they want to stay in that box, without making waves about U.S. politics.”

On social media and in the mainstream press, some young advocates for the emerging anti-deportation movement say they’ve long pushed for fairness and equality, and that Vietnamese Americans have shown up for other immigrant groups throughout U.S. history.

Still, within their own group, what’s missing is the “leadership of the older generation,” said Nguyen.

“We understand if they’re ashamed of some of us for our mistakes and our arrests,” he said, referring to immigrants with criminal records. “But do they need to punish our wives and children? Why would they not come out and fight for us so families can stay together? Why separate people who have paid the price for their bad choices or who will be exploited in Vietnam?”

Until last month, Nguyen was at risk for being deported to Vietnam. In 1996, he had been sentenced to life in prison for not intervening while one of his buddies stabbed a man to death. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown allowed him an early release, recognizing his bravery for saving dozens of civilians in a prison riot. Brown then gave Nguyen a full pardon this past Thanksgiving.

Last year, the Trump administration started pursuing the removal of a number of long-term residents from Vietnam and Cambodia, and to a lesser extent, Laotians, some of whom arrived in the United States decades ago as refugees, according to immigrant rights advocates and lawyers who have sued to halt the push. The administration maintains many have criminal records that subject them to deportation.

“It’s a priority of this administration to remove criminal aliens to their home country,” Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, told The Times.

The latest available numbers on removals by Immigration and Customs Enforcement paint a mixed picture. In fiscal 2016, which ended in September 2016 toward the end of the Obama administration, officials removed 35 Vietnamese people. In fiscal 2017, including the first nine months of the Trump administration, officials removed more than double that number: 71.

Removals of Cambodians and Laotians have been relatively minimal: In fiscal 2016, the agency removed 74 Cambodians; the next year, it removed only 29. The agency removed zero Laotians in fiscal 2016, and five the following year.

But critics see the moves as yet another example of how, far from the U.S.-Mexico border, in both rhetoric and action, the Trump administration is signaling that no immigrant, whatever their legal status, is safe...

How America Fractured in 1968

At the New York Times, "50 Years Later, It Feels Familiar: How America Fractured in 1968":

“The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory.” A reminder of the wars, riots, political polarization, police shootings, racism, & assassinations of 50 years ago. https://t.co/bYYbgKQ6tU

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) December 16, 2018

It was freezing on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan.

A fresh layer of snow blanketed the ground on the night of Dec. 31, 1967, and revelers in Times Square and Central Park seemed to look to the future with some hope. “World Bids Adieu to a Violent Year” was the Jan. 1 headline in The New York Times.

But 1968 would be tumultuous, too.

Even from the distance of a half-century, the moment feels familiar. From January to December, people demonstrated against racial injustice and economic inequality. Abroad, the United States military slogged through a seemingly interminable war. And after two terms with a Democrat in the White House, a Republican presidential candidate campaigned on a promise of law and order, and won.

It was the year between the Summer of Love and the summer of Woodstock, and some men grew their hair long while others were drafted to fight in Vietnam. “The country was bitterly divided: hawks and doves,” said Marc Leepson, an author, historian and Vietnam veteran.

It was also the year of the Tet offensive, an enormous attack by North Vietnamese forces, and of more than 16,000 American deaths in the Vietnam War, more than in any other year. Domestic support for the war effort faltered as antiwar protests exploded, most notably the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, to which the police responded with tear gas. Demonstrators, journalists and even some delegates were beaten and arrested.

Mr. Leepson spent almost all of 1968 serving at a base near the coastal city of Qui Nhon, Vietnam, and he returned home that December to a country that seemed vastly different from the one he had left.

“The enormity of everything, individually and cumulatively, didn’t hit me until I was in my parents’ living room in Hillside, N.J., watching year-end roundups on the news,” he said in a phone interview. (He eventually joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and grew his hair past his shoulders.)

While Mr. Leepson was overseas, a different sort of battle had been brewing in the United States. The civil rights movement had been underway for years, achieving landmark federal laws and Supreme Court decisions that struck down legalized segregation and discrimination.

But vast inequality persisted, and on April 4, the movement lost a leader: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis.

In the following days, protests and riots erupted in major cities across the country. Properties were destroyed, and dozens of people lost their lives.

“His death unleashed this feeling that we were suppressed,” Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir, a civil rights historian and an assistant professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, said of Dr. King. “Minority groups in America felt that they could now release all that and show the majority: This is our pain, and we have been telling you this for years and years.”

That message seemed to fall on deaf ears, she added, and demonstrations calling for racial justice have never stopped. “Adults need to really have an open mind and listen to the younger generation, and to their grievances,” she said. “I think that was not done in 1968.”

Instead, political opinion seemed to swing the other way. It was a presidential election year, and in March, Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, said he would not run for president again, adding that there was “division in the American house.”

As the year went on, candidates found that appeals to “law and order” were polling particularly well. Richard M. Nixon did it best, eking out a Republican victory in November against Hubert H. Humphrey, a Democrat. (George Wallace, a third-party candidate who supported segregation, won millions of votes and five states.)

That election brought the end of the Johnson administration and the so-called Warren Court — the period when the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, presided over a series of liberal rulings, most notably the 1954 decision striking down segregation in public schools. (Earlier in 1968, Chief Justice Warren told Johnson that he would retire, wrongly hoping the president could appoint a replacement before the winner of the election, whom Chief Justice Warren thought might be Nixon, took office.)

“It’s just a tremendously important moment in Supreme Court history,” Mary L. Dudziak, an author, historian and professor of law at Emory University, said of 1968. “It’s the beginning of that turn away from this era of expansive liberalism.”

But the big-picture changes were hard to recognize at the time; all year, major events made headlines at a breakneck pace. In April, a gas leak caused a huge explosion in Richmond, Ind., killing dozens of people and destroying numerous buildings. In June, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential hopeful, was fatally shot at a campaign event in California. Abroad, France was shaken by widespread protests and general strikes. A brutal civil war was unfolding in Nigeria. Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. And the death toll kept rising in Vietnam.

When 1968 came to a close, Time magazine highlighted some good news...

Still more.

An Oral History of the 1968 Columbia Uprising

This is actually pretty fascinating.

At VF:

The @1968CU protests, recalls one participant, came out of a moment in time in which “it was a question of whether the country would survive a civil war” https://t.co/Ku0KhMlDi5

— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) March 30, 2018

In April 1968, hundreds of students at Columbia University took over campus buildings in an uprising that caught the world’s attention. Fifty years later, they reflect on what went right and what went wrong.

At Columbia University in April 1968, about a thousand students forcibly commandeered five campus buildings, effectively igniting the mass student revolts of the 60s. The events that began haphazardly on April 23 soon grew into a public crescendo of awakening that changed the course of the American student protest movement. It was a year when political, racial, sexual, and cultural forces exploded into a “revolutionary volcano,” as novelist Paul Auster, then a junior at Columbia, described it. It was also the year when two widespread movements—civil rights and anti-war—combined forces to stoke a flame of youth rebellion not seen domestically in half a century.

That spring 50 years ago, Columbia’s compact, six-city-block campus on Manhattan’s bohemian Upper West Side became a petri dish, fermenting and fomenting discord that would engulf the nation. By the end of the year, American deaths in Vietnam exceeded 35,000 soldiers. Anti-war protests multiplied, the draft continued to loom like a Sword of Damocles over the lives of 27 million young men, the peaceful civil-rights movement intensified along with the increasingly militant Black Power movement, the sexual revolution and early feminism movement transformed gender roles, and the unstoppable popularity of psychedelic drugs and rock music (the musical Hair opened on Broadway that month) created an unbridgeable chasm of a generation gap. All of these movements for social change—including the conservative counterrevolutionaries—were out in full force on the Columbia campus that April.

University president Grayson Kirk “was a walking anachronism,” says Paul Cronin, editor of the new, definitive book on the Columbia student uprising, A Time to Stir: Columbia ‘68. “He was clueless and unresponsive to the attitudes, needs, and demands of his students.” It turns out that Kirk and his board of trustees, members of New York’s corporate and media elites, were as out of touch with youth culture as President Lyndon Johnson and his F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover was so threatened by what he saw at Columbia that, in May, he ordered his agency to initiate a secret counter-intelligence program, 2,000 F.B.I. agents strong, aimed at anti-war demonstrators and the New Left.

Not since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964–65 had a campus of a major university been shut down by its students. The student rumblings of 1968 started in February, when two black South Carolina State University students, protesting a segregated bowling alley, were shot and killed by state troopers in Orangeburg. (A third young black man, a high school student, was also killed, as he waited to walk his mother home from work.) In March, students at the historically black Howard University, in Washington, D.C., staged a four-day protest and sit-in. But Columbia captured the attention of the nation because of its stature as an Ivy League college situated in the media capital of the world. The protest was so large (720 students arrested), it lasted so long (a week of building occupations, followed by a month-long strike), and the police reaction was so brutal and bloody, that it was seared into the national conscience.

As tens of thousands of high-school students all over the country organize demonstrations demanding gun-control reform from politicians in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, we may now be witnessing the first full-fledged American student protest movement since the late 60s. “I got chills when I heard Emma González speak about her generation’s fledgling movement to stop gun violence,” said former ‘68 Barnard/Columbia Students for a Democratic Society (S.D.S.) activist Nancy Biberman. A lifelong housing and social-justice advocate in the Bronx, Biberman is heartened by the new wave of protest that has roused high-school students from decades of apathy. “Imagine that a student movement might emerge again and play a catalyzing role in ending the slaughter of innocent people.”

Our young people, in disturbing numbers, appear to reject all forms of authority, from whatever source derived, and they have taken refuge in a turbulent and inchoate nihilism whose sole objectives are destruction. I know of no time in our history when the gap between the generations has been wider or more potentially dangerous.

— Columbia University president Grayson Kirk, April 12, 1968

Dear Grayson, . . . You call for order and respect for authority; we call for justice, freedom, and socialism. There is only one thing left to say. It may sound nihilistic to you, since it is the opening shot in a war of liberation. I’ll use the words of LeRoi Jones, whom I’m sure you don’t like a whole lot: “Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up.”

Yours for freedom, Mark [Rudd] April 22, 1968

More.

ICYMI: Ken Davenport, The Two Gates

This book is worth your time. I'm plugging away on it, although my teaching and grading is cutting into my leisure time, heh.

I'll finish it up soon.

Get yours at Amazon, Ken Davenport, The Two Gates: A Novel.

ICYMI: Ken Davenport, The Two Gates

At Amazon, Ken Davenport, The Two Gates: A Novel.

Ken Davenport, The Two Gates

My good friend Ken Davenport was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, and it's now available at Amazon.

Here, Ken Davenport, The Two Gates: A Novel.

I'm a few pages into it, but will be plowing through more this weekend when I have time. It's an intriguing tome so far, and highly recommended.

And congratulations to Ken! That's quite an accomplishment.

Check back for updates on the book.

John M. Del Vecchio, The 13th Valley

At Amazon, John M. Del Vecchio, The 13th Valley: A Novel.

A work that has served as a literary cornerstone for the Vietnam generation, The 13th Valley follows the strange and terrifying Vietnam combat experiences of James Chelini, a telephone-systems installer who finds himself an infantryman in territory controlled by the North Vietnamese Army. Spiraling deeper and deeper into a world of conflict and darkness, this harrowing account of Chelini's plunge and immersion into jungle warfare traces his evolution from a semi-pacifist to an all-out warmonger. The seminal novel on the Vietnam experience, The 13th Valley is a classic that illuminates the war in Southeast Asia like no other book.

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

At Amazon, Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

This one's also a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

At Amazon, The Sympathizer: A Novel.

Tuong Vu, Vietnam's Communist Revolution

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Tuong Vu, Vietnam's Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology.

American Defeat in Vietnam Was a Political Choice

An excellent video, from Victor Davis Hanson, at Prager University.

Hanson's new book, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, comes out in October.

Vandalism of Vietnam War Memorial in Venice (VIDEO)

The vandals should do time.

Jeez, this is despicable.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Leftist Democrats Forcibly Remove Republican Sen. Janet Nguyen, a Vietnamese Refugee, from Floor of California Senate Over Tom Hayden Criticism (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, as if on cue, "Julie Roginsky Slams Communist and Nazi Slurs (VIDEO)."

It's no enemies on the left for Democrats. The late Tom Hayden was a traitor and Democrat (I repeat myself) who traveled to Hanoi with Jane Fonda to support the Communist North Vietnamese over the the U.S.-backed regime in South Vietnam. California Senate Democrats weren't going to allow an elected Republican, and a refugee from the war, to say a honest word about their comrade.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A state senator is removed from the chamber for her comments about Tom Hayden and Vietnam. (Via Althouse.)

Here's the video and statement, "An Adjournment in Memory of Fallen Vietnamese And Refugees Seeking Freedom and Democracy":

Dear Senators and the People:

I and the children of the former South Vietnam soldiers will never forget the support of former Senator Tom Hayden for the Communist government of Vietnam and the oppression by the Communist Government of Vietnam for the people of Vietnam.

After 40 years, the efforts by people like him have hurt the people of Vietnam and have worked to stop the Vietnamese refugees from coming to the United States, a free country. We will always continue to fight for freedom and human rights for the people of Vietnam.

Members, I recognize today in memory of the million of Vietnamese and the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees who died seeking freedom and democracy. I recognize that on Tuesday you had an opportunity to honor Senator Tom Hayden. With all due respect, I would like to offer another historical perspective.

On Tuesday, instead of participating, I chose to step out of the chamber out of respect to his family, his friends and to you. In contrast to your comments on Tuesday, I want to share what Senator Hayden meant to me and to the over 500,000 Vietnamese Americans who call California their home, as well as to the over 1 million Vietnamese Americans across the United States.

As you may be aware, Tom Hayden chose to work directly with the Communist North Vietnamese Government to oppose the efforts of United States forces in South Vietnam.

Mr. Hayden sided with a communist government that enslaved and/or killed millions of Vietnamese, including members of my own family. Mr. Hayden’s actions are viewed by many as harmful to democratic values and hateful towards those who sought the very freedoms on which this nation is founded.

Were it not for the efforts of the thousands of men and women who served bravely in the United States military and the South Vietnamese military, as well as the efforts of millions of Vietnamese citizens who resisted the communists, I would not be standing here on this Senate floor humbly representing the residents of the 34th District.

In addition to the sacrifices made during war, the efforts of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980’s allowed many Vietnamese like me to seek refuge in the United States.

In contrast to the great many people who fought to defend freedom and democracy, Mr. Hayden supported a Communist agenda and traveled to North Vietnam during the war.

He believed that those who protested the human-rights violations of the Communists were tools of the CIA. It is known that he believed that the war was a conflict between Imperialism, led by the United States and the “free” people of North Vietnam. Former Senator Hayden was profoundly wrong in his support of the Communists.

Members, to this day, the government of Vietnam continues to violate the basic human rights of its citizens. They systematically continue to oppress freedoms of expression, religion and assembly and incarcerate those who speak out for freedom and democracy.

Thank you for allowing me to make my comments. I proudly stand before you as a Vietnamese-American who appreciates the freedoms that so many around the world do not enjoy.

Deal of the Day: ZapMaster LED Lightbulb and Bug Zapper

This is great!

At Amazon, ZapMaster ZM400 2 in 1 LED Lightbulb and Bug Zapper, White (4 Pack).

Also, Save on Select Pocket and Camping Knives.

More, KIND Bars, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, Gluten Free, 1.4 Ounce Bars, 12 Count.

And, Under Armour Storm Hustle II Backpack.

Plus, School Supply Lists.

And from Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.

Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam.

Still more, from Michael Lind, Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict.

BONUS:  Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War.