Redux 30 tháng 4 for me
April
30th, 1975, aboard USS Blue Ridge:
U.S.
Ambassador to South Vietnam Graham Martin said
"If
we had done as a nation the things I think we said we should
do
--if
we had kept our commitments --we wouldn't have to evacuate."
The Kurdish defenders of
the Syrian border town of Kobane have held back advancing Islamic State
fighters, with the US supplying air support.
Correspondents say the crossing point is a vital supply and exit route.
The Pentagon reports that US planes have been bombing IS targets to the north and south of Kobane since Friday.
US and other aircraft from the international coalition also carried out air strikes on IS targets inside Iraq as well as dropping supplies to Iraqi government forces at Baiji, where Iraq's biggest oil refinery is located.
In Iraq's Anbar province, officials reportedly made an urgent appeal for military help against IS.
Haze and dust
More @ BBC
Unfortunately, as history has so often shown, "our" politicians make commitments that only are meant to appeal to the expediency of the moment; no more and no less. Other, honorable peoples, take these "actions" as a moral contract that will be followed through with and therefore put themselves on the line (...our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.") failing to realize that the words spoken mean/meant nothing. Once they have exposed themselves they bear the full life/death burden of their commitment; the ones whose words they believed are off to the next fundraiser knowing there are no consequences. Those of us that sit idly by are no better. The blood is on our hands too.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt that, as individuals each according to their own circumstamce, we are committed to what must be done. We KNOW what must be done. We HAVE the will to do it. What we doubt is that anyone else will follow in our steps. Internet words are easy. If that "hashtag" (it's an effin pound sign people!) crap was anything more than "feel good" effective the world's problems would be over. People are dying because of our inaction. People that took "US" at our word. And we will do nothing. Myself included. And I feel so very ashamed.
People that took "US" at our word.
DeleteI Have Committed The Mistake Of Believing In Americans
http://www.namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=852&highlight=phnom+penh
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/vietnam-people-america-1821074-times-new
(Regardless of what one thinks about this war or any other, we have honour, and we can't give our word, and renege upon it. I am sure this would have been the position of forefathers. BT)
Former Cambodian Prime Minister Sirik Matak, to whom the U.S. ambassador sportingly offered asylum.
"I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion," Matak told him. "I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. I have committed this mistake of believing in you, the Americans."
So Sirik Matak stayed in Phnom Penh and on April 21st was executed by the Khmer Rouge, along with about 2 million other people in the next few years.