FLASHBACK: Biden Opposed Evacuating Vietnamese After Saigon’s Fall
Critics on Wednesday were quick to recall that a young Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) opposed evacuating Vietnamese civilians placed during the 1975 fall of Saigon, just two years after he was first elected to the Senate.
“I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out,” Biden said during an April 14th, 1975 Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting. “I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out.”
He said in remarks on April 23rd, “I do not believe the United States has an obligation, moral or otherwise, to evacuate foreign nationals. … The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.” When Senate Democrats finally relented on at least some emergency funding, he called it a “ransom.”
Biden said in 2012 that he stood by his position on Vietnam. “It was decided we were not going to sustain our presence,” he said in a speech at the late Sen. George McGovern’s (D-SD) funeral. “And about five weeks later, helicopters taking off the roof. I mean, it’s not because of me. That was the plan. … I remember walking out of there thinking, ‘I was right.'”
.@AnnieLinskey : "2 weeks before Saigon fell in April 1975, Joe Biden was among senators summoned to WH for top-secret briefing on crisis Vietnam" https://t.co/zTgPo7Y1aD
Biden told that story 10/25/2012 McGovern funeral:
"5 weeks later helicopters taking off roof…I was right" pic.twitter.com/RIA0IK5jnJ— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 16, 2021
The 1975 remarks came after President Richard Nixon withdrew American Armed Forces from the country after nearly two decades of unsuccessfully seeking to defeat the communist forces of the People’s Army of Vietnam.
Parallels to Saigon have been invoked frequently by analysts this week after the Taliban overthrew Afghanistan’s government even before U.S. forces — and as many as 15,000 American civilians — managed to finish exiting the region.
The president’s emerging response to the Mideast conflict has contrasted with his remarks on Vietnam nearly five decades ago. Biden announced on Tuesday that he was authorizing $500 million in additional funds for relocating Afghan refugees.
“I know there are concerns about why we did not begin evacuating Afghan civilians sooner,” he said in a Monday speech addressing the issue. “Part of the answer is that Afghans did not want to leave earlier, still hopeful for their country. And partly because the Afghan government and its supporters discouraged us from organizing a mass exodus to avoid triggering, as they said, a mass crisis of confidence.”
