ABSTRACT
The tragedies and sufferings the United States (US) caused will remain forever embedded in the hearts and minds of millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and Montagnard tribesmen whose hearts and minds it tried to win. At least until 1969, the US fought a limited and constricted war of stalemate, in which most of the suffering its forces and the South Vietnamese forces and authorities inflicted was matched if not exceeded by the Vietnamese Communists. In numerous instances, the proper Vietnamese were not evacuated while thousands of panicked individuals of little consequence, many of them hardly knowing what they were doing, overcrowded the badly strained evacuation facilities and forced departing US military and officials to carry them along, sometimes at gunpoint. The process of diplomacy, of communications between decision-making centers, goes on permanently though sometimes only tacitly. Rigorously objective analysis is vital to the development of a foreign policy which properly serves the security interests of the American people.
