What happened during the fall of Saigon?
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What happened during the fall of Saigon?
The phrase ‘the fall of Saigon’ refers to the takeover of the city by the Viet Cong two years later on 30 April 1975. The US was forced to abandon its embassy in the city and evacuate more than 7,000 US citizens and South Vietnamese by helicopter. The takeover forced the South Vietnamese to surrender and end the war.
What led to the fall of Saigon?
President Richard Nixon had secretly promised South Vietnam that the United States would “respond with full force” if North Vietnam violated the peace treaty. However, after the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign, the North Vietnamese Army felt emboldened to launch a major offensive in March 1975.
Is the fall of Kabul a Saigon-style fall?
The fall of Kabul, Afghanistan, to the Taliban has inevitably drawn comparisons to the 1975 “fall of Saigon”—so many that, on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the press, “This is not Saigon.”
What was the impact of the fall of Saigon?
The fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975 brought the war in Vietnam really rushing back into American awareness. And though the media was full of scary and shocking images of people trying as best they could to leave the country, and of very chaotic and mismanaged evacuations, most Americans had resigned themselves to this outcome.
Will Milley see Saigon 1975 unfold in Afghanistan?
“I do not see that unfolding,” Milley said. “I may be wrong, who knows, you can’t predict the future, but I don’t see Saigon 1975 in Afghanistan. The Taliban just aren’t the North Vietnamese army. It’s not that kind of situation.”
What happened to the US Embassy in Afghanistan after the fall?
U.S. State Department officials said people working in the U.S. Embassy were successfully evacuated to the Hamid Karzai International Airport. Comparisons are being drawn between the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the fall of Afghanistan following the recent collapse of the Afghanistan government.