In Vietnam, A Story Of Political Betrayal

The South Vietnamese troops were true and brave allies, and the Democrats cruelly abandoned them to their dire fates.

Maj. Gen. Joe Arbuckle (USA, Ret.) | October 25, 2026

I recently saw a doctor with a Vietnamese last name and asked whether his parents were “boat people.” They were. His father, a physician in the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN), was imprisoned for years after Saigon fell. When he was released, he put his family, including my doctor, then five, on a boat and brought them to the United States.

Both my doctor and his father worked multiple jobs so my doctor could get through medical school and become a surgeon. When I told my doctor I had been an advisor embedded with the ARVN, we struck up a friendship. His father is still alive in California, and our conversation brought this memory back.

It reminds us that wartime political decisions carry enormous consequences: lives lost, families destroyed, destruction, domestic politics, and America’s reputation and credibility.

My story begins in 1972, when I was an advisor on Team 22 in II Corps, Vietnam. By then, U.S. ground combat forces had left; only advisors remained, and their numbers had been drastically reduced.

For years the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had waited for the Americans to leave. On 30 March 1972, about 120,000 NVA regulars invaded the South on three axes: I Corps, II Corps, and toward Saigon. This Spring, or Easter, Offensive employed tanks, heavy artillery, rockets, and many thousands of Viet Cong.

The plan was to panic the ARVN into retreating toward the coast, and it worked to a large degree. Within weeks, ARVN forces in II Corps had been overrun in places. Team 22 supported the ARVN 22d Infantry Division.

Fortunately, with no American ground units competing for air strikes, U.S. airpower from........

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