It was 30 years ago when Congress last took the reigns of national war fighting. In August 1974, Richard Nixon had been scandalized and left office. The November 1974 election brought forth the "Watergate babies"; Congress filled with young anti-war Democrats. One of the first actions of the Watergate Congress was to vote to deny an appropriation of $800 million to pay for South Vietnamese military aid, including ammunition and spare parts. Historical records now reveal that five weeks after that vote, the North Vietnamese started planning their final offensive.
The morale of the South Vietnamese was broken by that symbolic congressional act of betrayal. The actual dollar cuts forced South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to abandon the Central Highland in March 1975, leading to the collapse of our ally and the onset of genocide and police-state brutalities that killed more Asians than all the thousand days of the war did.
Today's Democratic proposals were attempted amendments to a military spending bill. History attempting to repeat itself?
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