American Military News by Andrew Dyer - The San Diego Union-Tribune August 21, 2021
The images this week of people desperate to flee their country as a prolonged U.S. military occupation comes to an ignominious end looked familiar to retired Master Gunnery Sgt. Juan Valdez. The 84-year-old veteran was the last Marine off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam, in 1975.
To Valdez, the fall of Kabul is worse than that of Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976, because of the fate he said awaits Afghans who worked with the U.S. during two decades of occupation.
“It definitely is worse,” Valdez, who lives in Oceanside, said during an interview Thursday. The scenes playing out on the news bother him, he said, and he’s especially worried about the fate of Afghan women under a renewed Taliban government.
“They don’t want to send them to school or let them have jobs,” he said.
Scenes of helicopters ferrying desperate people off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon came to symbolize the failure of the U.S. to achieve its stated mission in that country — to stop the spread of communism in southeast Asia — after a long and brutal conflict.
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https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/08/chaos-in-kabul-is-worse-than-fall-of-saigon-says-last-marine-off-embassy-roof-in-1975/
