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Pulse: Kabul's fall evokes painful memories of Saigon

Some Vietnamese and Hmong Americans are speaking out on the parallels between the crisis in Afghanistan and the desperate 1975 evacuations at the close of the Vietnam War.

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ECHOES OF SAIGON—Amid the unfolding chaos, some Vietnamese and Hmong Americans are speaking out on the parallels—though imperfect—between the crisis in Afghanistan and the 1975 fall of Saigon at the close of the Vietnam War.

Between the lines: President Joe Biden and senior U.S. officials had already sought to hold back the tide of comparisons early on. Last month, Biden said “zero” similarities could be drawn, adding that “the Taliban is not the North Vietnamese Army.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly rejected the parallels on Sunday: “This is manifestly not Saigon.”

Just hours later, the comparisons became all but inevitable—with footage of the U.S. embassy staff’s evacuation from Kabul mirroring iconic photographs of helicopters rescuing South Vietnamese citizens from the American embassy in Saigon. By Monday evening, an unnamed U.S. official described the deteriorating situation to CBS News as “worse than Saigon.”

  • “Having literally been in Saigon for the fall of Saigon, it certainly looks like Saigon to me,” novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen tweeted
  • Videos of Afghans rushing onto the Kabul airport tarmac evoked painful memories for Lee Pao Xiong, whose family was split up in the flood of people evacuating Laos—where the U.S. had recruited Hmong soldiers to fight for its side—in 1975. “I know exactly how they're feeling right now,” Xiong, now the director of the Hmong History Center at Concordia University, told KARE 11 News. “I was there. I was on the tarmac.” 
  • Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen (D) also spoke of her family’s experience after the fall of Saigon. Most of her family were left behind, and her father and two uncles were later imprisoned in “re-education camp[s],” where they were subjected to starvation and more.
  • The Progressive Vietnamese American Organization urged the Biden administration to help fleeing Afghans and “do better than what we did in 1975.”
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