The comparisons between Afghanistan today and the fall of Saigon and South Vietnam in 1975 are unavoidable. It was a humiliating defeat for the United States after a long and unpopular, distant war.
President Joe Biden cemented that comparison during a press conference on July 8 when he resolutely rejected any parallels between the two situations.
“There’s going to be no circumstance in which you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable,” he said.
Less than six weeks later, eerily similar scenes were playing out in Kabul.
Award-winning journalist Ronald E. Yates sheds light on where these comparisons hold and where they differ. He was in Vietnam in 1975, and later reported from Afghanistan, as a longtime war correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. He is dean and Professor Emeritus of the College of Media at the University of Illinois.
Watch the full episode on Epoch TV.
