May 2, 2005 - "I can still hear the voices of American embassy officials and their Vietnamese interpreters shouting: 'Khong ai se bi bo lai!' (no one will be left behind) at the frantic throng outside the embassy compound. It was a scene that still saddens me - one that made me ashamed to be an American, not because we were leaving in abject defeat but because we were betraying thousands if not millions of Vietnamese who believed our promises of a free and better Vietnam if they supported our policies"

Ron Yates is Dean of the College of Communications at the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. Thirty years ago he was a young reporter assigned by the Chicago Tribune to cover the last days of the War in Vietnam and he was there on April 30, 1975 when United States citizens were evacuated. For the United States the war had ended 2 years earlier when the Kissinger peace deal was inked in Paris. From that point on the burden of defending the regime in Saigon fell on the Vietnamese alone. Henry collected his Nobel Peace Prize and the Vietnamization policy was implemented.

Yates was in Saigon on April 27 th when the capitol was hit by two isolated rocket attacks. One hit the roof of the Majestic hotel and killed a porter. The second struck a market killing 12 people shopping for their dinner. All of the casualties were local people. None of the Americans were hurt. Yates was lifted by helicopter to the USS Denver 35 miles off shore. He was there at 7:52 AM April 30 th when the last chopper lifted off from the embassy roof. He remembers saying to no one in particular, “So this is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like”.

Of course the parallels with 1975 are inexact. Baghdad is not Saigon. Even though the toll of Iraqis falling to the rebels is markedly rising each day as Iraqification takes hold the toll in American casualties has maintained the same level. Iraqi forces are having no better success in putting down the insurgency than American forces have had. The Iraqi war has not yet lasted 10 years and while official Washington is not talking about the light at the end of the tunnel we are beginning to wonder what “good success” looks like.

There is a difference too that in Vietnam we intruded into a family fight, a civil war. In Iraq we invaded, ousted a regime and created the conditions that had led to the protracted rebellion that many foresaw and the end of which is not in sight – at the end of the Tunnel or elsewhere.