WE WERE CRAVEN ONCE:

Kerry betrayed our Vietnam-era allies, the Montagnards (Joseph L. Galloway, 4/01/04, Knight Ridder)

The Montagnards are a simple mountain people who were pawns in foreign wars that dragged on in Vietnam for decades. They were loyal soldiers for first the French and then the U.S. Special Forces, the Green Berets, during the period from the 1940s through much of the 1970s. Today they are still paying the price for that, and for wanting to be left alone in their high green mountains. [...]

The Montagnards, who once numbered more than 1 million, have dwindled to fewer than 650,000 during a time when the Vietnamese population has more than doubled to 60 million in a postwar baby boom.

I wish I could tell you that the missing Montagnards, who soldiered for our Green Berets, could be found among the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Vietnam who have settled and prospered in the United States since the end of the war. But I can't. No more than 2,000 of the Montagnard have found sanctuary in this country, most in the area of North Carolina around Fort Bragg where the Special Forces headquarters is located.

Many were killed in the desperate fighting that enveloped the Central Highlands during the war. Many more just died, their villages destroyed, their way of life and living likewise destroyed.

In early 2001 thousands of Montagnards demonstrated for freedom of religion and for a return of their land. The Hanoi government sent in soldiers and police to crush them. Many were killed; many were tried and sentenced to prison. More than a thousand fled across the border into Cambodia. In 2002-2003 the Bush administration took almost all of them in and they joined 600 Montagnard resettled in two earlier batches - 200 in 1986, and 400 in 1992.

In 2001 the Vietnam Human Rights Act was introduced in Congress. It tied future U.S. aid to Vietnam to the Hanoi government improving its abysmal human rights record, including persecution of the Montagnards. It passed the House with 410 ayes and only one no. But in the Senate, Kerry locked the bill up in committee and refused to allow it to go the floor for debate and a vote. In effect, Kerry killed the human rights bill.

Unfortunately, the Senator has a consistent record of favoring communist regimes over their people.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2004 9:39 AM