The betrayal of South Vietnam

From the New York Sun, a pop quiz.  How many U.S. troops were still fighting when the 94th congress pulled the plug on support for South Vietnam?

It turns out that when the Congress pulled the plug on Vietnam, the number of our U.S. troops in Vietnam was zero. When, in the 1974 elections, the Democrats widened their majority in the Congress and then, in the spring of 1975, finally defied President Ford and ended support for the free Vietnamese government in the South, the number of GIs was something on the order of two or three dozen, mostly embassy guards.

[...]

In January 1974, according to a timeline at PBS.org, the North Vietnamese were then "still too weak to launch a full-scale offensive," but had "rebuilt their divisions in the South" and "captured key areas." Watergate was gathering, and on August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned. At this point, there was only a doughty little government in South Vietnam that was standing alone against the combined might of the Soviet Union and the Communist Chinese. And it was prepared to fight on for another generation.

The Congress, however, wasn't prepared to stake them, despite the fact that South Vietnam was our ally in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. In October 1974, the 93rd Congress voted to end foreign aid to Vietnam. President Ford vetoed the measure. Congress, after an election that expanded the Democratic majority by 48 seats in the House and five in the Senate, overrode the veto. In the Spring, the 94th Congress blocked military appropriations for the South Vietnamese. It was not about our GIs. They had long since gone. A country of 50 million individuals who had sided with America and yearned for freedom was cast into the dark night of communist tyranny.

As the Democrats haggle over funding for the Iraq war, this is something to keep in mind.  It wasn't about the GIs then and it's not about the troops now.