Last Days in Vietnam (2014)

  Hey, you know that adage about history and dooming to repeat it?  We still haven't fixed that but we have started filming what it looks like!

In 1975, a peace treaty was signed between North and South Vietnam.  President Nixon promised South Vietnam that if the North reneged, American forces would step in and re-arm.  U.S. troops began leaving he country.

In 1976, Richard Nixon resigned.  In the grand tradition of quitting before you can be fired, he left his successor, Gerald Ford, an enormous mess to clean up.  The North Vietnamese army broke the Paris Treaty and began rolling south, prompting a series of cluster fucks and a huge humanitarian crisis.  

This documentary, produced by PBS, stitches together first-hand accounts and news footage to examine the men (not a single woman was interviewed) who risked their careers and their lives to bring as many South Vietnamese people out of the country as they could, using both authorized and unauthorized means.

A U.S. president ordered the removal of troops from a volatile country where their involvement had lost whatever popular appeal it might have once had, then leaves office, and the actual extraction is left to his replacement.  Meanwhile, people on the ground are desperately trying to do right by the native translators, workers, and support staff that will absolutely suffer if left behind for the oncoming enemy by cramming as many refugees onto transport as they can while the eyes of the world are upon them.  Sound fucking familiar?

Last Days in Vietnam is currently streaming on Kanopy.   Can't wait to see the sequel, Last Days in Afghanistan, in about ten years.