Is Kabul, Afghanistan America’s Dien Bien Phu? — With Report from Sources on the Ground in Afghanistan
I have heard several pundits comparing the current debacle in Kabul to the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, when the remaining American diplomatic and military personnel fled Vietnam in the face of North Vietnam conquering South Vietnam. Others cite Benghazi, when U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered and a secret CIA base was besieged by Islamic militants on September 2012. But I think a more apt comparison is the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Dien Bien Phu was the decisive victory of the North Vietnamese over the French Army in May 1954 and marked the end of French colonialism in Southeast Asia. Viet Minh communist revolutionaries surrounded and overran the the French Union‘s colonial Far East Expeditionary Corps.
