From the Archives: May 1975

HE UGLY agony of Indochina is made all the more tortuous by the delusive refusal of this nation to accept the culpability for decades of a morally indefensible policy whose final failure is now being revealed.

The urge to believe that we have done what was somehow right and honorable leads us to wash our hands of any sin and then search to place on others the responsibility for the failure of American policy. So the administration blames the North Vietnamese for violating a treaty that was never initially respected by the South Vietnamese.