Pham grew up in the U.S., joined the Marines and served in the First Gulf War; he said: "Vietnamese refugees from 1975 had a lot of help from Americans who lived near the refugee camps and from Vietnam vets who felt they had a debt to help us. I'm grateful for that."
Referring to Biden, Pham said, "You have to look at foreign policy and humanitarianism. The Vietnam refugee crisis was big in 1975. Even if you were against the war, why wouldn't you support the refugees? Why wouldn't you support the families and women and children who were trying to escape? If we get involved in wars, there will be refugees. So we need to think about our moral obligation to non-Americans, especially to our allies."
Was it fair to judge Biden based on his actions from 1975, Pham replied, "As someone running for President, it's part of his record, just like everything else."
His position against the Vietnamese then was in stark contrast to the one he took nearly 30 years later over Iraqi and Afghan interpreters who had worked with U.S. forces. "We owe these people," his then top foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken said in 2012. "We have a debt to these people. They put their lives on the line for the United States."
And how and why in Joe Biden's mind were Vietnamese survivors of Lyndon Johnson's War Against Communism any different in 1975?
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