Many participants in Saturday’s “peace” demonstration on the Mall — including mainstream media journalists covering it — noted the parallels with the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era. Thousands demanded American withdrawal from a nation under siege by totalitarians bent on enslaving millions. Hollywood celebrities and Democrat politicians stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the speaker’s platform. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was even a weekend presence, via television from Switzerland, again telling the world how terrible is his country. All that was needed to complete this reconstruction in time was new photos of Jane Fonda consorting with insurgents killing Americans in Iraq in 2007, as she did with the North Vietnamese killing Americans in 1972.

There is, however, one fundamental difference between 1972 and 2007. We know today what comes after the marchers have boarded their buses and headed home, the speeches have ended and the politicians have voted their resolutions. Once the enemy celebrates their victory, blood begins flowing across the killing fields. In Vietnam, millions of South Vietnamese were murdered within weeks of the North’s April 1975 triumph, millions more spent years in brutal “re-education camps” and yet more millions became boat people fleeing the slaughter. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge created a Hell on earth that killed millions more innocents. Eventually, millions of Afghanis died because the Soviets were emboldened by America’s defeat in Vietnam to send the Red Army streaming into Afghanistan.