Talk:Operation Babylift

Military history: Asian / Southeast Asia / Cold War Start‑class

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Aviation

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Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement (inactive)

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Untitled

The adoptees who left Vietnam in April, 1975 recently returned to Vietnam for the 30th Anniversary of Babylift. Twenty-one of the 2,548 adoptees, their guests, and many of the Babylift participants were part of this official delegation, recognized by the governments of the United States and Vietnam. This trip marks the first time that such official recognition has been accorded to the Babylift adoptees. Thank you, Lana Noone. Lana@Vietnambabylift.org Plans are underway for the 35th Vietnam "Operation Babylift" Anniversary in 2010. Please contact Lana@Vietnambabylift.org for complete details and all media inquiries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.117.245.86 (talk) 22:00, 21 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Plane crash section

This section is totally unreferenced, and it seems to have been so since it was written. I have tagged it as such and removed a very POV, unreferenced and unencyclopædic statement "News of the plane crash brought widespread attention and sympathy toward the operation and the evacuees in the U.S. and other nations."
The section also differs from the version in the main article, giving different/added details. As these details were added here (In 2008) by an IP w/o refs., there is no way they can be verified. eg "At 50 feet, the throttles where retarded to idle"(no mention in Main story), "The cargo compartment was completely destroyed, killing 141 of the 149 orphans and attendants."(Main story says 76 children died, no mention of 'cargo compartment' at all) etc.
♦ I'll fix it up, if I get a chance, by deleting the un-veverifiable/differing parts, or if not anyone else can! :-))
- 220.101 talk^\Contribs 09:28, 14 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Background

What was the reason for this operation? What threat faced orphans in Saigon? It should be mentioned in an article otherwise it looks like a kidnapping not a rescue operation! 91.77.244.116 (talk) 10:45, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

2nd that. Wonder what kind of law might permit such action. JB. --92.195.31.78 (talk) 02:25, 22 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I also came here to see if there's a section for criticism here, but there's none. Similar actions in the Russian-Ukrainian war have been labeled as kidnapping. Nakonana (talk) 03:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously this is a kidnapping, a war crime. It's not even the first time an invader has stolen children - happened to poland. I think it's amazing that there's no mention of the controversy around this incident in the article. Custody disputes were all over the newspapers in the 1970s. It isn't difficult to find stories of "orphans" who were not orphans. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:A442:581E:1:135A:2130:D641:6009 (talk) 02:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, this was kidnapping. No excuse for this, the lives of these babies weren't at immediate risk, the reasonable option was to leave them in their home country, not take them away. If the charities/orgs that cared for them were to leave the country, they should have given these babies to the local authorities. The andf (talk) 18:21, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Operation Reunite

The "Operation Reunite" section only contains a link to a non-existent (defunct?) website with no other information. Not sure if it should be removed or if there's a way to beef it up with reliable references? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.36.32.223 (talk) 00:41, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It still seems to be a 501(c)(3) organization, based in Linwood, NJ.

The domain extension has for whatever reason changed

from .org (originally for organizations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs, now unrestricted)

to .com (mainly for commercial entities, but unrestricted)

Trista Goldberg, a Vietnamese adoptee herself, is the founder of Operation Reunite. -> Amerasians - Story of Kien Nguyen and Trista Goldberg. Goldberg was born Nguyen Thi Thu in 1970 in Vietnam. -> Group helps adoptees to trace their heritage

See here for more -> operationreunite.com

--2001:9E8:4635:D226:8767:7E39:7D83:9708 (talk) 12:34, 4 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Stealing babies"???

This article currently says that President Ford announced that the United States would commence stealing babies from Saigon and airlifting them to the US. I doubt very much that the President phased it that way, or that "theft" of these babies was what was intended. I do not know what words were actually used, but I am removing the word "stealing" until someone can come up with a verifiable quote that says what actually happened here. I am sure that the explanation, whatever it is, had a different pretense than outright stealing infants. A loose necktie (talk) 22:22, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PP

I have now asked for page protection. Slatersteven (talk) 12:29, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of claim about lack of consent

In revision of 02:18, 4 August 2023, the statement that the children were relocated without their consent is removed. Admittedly, there is no explicit statement in the indicated sources confirming this, but bearing in mind these were generally infants and young children in the custody of orphanages that presumably would be ceasing operations, "informed consent" would not realistically have been a plausible option. Fabrickator (talk) 03:57, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the removal of "without their consent", but if it "would not realistically have been a plausible option", then what they did amounts to kidnapping. If Russia does it in Ukraine, it's kidnapping. If the US did it in Vietnam, it was also kidnapping. No real reason to take babies away from their home country, their safety wasn't at risk. I see this as an illegal act of war/revenge. The andf (talk) 18:19, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]