https://web.archive.org/web/20090311004602/https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamcenter/events/1996_Symposium/96papers/story.htm

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This is an excellent, excellent posting AND discussion. NOT TO BE MISSED! :>)

neo-neocon » Blog Archive » A mind is a difficult thing to change: Part 4A (Vietnam-the home front)

Was going into Bosnia’s Civil War wrong? What about Kosova? Albania?

Tell us. Does it matter how many innocent civilians the facist dictator killed? Hitler may have killed 6 million Jews. Stalin killed 7 million Ukranians in that country alone.

We could have freed the South Vietnamese. Communism is evil….

I will be glad to continue this. Email me, or visit my blog.

We were involved in another nation’s civil war in a part of the world we didn’t – and don’t – understand. On the surface, the Vietnam conflict – the whole thing from 1945 to 1975 – was much more about nationalism and self-determination than it was about communism. Underneath, it was about the more Chinese-influenced north’s historical desire to dominate the south.

If the Western nations hadn’t given colonial Indochina back to France – who had lost it to the Japanese and been unable to retriever it by their own means – Vietnam probably would’ve been an utterly non-threatening agrian Communist nation with loose ties to the Soviets. The conflict, and the US phase specifically, pushed it tightly into the Soviet orbit, gave it the region’s largest military (aside from China’s) and caused the whole mess to spill over into Cambodia as well.

Oh – and 58,000 Americans died along the way.

War is necessary sometimes. That one most certainly was not. Nor the current one.

We’re the only developed nation that still has militarism as a core component of our national identity. We need a military. Sometimes we gotta fight. BUT, we have to stop treating it like it’s a football game. And judging ourselves by whether or not we can kick the shit out of paper tigers in the third world.

If anyone is anxious about their actions back then, please, leave it at that. Don’t start re-thinking Vietnam. It was wrong. It is wrong.

The opening sentence, in a section entitled Whose Victory?: “The first post-war decade was marked by a continuation of the wartime subsidy system, the regimentation of daily living, and the reign of hardline ideology.”

[…]

“The result of the Vietnam war was a complete victory for the communists. The war was the mother’s milk, the school and the testing-ground of Vietnamese communism. It provides historical justification for the indispensable leadership of the Communist Party, endowing it with the “mandate of heaven”. Communism found a special route to the Vietnamese throne through this remarkably bloody mandate. The war is gone, but the claim it represents remains. To this day, the legitimacy earned thirty years ago is constantly reiterated, repeated, reaffirmed, validated and deified.”

[…]

“Thirty years after the war, all of our foundational cultural values have lost their validity and the noblest ideas of communist ideology have become a joke. No space has emerged for basic western democratic values or for the positive dimensions of modern globalisation.”

“Instead, Vietnamese people face a morass of social problems: rampant corruption; violation of the rule of law; perversion of morality and dignity; the collapse of medical and educational systems …”

[…]

“After liberation, however, southern society was subjected to intense repression: prison, concentration camp, the seizure of property, discrimination against bi-racial children, the purge of intellectuals, the destruction and prohibition of southern culture, the complete erasure of numerous careers and many lives.”

“Thirty years after the war, the country has never once acknowledged the painful exodus of almost 1 million southern Vietnamese, the “boat people”. It is as if they are no longer Vietnamese and have been excommunicated from the unified nation.”

“If there was ever a reason for anyone to be Communist it is Vietnam.” HCM

Hardly, such a statement elides, occludes, denies and omits enormities. The North invaded the South, not the other way around. Reference, this overview from Texas Tech’s Vietnam Center for Research, search or scroll to the following statement, about 1/4 the way down:

“In the North, in the years after the Geneva Accords of 1954, no non-communist group, no matter how much love its members expressed for their homeland, was allowed to form or grow. Deaths from Communist-lead ‘reforms’ between December 1953 and July 1956, have been placed variously at from 5,000 to one million. Let us look, for a moment, at these variations.”

Further down this:

“Atrocities continued. In the 1959, Hanoi’s politburo received a series of reports indicating that even though the North had been directing a phase one guerrilla insurgency in the South for two years, the South was socially and economically out-pacing the North. ‘By Tet of 1959,’ William Colby writes in his book, Lost Victory, ‘it was plain that a nationalist and non-Communist Vietnam was firmly established. It was also becoming apparent that its future was, if anything, more promising than the gray and regimented society in the North.’

“It was in response to these reports that the Communists decided, in May of 1959–to establish Trail 559 [later to be expanded and become known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail], and to launch an expanded insurgency, the Second Indochina War. By 1961 northern Communist were assassinating one hundred southern hamlet, village, and/or district officials each month. By 1962 that figure had grown to one thousand per month. If this is not part of our ambient cultural story, can one make sense of Eisenhower’s or Kennedy’s troop responses?”

And this is merely the tip of the iceberg.

The “Southern Republic of Vietnam” was never a country, nor ever recognised by the U.N. Neither was the North. The Geneva Cessastion of Hostilities Agreement of 1954 only created two cease fire zones for the billigerents, France and the Viet Minh, to regroup into, and the French had another year to pull out completely. After that elections were to be held and the cease-fire zones were to disappear. The territorial integrity of Vietnam was guaranteed throughout this internationally binding agreement. Neither the north or the south were ever “legitamite”. It was the U.S. (in the McCarthy era) that, knowing “communist” Ho Chi Minh would win the elections, blocked the Geneva provisions, ..odd behaviour for “the champion of democracy”. (see Command Paper, 9239, Great Britain Parlimentary Sessional Papers, XXXI, 1953/54, London, pp.9-11, 27-38, and International Control Commision Reports).

This was not the first time the Vietnamese were cheated either: The March 1948 Agreement and the creation of the Associated States went up in flames when France had enough re-inforcements and levelled Haiphong, killing thousands, and setting off the French-Indochina War in earnest.

Ho Chi Minh worked with the American’s as well in W.W.II, ironically seeking a U.S. alliance after W.W.II, only to be dumped and handed over on a silver plater to the French (via an English and Chinese horse-trade). It would take another thirty years of war but this bitter U.S. betrayal, hardly ever discussed, would be avenged. Let us not forget Vietnam’s fledgling independence, declared Sept. 2 1945 and celebrated as such today, was crushed when the English re-armed 105,000 Japanese P.O.W.s, after W.W.II had ended (see “Newsweek”, October 8, 1945, p.57), with the help of French Foreign Legion troops, half of which were Nazi’s recruited from European prison camps (see “Newsweek”, August 19, 1946). A nice reward for Ho Chi Minh siding with the U.S., helping them prepare an invasion of Vietnam in 1945 (Operation Carbonado, scraped after Hiroshima).

France’s collaboration with Japan in W.W.II, perhaps the darkest days in Vietnamese history, seeing a third of her population die from starvation as she fed two armies, cannot be forgotten either as the Communists “took revenge” against the catholic south after 1975.

Prior to siding with the Japanese in W.W.II French (catholic) colnialism had already brutalised Vietnam for 80 years. Yes, it was a long road to Vietnam independence. A long ugly fight, full of betrayal, from the west, and from Russia and China too.

That the “victors” took revenge on southern collaboraters is, for me anyway, quite understandable. I believe American’s would have been extremely more harsh with, let’s say, American’s who had collaborated with the Russian’s under the same miserable circumstances.

Of course none of this ever had to happen. If the U.S. had stood up for her principles after W.W.II (instead of bowing to European pressure to re-occupy their colonies) Vietnam would have become an American Protectorate, like the Phillipines (See “Why Vietnam”, Ret. Col. A.A.L. Patti, University of California Press, 1981).

In all respect for what the Vietnamese are experiencing, it took “us” a 130 years to screw Vietnam up, it could take that long for her to heal. In the meantime I would not blame her for being paranoid and over-reacting. Certainly she has every reason to distrust “us”, or any dissent. After such a long bitter fight it is only natural she is reluctant to “let go of the bit”, not to mention the glory of the most remarkable upset in military history.

On the other hand, if the Vietnamese are so terribly unhappy I imagine they will take to the streets and change things, like so many other countries have. Certainly after defeating France and the U.S. they have proven they, if anyone, are capapble. I would guess though the numbers will be hard to muster, as those feeling persecuted today are most likely the catholic minority, instigator’s of the whole mess back in the 1860’s, right through Ngo Diem and the 1970’s. Maybe for those catholic ex-pats it’s time to stop complaining and become a Vietnamese Communist, so everyone can finally relax. The Vietnamese are finally eatting and have a bright future ahead of them, not to mention a God-damned strong government, a product of their hostile enviroment. Welcome to planet earth.

If there was ever a reason for anyone to be Communist it is Vietnam.

The “Southern Republic of Vietnam” was never a country, nor ever recognised by the U.N. Neither was the North. The Geneva Cessastion of Hostilities Agreement of 1954 only created two cease fire zones for the billigerents, France and the Viet Minh, to regroup into, and the French had another year to pull out completely. After that elections were to be held and the cease-fire zones were to disappear. The territorial integrity of Vietnam was guaranteed throughout this internationally binding agreement. Neither the north or the south were ever “legitamite”. It was the U.S. (in the McCarthy era) that, knowing “communist” Ho Chi Minh would win the elections, blocked the Geneva provisions, ..odd behaviour for “the champion of democracy”. (see Command Paper, 9239, Great Britain Parlimentary Sessional Papers, XXXI, 1953/54, London, pp.9-11, 27-38, and International Control Commision Reports).

This was not the first time the Vietnamese were cheated either: The March 1948 Agreement and the creation of the Associated States went up in flames when France had enough re-inforcements and levelled Haiphong, killing thousands, and setting off the French-Indochina War in earnest.

Ho Chi Minh worked with the American’s as well in W.W.II, ironically seeking a U.S. alliance after W.W.II, only to be dumped and handed over on a silver plater to the French (via an English and Chinese horse-trade). It would take another thirty years of war but this bitter U.S. betrayal, hardly ever discussed, would be avenged. Let us not forget Vietnam’s fledgling independence, declared Sept. 2 1945 and celebrated as such today, was crushed when the English re-armed 105,000 Japanese P.O.W.s, after W.W.II had ended (see “Newsweek”, October 8, 1945, p.57), with the help of French Foreign Legion troops, half of which were Nazi’s recruited from European prison camps (see “Newsweek”, August 19, 1946). A nice reward for Ho Chi Minh siding with the U.S., helping them prepare an invasion of Vietnam in 1945 (Operation Carbonado, scraped after Hiroshima).

France’s collaboration with Japan in W.W.II, perhaps the darkest days in Vietnamese history, seeing a third of her population die from starvation as she fed two armies, cannot be forgotten either as the Communists “took revenge” against the catholic south after 1975.

Prior to siding with the Japanese in W.W.II French (catholic) colnialism had already brutalised Vietnam for 80 years. Yes, it was a long road to Vietnam independence. A long ugly fight, full of betrayal, from the west, and from Russia and China too.

That the “victors” took revenge on southern collaboraters is, for me anyway, quite understandable. I believe American’s would have been extremely more harsh with, let’s say, American’s who had collaborated with the Russian’s under the same miserable circumstances.

Of course none of this ever had to happen. If the U.S. had stood up for her principles after W.W.II (instead of bowing to European pressure to re-occupy their colonies) Vietnam would have become an American Protectorate, like the Phillipines (See “Why Vietnam”, Ret. Col. A.A.L. Patti, University of California Press, 1981).

In all respect for what the Vietnamese are experiencing, it took “us” a 130 years to screw Vietnam up, it could take that long for her to heal. In the meantime I would not blame her for being paranoid and over-reacting. Certainly she has every reason to distrust “us”, or any dissent. After such a long bitter fight it is only natural she is reluctant to “let go of the bit”, not to mention the glory of the most remarkable upset in military history.

On the other hand, if the Vietnamese are so terribly unhappy I imagine they will take to the streets and change things, like so many other countries have. Certainly after defeating France and the U.S. they have proven they, if anyone, are capapble. I would guess though the numbers will be hard to muster, as those feeling persecuted today are most likely the catholic minority, instigator’s of the whole mess back in the 1860’s, right through Ngo Diem and the 1970’s. Maybe for those catholic ex-pats it’s time to stop complaining and become a Vietnamese Communist, so everyone can finally relax. The Vietnamese are finally eatting and have a bright future ahead of them, not to mention a God-damned strong government, a product of their hostile enviroment. Welcome to planet earth.

If there was ever a reason for anyone to be Communist it is Vietnam.