Posted on 10/04/2013 8:07:40 PM PDT by 11th_VA
Vo Nguyen Giap, the wily general who drove both the French and American forces from his homeland of Vietnam, has died in Hanoi. He was 102.
According to The Associated Press, Giap died in a military hospital in Hanoi where he had been for the past four years.
Giap, second only in reverence in Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh, is widely credited with developing the guerilla warfare tactics that are currently used by modern-day terrorists. His defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu after two months of siege in 1954 effectively ended that country's colonial rule and set the stage for the costly involvement of the U.S. in the Southeast Asian nation. The military victory is still studied in war colleges.
Giap oversaw the Tet Offensive in 1968, which began the long, painful withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, a process that was not completed until the mid-1970s.
Born into a peasant family, in later life Giap lived the role of a philosopher king and was routinely visited by military and political leaders from around the world, including Fidel Castro in 2003.
Giap began his military career at 14, enrolling with a clandestine resistance movement, then joined Ho's Communist Party and fled to China with him ahead of Japan's invasion of Vietnam in 1938.
He later served as defense minister and deputy prime minister following the end of the Vietnam War.
Giap developed a ragtag army of guerillas who lacked the most basic of essentials but who were superbly trained and outsmarted the richer and better-fed soldiers first of France and then the U.S.. Guile, surprise and stealth carried the day against countries that poured guns, aircraft and warships into the region.
Ironically, Giap has been quoted as saying the bombardment of Hanoi by President Lyndon Johnson in 1972 was working and that if Johnson had only continued with it longer, it would have resulted in an American victory. But the campaign was hugely unpopular at home, sparking massive demonstrations and pitting generation against generation. In the end, the war led to Johnson choosing not to seek a second term.
According to the AP, historian Stanley Karnow interviewed Giap in Hanoi in 1990, quoting him as saying: "We were not strong enough to drive out a half million American troops, but that wasn't our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American government to continue the war."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took to Twitter to recognize the general's death and recount a personal experience with his former enemy.
"Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap has passed away," wrote McCain, a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War who spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp. "Brilliant military strategist who once told me that we were an 'honorable enemy.'"
I thought it was Walter Cronkite that drove us out of Nam?
This Gov’t is NOT going to turn me into a slave, and burden me and my kids by stealing the fruit of my labor. I will resist to the end ...
Walter Cronkite, Jane Fonda and John Kerry.
President Johnson in 1972? I'm guessing that Giap said Nixon but the journalist wrote down Johnson out of spite.
Don’t forget the ultimate military genius - Robert McNamara.
We left in accordance with a peace treaty. After we left, Giap et al. violated it.
Cronkite was routinely seen yachting with that draft dodger from Arkansas but never with Ford or Bush.Hey,at least he was honest toward the end of his life,declaring himself to be a radical Marxist.
And look at what the Wiley gemeral’s strategy won: a country still in the stone ages (or at least the 1940’s).
He might have been a genius but he sure was wrong about McCain.
It says he ran the US out of Viet Nam. I didn’t know he was a member of the democrat party.
He didn’t deserve Sarah Palin as a running mate.
Absolutely...you are correct
But he showed the world we can be beat by attrition.. we won on the ground, but the politicians and far to many Americans sold us out. He knew the American character after 1955 far better than most here. Hate to say it but he has had the last laugh...
Point taken.
It wasn’t just Cronkite - a lot of the 4th estate was in the 5th column.
He’s darn well done and dead, but I still stand!
Thank you. Defunding and rules of engagement. Nothing is new under the sun.
Actually they were ready to surrender until we announced a pull-out date.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history...
Oh, that’s right; no one was told about that little bit of history; thanks minitrue!
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