Posted on 12/27/2024 2:31:51 PM PST by DallasBiff
Ho Chi Minh (born May 19, 1890, Hoang Tru, Vietnam, French Indochina—died September 2, 1969, Hanoi, North Vietnam) was the founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As the leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement for nearly three decades, Ho was one of the prime movers of the post-World War II anti-colonial movement in Asia and one of the most influential communist leaders of the 20th century
(Excerpt) Read more at britannica.com ...
My Dad argued that the Vietminise hate China, and could have been an ally against them.
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“I for one would rather sniff French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life.”
Ho Chi Minh
1946
After WWII Ho Chi Minh tried to contact Truman about possible “cooperation.” Truman turned him down. Stupid is as stupid does.
Ho ho ho.
Chi Minh.
In my deluded College days the chant was “Ho,ho,ho chi Minh!” We were thinking we were ending the Viet Nam war—all we did was let the Commies win.
Worse, it allowed the Commies HEREVto infiltrate into America.
Yes, the USSR was esatic to see us tied down there,while they surpassed us in military might.
Why do we have so many sympathetic posters to Ho Chi Minh on our FreeRepublic? Ho was communist scum and no, he wouldn’t have been a friend if we had caved to his vision of Vietnam. The whole reason over one million North Vietnamese refugees came to live in the south was Ho Chi Minh’s barbaric policies treatment of religious folks and any opponents of communism.
We had to fight the bastard - and only the campus Lefties thought he was some kind of hero.
This.
At the time, IIRC my poli sci classes, we felt we needed the support of the French for NATO and to oppose the Ruskies.
“ Why do we have so many sympathetic posters to Ho Chi Minh on our FreeRepublic? Ho was communist scum”
Yep.
Good observation. Good question.
Evil communist Ho Chi Min.
I knew a Vietnamese immigrant who worked on machinery for us a few years back, and I had a difficult relationship with him.
He was extremely difficult and obstreperous, and grew to dislike him. He was difficult to understand, stubborn, and refused to work with you to resolve issues.
Then, I was forced to work with him closely for several days in a row where we had to spend many long hours in waiting and observation, so I asked him where he was from and when he came to America.
He said he was Vietnamese, and had been a junior ARVN officer when Vietnam fell. He came to America in 1979, and when I asked what he did between the fall of Vietnam and his immigration to America, he said that he had been in a “re-education” camp in the jungle up until 1978.
I asked if they had finally released him and allowed him to emigrate, and he said no...he had escaped the camp and made his way to the coast, stolen a boat and made it out to sea where he was rescued after a few weeks, then ended up in Australia for some reason. After a little while there, he came to America. (This was quite a few years back, so I can’t remember his exact words)
I was stunned. All the time I knew this guy, I knew nothing about him or his past, and resolved to never take for granted what a person may be or where they had come from.
But the thing that I will never forget, when I asked him what it had been like in the re-education camp, he didn’t say anything. He just got a very far away look in his eyes, and said almost inaudibly “The things we had to do...” and said no more.
The look on his face when he said those words “The things we had to do...”
That's a great story. Thanks for sharing it.
I don’t have time to read the article - I will later to refresh my memory. IIRC, Ho Chi Minh studied in the USA. He modeled his constitution of his envisioned united Vietnam after ours. Asked for our help to unite them (kick the French out???).
Or - maybe that was just some propaganda that Fonda and Kerry put out there.
A friend of ours dad was in the ARVN. Taken and held in a camp for 4 years after the war before they even knew he was still alive. Then many years later with just an annual update. I think for a couple of years at the end they actually got to visit him. She, her baby sister, and her mom would beg for food. Her two brothers worked in the fields.
She said she was jealous of her brothers, who each got 2 balls of rice a day to eat (seeing as they worked the fields). She and her mom got one ball each. Her baby sister died of starvation.
“Ho,ho,ho chi Minh!
Let the Commies win.”
(Not sure if that really rhymes, but...)
Thank you again, for a interesting story.
Ho once said “I would rather smell French s___ for five years than Chinese s___ for a thousand years.”
Ho Chi Minh joined the Comintern in 1917, and was a founding member of The French Communist Party.
I took a graduate class in Cross Cultural Psychology at the University. It was one of the most valuable, eye opening classes I have ever taken.
It was a small seminar class and we each had to bring a speaker to the group who had been born in a foreign country, experienced difficult times, and came to the USA.
Every one of the stories paralleled the story you told of the Vietnamese guy.
My guest speaker was a newspaper reporter who left Uganda when it was run by the brutal dictator Idi Amin. He had to leave or be murdered. He explained how they went from being a civilized society to dead bodies laying in the street that people ignored and walked around.
We had a surgeon who had his elementary school education in the trenches in China as the Japanese were advancing. His desk was a board with a rope through the ends so he could carry it over his shoulder. He came to America penniless and became an MD.
Many such stories made me appreciate the America I grew up in.
I provided an apartment and hired a Vietnamese guy in the early 1980’s. He and I became friends and the stories he shared with me about being a tunnel rat and assassin during the war really opened my eyes to the resiliency of the human soul. I will never take people for granted.
This is why I still love to travel the world, alone with a backpack, sleeping in barns and thatched huts, meeting the local people and hearing their stories.
There are two sides to every story. I try my best to understand all of them before I formulate my own opinion.
The French were converting Buddhist villages to Catholicism at gunpoint. President Diem’s brother was a priest and in charge of the Catholic Church in Vietnam.
They made it illegal to practice Buddhism. Please read about how they executed Buddhist monks just for flying the Buddha flag on his birthday.
This is what caused the monk Duk to drive to Saigon Square from Hue’ and set himself on fire in June 1963. President JFK saw that photo of the monk on fire on the front page of the NY Times and stated, “No photo has moved the emotions of the world like that one.”
That was the turning point for JFK, and caused him to realize that the war was a religious war more than a war on communism.
Twenty-one days before JFK was assassinated, our CIA led a couple that murdered Diem, the president of South Vietnam. Kennedy exploded at the CIA, and began issuing orders to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
These documents are a part of the JFK papers that Pompeo begged Trump to not release as they would damage the CIA. Let’s see what happens when Trump releases them soon.
They won, we(the United States) had backed away two years earlier. We had zero combat troops or active military advisors on the ground in Viet Nam at the time, and were even forbidden from giving military aid to the South Vietnamese government by the United States congress run by hard left Democrats.
We did not lose that war. We just quit fighting it. Maybe that was the right decision, but millions of SE Asians payed one hell of a price for that decision..
BTW. Uncle Ho was a rat bastard commie who is hopefully burning in hell right now.
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