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
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The fight against the Vietcong terrorists - and they were terrorists at first - was separate from any religious strife.
The difference between you and I is that I was there on the ground during the Buddhist riots of 1966 and saw what the issues were. I served a total of 15 months, including direct combat in Vietnam, so I know who was our enemy and who wasn't. The Buddhists were never part of the problem - that was Saigon's problem. The enemy was the Vietcong regulars and the North Vietnamese divisions in the South - and the full weight of the Logisitic support of the Soviet Union, China, and the Warsaw Pact.
You've been listening to the enemy's version of history.
The implication was that he would have established a democracy or a republic with the help of the US.
Had he done that we would have had a super-strong ally in SE Asia, like S. Korea.
Just speculating on my part, the above.
But this much is true: Ho wanted independence for Viet Nam, and his people did too. Way underrecognized by the likes of LBJ, JFK, McNamara, etc.
Also bemoaning what happened after the French reoccupation of Indochina and our 53,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Ho made overtures to the US POTUS and State Department during WW2 and was dismissed.
We chose to support the French, we dismissed Ho, who indeed sought support from the Communists.
My interest is in, What if?
Had we heard Ho out during WW2, would he have accepted American support to create an independent democratic republic rather than being a communist satellite?
Right, that was the justification.
But he had lived in the US for some time and had some idea about our culture and political system.
Maybe he was ambivalent about Communism in the early years.
His overtures to the Americans would suggest that he was sympathetic to the ideas of Jefferson and the Declaration.
Maybe he was just lying.
France has been a pain in the butt “ally” since the end of WW2.
I understand your perspective, but their is another perspective also with much truth.
The French Catholic church had their own military/police force that was actually murdering unarmed peaceful Buddhist monks.
And since it was Diem’s brother heading the Catholic Church, it spread to the government too.
Buddhists were considered second class and not able to get government jobs. They were suppressed, and as such turned to Ho to try and get out of the suppression. They drove them to communism.
I had relatives there in the 1950’s and early 1960’s as advisors.
Thank you for sharing that post.
Failure to recognize that the Buddhists were against the US and French greatly effected the final outcome of the war.
Well, your relatives’ memories are different than mine. My experience with the Buddhists were just as much against the communists as anyone else during the war. The Vietcong murdered Buddhist village chiefs as readily as they did the Catholics.
The enemy pushed atheism and believers in the Vietcong/NVA were suppressed and the Buddhists suffered as much as anyone.
When Diem was killed, most of the Buddhist opposition lost steam and the government’s forces contained as many or more soldiers as any other religious group.
Ho Chi Minh was evil - and when he finally died, the North Vietnamese finally stopped torturing our POWs and allowed them to congregate.
They would not have won if we hadn’t have left them: between MacNamara’s idiocy and the useful idiots at home, we wasted our opportunity and South Vietnam’s freedom.
I suspect that Ho Chi Minh’s copy-catting the Declaration of Independence was just for show. He was a hard-core Communist—educated in the Soviet Union, founded the Indochinese Communist Party, served for many years as a Comintern official and even survived Stalin’s purges.
Ho Chi Minh was an absolute, murderous bastard. He would NEVER have agreed to democracy. He wanted a dictatorship - which he got and kept by murdering any opponents.
No idea why any Freepers would excuse him.
Yes. WE are so lucky. So lucky to be American. We should appreciate it deeply, but so many of us simply take it for granted.
I feel a strong obligation NOT to take it for granted. When I count my blessings, of which I have many, I ALWAYS include “Being an American” as one of them.
And I admire that you could travel around with a backpack, meeting people you don’t know, just taking it as it comes. I often thought I would be able to do that, but I think I would always get hung up on food.
When I was in the USN, back in the days when you could do this I would go ashore on liberty and just go as far away from Fleet Landing as I would get. I took to carrying a small notepad and a pencil with me to communicate, because I can draw pretty well, and it is surprising how a small, swiftly drawn pictograph can convey an idea effectively across cultures.
You are most welcome, FRiend...:)
I respect your perspective and agree with you regarding Ho Chi Minh.
From my perspective, I see him as an evil opportunist, taking advantage of the turmoil in the country. I agree with you about the Buddhists hating the communists. This was especially true after the Tet offensive when the North killed over 4,000 people in Hue’.
Communism is a poison, feeding on hatred wherever it appears. Chairman Mao used the same hatred and division to drive out Chiang Kai-shek.
Yes.
It reminded me of a college history professor, a somewhat elderly gentleman who was telling us one day in class about having kidney stones, which is an odd subject to discuss with a class.
He was a little mousey man, and taught a philosophy class of some kind IIRC.
Years later, after I went through several months of acute and painful kidney stones, I understood completely (I had to command myself to shut up about them, even to my poor wife) and I remembered that “far away” look the professor got in his eyes when he was talking about it.
It was clear the professor was, as he related his kidney stone story, far away in another time and place as he was talking to us, and I recall thinking “Holy crap. Whatever kidney stones are like, I don’t want them because they must really suck!”
That was the exact same look the Vietnamese guy had in his eyes when he said those words “The things we had to do...”
Ho was a die-hard communist, a member of the Comintern, and a firmly pro-Soviet ally. We were never seriously to be considered ally: we worked with Ho to fight the Japanese but it was strictly an alliance of convenience for the duration of the war.
The American Pro-enemy Left featured Ho Chi Minh as a "Father of his country" and pushed Hanoi's propaganda but it was all lies and only served as a fifth column against us and our war aims against communism's latest foray.
Hopefully, the bastard's at a place where the temperature setting is Deep Fat Fry.
He was perhaps just attempting to fool the US officials, but, he had no obligation to go so far as to invoke Jefferson.
Who knows what he might have offered the US officials, if given an audience with them?
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