This is the truth of this article. Go into any provisional hospital, even in the poorest sections of Issan, in Thailand and compare with the best that Vietnam has to offer and you can get a idea of where Vietnam could have been if not for our surrender there. Cambodia, Laos and Burma are monuments to the "wonders" of socialism as well. If you are using the quality of life for the individual, Vietnam is hardly the example to use for success. Hopefully, the future will bring better days to Vietnam, however, to go much beyond where they are today, the will have to throw off the "foreign" influence of communism.
Good point.
Ho Chi Minh, a co-founder of the French Communist Party in 1919, and who lived in Moscow for about a decade thereafter.
Hardly a homegrown Vietnamese social philosophy.
Just as Pol Pot and Ieng Sary got their dose of French Communism three decades later while studying at the Sorbonne (Ieng detailed the Khmer Rouge agricultural gulag in his Sorbonne doctoral thesis).