Posted on 04/28/2005 8:16:41 PM PDT by CHARLITE
MANY myths and half-truths about the Vietnam War whipped up by the communist propaganda machine have been allowed to persist unchecked in discourse about Iraq. Today, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, perhaps some lessons can be learned from this painful chapter in history.
A point of view held by the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and still taken as fact by some people today is that the Vietnam War was a civil war, not one fomented or directed by the communist north, which, in turn, was being instructed by China.
With that belief, the anti-Vietnam War movement denounced US involvement in Vietnam as an act of interference. The Vietnamese Communist Party's official biography on leader Ho Chi Minh and the Chinese Communist Party confirms that the communists in the north received instruction from China and were supported by the rest of the communist bloc with aid to foment the war and to spread Marxist-Leninist ideology.
The Vietnam War should thus be seen, rightly, as a fight to preserve freedom and democracy by the people of South Vietnam against communist invasion.
The anti-war movement supported the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (the Vietcong) portrayed by communist sympathisers in the West as independent from Hanoi. Party documents now reveal it was a product of the north.
As such, members of the anti-Vietnam War movement let themselves be deceived by the communists. Some influential people in the West, wittingly or not, abetted the communists in their deception.
Novelist Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American in 1955 in which he denounced the US and South Vietnam as engaged in acts of terrorism against the Vietnamese people. He could not provide any verifiable detail about one such alleged incident which he asserted was true.
At the time Greene wrote, thousands of people in the north were slaughtered in the so-called land-reform campaign initiated by Ho Chi Minh under the directives of Chinese advisers. Greene was happy to ignore that campaign.
Noam Chomsky, the leading anti-war intellectual, vowed "to speak the truth and to expose lies" as a reason for his pro-Vietnamese communist stand. As he made this passionate avowal, North Vietnamese poet Nguyen Chi Thien was imprisoned for doing just that, writing the truth about the communists. Nguyen was imprisoned for 27 years.
The Western media turned what was a military success on the part of the non-communist forces in the south to a political victory for the communists. The Tet Offensive of 1968 was an unmitigated disaster for Hanoi. Yet it was pictures of US carnage that were publicised to a war-weary audience.
The media also relayed ad nauseam the picture of a South Vietnamese soldier shooting a Vietcong, in civilian clothing. The message was loud and clear -- this is the kind of atrocity that the South Vietnamese army did to their own people, with the backing of the US. The Western media did not report the massacre of 4000 unarmed civil servants and civilians in the city of Hue, committed by the communists.
Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the South Vietnamese officer in the picture, passed away in 1998. Neil Davis, the Australian war correspondent killed on assignment in Thailand, set out the background to the killing when interviewed for David Bradbury's 1980 documentary Frontline. The Vietcong shot by Loan had, not long before this picture was taken, led a team of communist terrorists who killed the family of a South Vietnamese officer, including his 80-year-old mother, his wife and his children. How often is his background explained?
Following their victory in 1975, the communists, hailed as liberators by their sympathisers, put more than 1million people in concentration camps, appropriated property, nationalised all means of production, evicted people from their homes and stripped people of their savings. Before the end of the war, South Vietnam was at par with other developing countries in the region. Now, after 30 years of "liberation", Vietnam ranks with the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world.
After 30 years of peace, intellectuals, artists, Buddhist monks, Catholic priests, tribal people, even communist war heroes, are subject to arrest, torture, harassment and imprisonment for peacefully demanding freedom and democracy.
What is occurring in Vietnam sparks protests from human rights organisations around the world. Amid all of these voices of protest, the deadening silence from the anti-war camp is telling. Those who supported the communists still refuse to see the stark evidence.
It was the pressure from the anti-war elite that forced the US administration to pull troops out of Vietnam. The hasty US retreat made South Vietnam prey to a ruthless enemy still fat with Soviet largesse and left behind it a trail of indescribable human suffering culminating in the boat people tragedy.
Are we going to let this happen to Iraq? Troop withdrawal should be a process that happens gradually to allow the precious new democracy in Iraq time to build up its national security and strengthen its governing institutions in the face of fundamentalist savagery.
Building a democracy is a long process. While 80 million Vietnamese people are now doomed in slavery, the chances for the Iraqi people to live in a society that respects freedom and is based on the rule of law is within reach.
Quynh Dao is a member of the Australian-Vietnam Human Rights Committee and a former refugee.
My room mate at APG was a RUFF PUFF advisor for six years around Bambi Touit (spelled like it sounds) His name was Ron Osimo. He thought the world of the Vietnamese.
I had a 12 year old kid save most of my unit one day on my demo range by picking up a burning WP round and throwing it in a water filled crater. He got to it first and picked it up instead of running like most of us were going to do. It was right in the middle of 1,500 lbs of explosives and propellent when it started burning.
Our decission to let the communist freely demonstrate and operate in this country probably cost us even more.
The most important thing is we learned from Vietnam War is more than just battles and firepower, it involves coordinating politics and being adept to the local culture and politics of the people in country. Look at our approach in Iraq and you will see not only the network centric technologies but also the political/cultural sophistication in our military.
I was too young for VN, but have traveled there quite a bit and know a large number of former ARVN officers and enlisted as well as former civilian employees (all through wifey who is Vietnamese).
One of the most poignant comments I've ever heard came from a former civilian employee who's still (trapped) in VN - he was highly trained in the US and speaks flawless English, though now he's pretty much blacklisted because of his previous line of work.
Anyway we were talking about 1975 and he was saying "Terrible, terrible, we didn't know how bad it was going to be", and etc, until he finally looked me in the eye and said "Why did America abandon us? I can't understand that. We were winning, and America abandoned us."
What was I gonna' do, explain John Kerry and Jane Fonda to him?
Not only did we not give them every thing we promised them when we pulled out, we didn't even make up their ammunition expenditure for the 1972 Easter Offensive. It was a Democratic congress that cut the funding with Ted Kennedy in the lead.
May Kerry and Kennedy et al rot in hell for the evil they inflicted upon the South Vietnamese people, not to mention 2.5 million Cambodians.
Awesome article.
Good afternoon out there.
I am the infamous 'Teacup', Assistant Team
Leader of Team 1/7 in Vietnan, fortunately
for me, under 'Brazzaaville'.
It is my opinion that following the Tet
Offensive of 1968 the Viet Cong, as an
organization, virtually ceased to exist.
I agree with Brazzaville, following that,
the enemy we encountered were primarily
very young troops send south from the north.
I talked to one Vietnamese company commander who was trying to hold that big bridge north of Saigon. He said he had 17 rounds of 5.56 for his company right toward the end. NOT 17 rounds per man, BUT 17 rounds for the entire company. He told his men to get in civilian clothes and try to go home and at least save their families. I think I would have done the same thing. It was all over.
While flying from the west coast back to Virginia there was an American sitting next to me who had just gotten out of Saigon. The poor guy was still in shock. He related to me what it was like right at the very last. He claimed that some of the Vietnamese mothers were running by his bus trying to toss their children through the windows in hopes they would be saved. He saw at least one baby go under the wheels of the bus as it headed to the airfield. I wish Kerry, Fonda, and Kennedy would be forced to watch a film of something like that every night, because those people played a big part in it.
Thanks for mentioning Xuan Loc, brazzaville. Our Democrat-controlled Congress was despicable in those days.
I'm half in the bag from too much alcohol consumed in the first class section of my Pan Am clipper from New York, and punchy from the time zone change. Queuing up to the Air Vietnam counter to get my boarding pass for the flight to Saigon, I see a sign being posted, “All Flights to Saigon Canceled.” --Drick Halstead
It really brings tears to your eyes when you read that stuff. I wonder how many of those guys in the South Vietnamese unit were looking vainly to the skies for American aircraft?
For your review and comments, don't know if have seen this one, might want to ping it to the Foxhole
1975, not 6
When are the rank and file Americans gonna realize that the anti-Vietnam War types are not deceived at all? They aren't deceived, they really believe in communism.
We have the Dan Blathers hugging Castro, and the air-headed Janie Fondas telling us to pray that we become communists.
What more do we need to know to realize that there are dangerous subversives right here in our midst?
Not to mention the Soviet Communist inbeds in our media such as Hollywood, music industry, news (both TV and print), Democrat party and Madison Ave. Senator McCarthy warned us about these inbeds back in the 50s but they had complete control of the media and were able to hide the truth ad discredit him. Later when the KGB records were opened to review it was seen that everyone that "Tail gunner Joe" said was a commie was a commie but the MSM has never gotten around to talking about that.
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