[kearnyirish2]

“He was already a socialist then, having been one of the founders of the French Communist Party.”

Probably; he did have a legitimate point about self-determination, though.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

“Self-determination” meant to Ho that the Communists would takeover by “any means necessary”.

He betrayed Vietnamese nationalist Phan Boi Chao to the French Secret Police for money which was used to fund the Communist Party of Vietnam (later to become the uber Communist Party of Indochina: See Robert Turner’s massive tome on the “History of the Communist Party of Indochina”, Hoover Institution, about 1972 or 1974).

Later on, Ho decimated the Communist (Trotskyite) and non-communist members of the Lien Viet political coalition that was formed in 1944-45, and which were included in the “Coalition government” of 1945-46/47. Ho used Togliatti’s “Salami tactics” to destroy them one group at a time (Cao Dao, Dai Viet, Trotskyites under Thao Tu Tang (something like that); Kuomingtang VNDD, etc).

Ho was always a socialist/marxist, since at least 1916 during his stay in France. He gave up all pretenses of being a nationalist in 1925 but his propaganda machine, aided and abetted by both French Communists and American Communists and liberal dupes, gave him this “George Washington of Vietnam” personna which has only recently been dented to any significant degree.

The Russian/Soviet constitution read like a copy of the US Constitution but about 30 million lives later, even a blind fool could see that it was just a piece of paper with no good faith and practice behind it.

The same for Ho’s writings and constitution. He helped kill at least 2-3 million So. and North Vietnamese citizens, Laotians, and made possible the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (another 1.7-2 million people, including some that I knew).

Like Che Guevara, he was the posterboy for “self-determination” in the eyes of the evil Left, but to his victims, he was just a Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann with a Hammer & Sickle on his arm.

SOmetimes the truth hurts but since our Left is immoral, amoral, and just plain evil, they don’t suffer the derision and approbation that they deserve. They get elected to Congress and teach in our colleges and high schools.

Who says that the good guys always win?

[hinckley buzzard]

No probably about it. He was a Founder in Paris in 1920, having been inspired not by Thomas Jefferson but Karl Marx. We heard all this claptrap about Ho way back during the war itself. Nobody has ever verified any of it. After WWII The French created a unified Vietnam out of the three preexisting regional states, under Bao Dai, enthusiastically endorsed by all the Indochinese leaders but Ho. He refused to go along and established the Vietminh as violent armed resistance. So much for "self determination," the rallying cry of the Nazi Anschluss btw.

[Neidermeyer]

I understood that he did approach the US first about arms and support for fighting the French colonial forces after WW2 ,,, when we turned him down due to treaties he approached the USSR.