Posted on 02/02/2021 5:30:04 AM PST by Kaslin
Ten years ago, I wrote a column reflecting on my reactions to visiting Vietnam. Given the lack of revulsion to, and even flirtation with, communism (or its more mildly named version, socialism) among many young Americans, it is worth revisiting.
It was difficult to control my emotions -- specifically, my anger -- during my visit to Vietnam. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people -- their intelligence, love of life, dignity and hard work -- the more rage I felt toward the communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, communists still rule the country. Yet, Vietnam has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So, then, what exactly did the 2 million Vietnamese who died in the Vietnam War die for? I would like to pose that question to some of Vietnam's communist rulers. "Comrade, you have disowned everything your Communist Party stood for: communal property, collectivized agriculture, central planning and militarism, among other things. Looking back, then, for what precisely did your beloved Ho Chi Minh and your party sacrifice millions of your fellow Vietnamese?"
There is no good answer. There are only lies and truths, and the truths are not good.
The lie is the response offered by the Vietnamese communists, repeated by the world's noncommunist left, taught (until today) in virtually every Western university, and spread by virtually every news medium on the planet: The Vietnam communists, i.e., the North Vietnamese regime and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, were merely fighting for national independence against imperialism, i.e., foreign control of their country. First, they fought the Japanese, then the French and then the Americans. American baby boomers will remember being told over and over that Ho Chi Minh was Vietnam's George Washington, that he loved the American Constitution, after which he modeled his own, and that he wanted nothing more than Vietnamese independence.
Here is the truth: Every communist dictator has been a megalomaniacal, cult-of-personality, power-hungry, bloodthirsty thug. Ho Chi Minh was no different. He murdered his opponents, tortured God only knows how many innocent Vietnamese (burying peasants alive was a favored method), so as to scare millions of peasants into fighting for him -- yes, for him and his blood-soaked Vietnamese Communist Party, backed by the greatest murderer of all time, Mao Zedong. But moral idiots in America chanted "Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh" at anti-war rallies, and depicted America as the real murderers of Vietnamese -- "Hey, hey, LBJ: How many kids did you kill today?"
The Vietnamese communists were not fighting America for Vietnamese independence. America was never interested in controlling the Vietnamese people, and there is a perfect parallel to prove this: the Korean War. Did America fight the Korean communists in order to control Korea? Or did 37,000 Americans die in Korea so that Koreans could be free? Who was (and remains) a freer human being -- a Korean living under Korean communist rule in North Korea or a Korean living in that part of Korea where America defeated the Korean communists?
And who was a freer human being in Vietnam -- those who lived in noncommunist (but authoritarian) South Vietnam or those who lived under Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh's communists in North Vietnam?
America has fought to liberate countries, not to rule over them. It was the Vietnamese Communist Party (and China), not America, that was interested in controlling the Vietnamese people. But the lie was spread so widely and so effectively that most of the world -- except supporters of the American war effort in Vietnam, the Vietnamese boat people and Vietnamese who yearned for liberty -- believed that America was fighting for tin, tungsten and the wholly fictitious "American empire," while the Vietnamese communists were fighting for Vietnamese freedom.
I went to the "Vietnam War Remnants Museum," the Communist Party's three-floor exhibit of anti-American photos. Nothing surprised me -- not the absence of any truth about the communist North Vietnamese or the Viet Cong; not a word about the widespread threats on the lives of anyone who did not fight for the communists; not a word about those who risked their lives to escape by boat, preferring to risk dying by drowning, being eaten by sharks or being tortured or gang-raped by pirates than to live under the communists who "liberated" South Vietnam.
Equally unsurprising is that there is little difference between the history of the Vietnam War as told by the Communist Party of Vietnam and what just about any college student will be told in just about any college by just about any professor in America, Europe, Asia or Latin America.
I will end with the subject with which I began -- the Vietnamese. It is impossible to visit Vietnam and not be impressed by the people. I hope I live to see the day when the people of Vietnam, freed from the communist lies that still permeate their daily lives, understand that every Vietnamese death in the war against America was a wasted life, one of the more than 100 million human sacrifices on the altar of the most bloodthirsty ideology in history: communism.
Share this with your son or daughter who knows nothing about communism and has no idea why decent people hate it, along with fascism and Nazism.
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
― George Orwell, 1984
It's all Collectivism.
It's all about the desire for power over others.
On the other hand, individuals who want power over their own individual lives, reject communism, socialism, Nazism, fascism and all forms of Collectivism.
We will not succumb.
If you play this video clip, you will see why.
My view of the Trump Rally in DC - 01 06 21. D.S. McLaughlin
Great piece. Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.
ONE THING THE VIET NAM WAR GAVE AMERICA IS JOHN KERRY.
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
So, so true! Ho Chi Min certainly did not have a monopoly on the concept. Think; Stalin, Hitler & Mao. Together they were responsible for almost one billion deaths on this planet and all of it for their power and warped ideology.
The part that I still don’t understand is how the lies we are now being told are so boldly proclaimed by every institution in our country.
Watch for re-education camps and social scores (like the CCP) here if this does not stop!
I worked with a guy who was a kid and was on one of the boats out. His father was taken to a re-education camp and never returned.
I truly began to hate the demonRAT party when they betrayed and deserted the Vietnamese people in 1975. Our military WON that war in 1973 when the NVA was dragged to the table after they were almost bombed into history- thank you President Nixon.
Communism is just socialism with teeth, which they MUST grow in order to maintain power. The left is cutting theirs NOW, right here.
This is meaningless to the indoctrinated. First, they don’t care. Second, even if you force them to notice, they’d tell you what we’re doing here is going to “social democracy” and righting hundreds of years of wrongs!
So, shut up and die already. (Yes, I’ve been told that online).
I spoke to a man recently who grew up in Vietnam. He tried to convince his co-workers about the dangers of socialism and voting for Biden but most did not listen to him. Now of course, he has to keep his mouth shut or he’ll be fired.
Well said.
The idea that Ho Chi Minh was just a nationalist trying to free his people was absurd from the beginning. He'd been a long-time Communist and was even a founding member of the French Communist party. ("In December 1920, Quốc (Ho) became a representative to the Congress of Tours of the Socialist Party of France, voted for the Third International and was a founding member of the French Communist Party." [Wikipedia]
Yes, there is. The commie filth in china and north vietnam were never about equality. It's always about dickheads at the top feeding their lust for power and dollars.
The same in the good old USA. Soros and Buffet and the rest of those creeps are not about the common good. They're all about enslaving peons like me and you in order to feed their lust for power and dollars.
I hope the liberal pukes who enabled all of this remember this about the time they're being shipped out to the gulags and the gas chambers. Creeps.
I too visited Vietnam last year and visited the same locations.
Having heard the American side, and now the Vietnam side, I returned to search for the truth somewhere between the two.
It is there. The Vietnamese people are good people. We backed them into a corner under Johnson so that they chose communism as their only escape from French Catholic control.
I also worked for a guy that escaped from the Vietnam. (Vietnamese boat person) He wound up in a refugee camp in Australia before coming to the US. I asked him if he had any resentment towards the US because of the Vietnam war. He told the happiest day of his life was when he learned he was being resettled in the USA.
Remember, Vietnam defeated murderer Pol Pot who was backed by China. China even attacked Vietnam in 1977.
>> “We backed them into a corner under Johnson so that they chose communism as their only escape from French Catholic control.” <<
Are you aware of Ho Chi Minh’s background? Way back in 1920 he was a founding member of the French Communist party. Nothing done by Americans pushed him in that direction.
The Vietnamese people hate China and limit China doing business in Vietnam and block workers, but not tourism.
This is not true in Laos, Cambodia, and to a lesser degree Thailand.
Yes. I also read his letter to Truman asking for help.
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