I am going to break from the credibility gap today
to answer the following comment posted on YouTube. Normally I hesitate to
respond to commentators who fail to cite their sources, however, it is time to set the record straight.
The following was directed at me (I lined thru it so you know I did not write this:
"+@VietnamWarMyths You don't know what you are talking about.
South Vietnamese nationalism is precisely what you were fighting to crush. The
Viet Minh nationalists fought the French, then the Japanese, the French again,
and then the United States after the US installed its dictatorship in the South
which attacked the nationalists.
It was the Vietnamese nationalists who were fighting for the liberation and
independence of South Vietnam from the US and its installed military juntas.
The idea that a defenseless third world country in Indochina was going to take
over the world is simply ludicrous."
I am not sure where you got the (ludicrous) idea that I said
North Vietnam was trying to take over the world, but let’s clarify that right
off the bat.
The Vietnam War (American War from the Vietnamese point of
view) was one of dozens of “wars of liberation” the Soviet and Chinese leaders
were attempting to use to take over the world
[i].
As I said in my first comment, the Soviet Communists and Chinese Communists
were trying to take over the world.
That clarified, I will now respond to the issues from the
beginning:
“You don't know what you are talking
about.”
I have spent decades studying the Vietnam War. 3 years of
that time was spent in full-time graduate level academic research, studying
original & secondary source documents from the North Vietnamese, the South
Vietnamese, the Soviets, the Chinese, the Vietcong, the Australians, the
Americans including both government, media and antiwar sources. I have hundreds
of pages of notes collected from this research. The index alone for those notes
is fifteen pages long. Also note that I cite my sources.
"South Vietnamese nationalism is
precisely what you were fighting to crush. The Viet Minh nationalists fought
the French, then the Japanese, the French again, and then the United States
after the US installed its dictatorship in the South which attacked the
nationalists."
You are right about the French, and about the Japanese, more
or less. Your level of accuracy fails miserably after that.
It was North Vietnam that was trying to, and succeeded in
crushing South Vietnamese nationalism. Note that South Vietnam no longer exists
as a nation. We, Americans, did not crush it, the North Vietnamese did. We were
trying to protect South Vietnam from
communist aggression & forced unification under communist rule.
The peoples of North and South Vietnam were two very
different peoples. The southerners did not want to be dominated by or unified
with the North.
Next, I will call your attention to the organizational
documents of the National Liberation Front (NLF or political arm of the Vietcong)
known as the
Manifesto and Program of the
National Liberation Front of South Vietnam[ii].
The South Vietnamese did not create this document; the North Vietnamese created
it. Observe the second paragraph opens with the statement, “Our compatriots in
South Vietnam
[iii]”
(RVN). This is one of many indicators that show that the South Vietnamese did
not create the Vietcong.
The Vietcong (VC) was a puppet organization created by the
Communists in North Vietnam (DVR). After the non-communist government in the
South surrendered, the Northern government took control of South Vietnam away from
the Vietcong (by this time the NLF had morphed into the Provisional
Revolutionary Government or PRG) leadership, systematically squeezing the
Southerners out of the government until the North controlled the entire nation.
Truong Nhu Tang, the Vietcong Minister of Justice, while discussing the
aftermath of the fall of Saigon stated,
 |
| Truong Nhu Tang |
“My administrators began claiming that they had to carry out
orders from their superiors in the Northern government rather than the
directives they received from us. ... My guests (Northern leaders) succeeded in
conveying to me the fundamentality of the North’s resolve to control the
Provisional Government ... I had no illusions about what was happening, and I
knew that neither I nor my colleagues would be in office long”
[iv].
Even though President Diem may have been repressive, very
few South Vietnamese chose to escape to the north, because they knew Diem was
less oppressive than the Ho regime. Those that did migrate north were primarily
Communists.
However, when the DVR was forming in the mid 1950s, hundreds
of thousands of Vietnamese citizens voted against communism with their feet.
They chose to leave the north because they were quite aware of the repressive
controls imposed by the Communists in the north. The South Vietnamese did not
want a communist government!
"The US and its installed military
juntas."
A Constitutional Assembly of 118 men and women was elected by
85% of the people, in spite of the fact that “communist guerrillas attacked
voters, polling places and even candidates. One of those who was elected was
murdered by the Vietcong immediately after the election”
[v].
 |
| Nguyen Cao Ky |
Through early 1967 the
South
Vietnamese Constitutional Assembly and the
South Vietnamese Directorate met in Saigon and drafted a
constitution
[vi].
This was a combined effort of their military and civilian officials, not
Westmoreland, not Taylor, not Johnson.
Diem’s eventual successor, President Thieu was elected in a
nationwide election where over 75% of the population turned out to vote in
spite of continued Communist reprisals against anyone who voted
[vii].
That’s a higher percentage turnout than any election in the history of the
United States and we don’t risk death for voting. The Vietnamese people
installed President Thieu, not the US.
This is evidence of two things: First, by 1967 the Vietcong
did not control the hearts and minds of the people. Second, in most instances,
the Vietcong did not have the capability to carry out their threats because the
elections were held with large turnouts in spite of those threats. If the VC had the
capability they would have closed down the polls.
Premier Ky stated, “The Vietcong positioned themselves as
liberators ... (However) after Tet it was plain that the Vietcong were
mistaken, that as much as people found fault with their government, they did
not want to live under communism”
[viii].
By the middle of 1968 the Vietcong were so unpopular among
the South Vietnamese that 70% of the VC ranks were filled with Northern
conscripts
[ix],
and many of the remaining 30% were teenagers stolen from their villages.
After returning to III Corps from the hospital in Japan, I
was a guard on the Dau Tiang bridge platoon for about a month. We had daily
contact with the villagers in Dau Taing. On three occasions, against
regulations, we hid teenagers from the village (two of which were 12-year old
boys) on the bridge because the VC were in the village drafting these kids for
their army. I repeat the VC were kidnapping children to fight!
If the VC were as popular as the media claimed they were,
they would have no need to draft anyone, they would have plenty of volunteers.
"It was the Vietnamese nationalists
who were fighting for the liberation and independence of South Vietnam from the
US."
Now, you may have gotten the mistaken idea that the VC were
fighting for Vietnamese nationalism because many of the rank and file VC, who
were Southerners by birth or ancestry believed the same thing. They, like you
were duped by communist propaganda.
Truong Nhu Tang, the VC Minister of Justice, himself a
former communist, admits, that under direction from the northern honchos, they
specifically did not mention communism to the rank and file VC members because
if they had, most would have deserted because they were anti-communist. This
does not mean that the VC were in fact fighting for “nationalism”.
While it is true that they believed they were fighting to remove foreign invaders from their land, they were
unwittingly fighting for forced unification under communist rule. The claim, that the US was a foreign invader, was, after all, a main point in the communist Dich Van propaganda program.
Speaking of Vietcong training for the Southerners, Truong
stated, "As a general rule there was no political indoctrination; Marxist
subjects, for example were never touched on. ... Northern troops ... (received)
a steady infusion of Marxist precepts and class analysis. Had we attempted
similar indoctrination of the Southern peasant guerrillas, they would have
considered it worse torture than the regime could possibly devise for
them"
[x].
Many of the higher echelon of the VC leadership were well
aware that the organization was a communist organization, but they also took
great pains to ensure that the rank and file Southerners did not know this fact
[xi].
Because all the previous foreign occupiers were colonialists, it was easy to dupe
Southern nationalists into believing the Americans were colonialists as well.
The Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) were the
true South Vietnamese nationalists. The VC only thought they were. All the
Vietcong’s efforts only succeeded in costing them their county to communist
aggression. Those that did not die in the struggle paid an unexpected price
when they found their sovereignty stolen from them by the Northern invaders
[xii].
[i] See Domino Theory below.
[ii]
Truong Nhu Tang, Chanoff D., & Doan Van Toai
(1985). A Vietcong Memoir. San Diego,
CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, pp. 319-322.
[iv] Ibid, pp. 266-267, parentheses added.
[v]
Cao Ky, N., Wolf, M. J., (2002). Buddha’s Child: My fight to save Vietnam.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, p. 231.
[viii]
Cao Ky, N., Wolf, M. J., (2002). Buddha’s Child: My fight to save Vietnam.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, pp. 283-284.
[x]
Truong Nhu Tang, Chanoff D., & Doan Van Toai
(1985). A Vietcong Memoir. San Diego,
CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, pp. 164-166.
[xii]
Truong Nhu Tang, Chanoff D., & Doan Van Toai
(1985). A Vietcong Memoir. San Diego,
CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
A military bus to the airport and a quick flight down to The
City,[iv]
a taxi to Union Square to feed the mind & a really freaky bus trip to Salinas
to visit some graves that I never managed to find. I did find myself at my
ex-fiancé’s house. Not sure why I went there ... perhaps to flash my wedding ring
in her face. But she wasn’t home. 
