From: knguyen@emr1.emr.ca (Kim Nguyen)
Newsgroups: alt.war.vietnam
Subject: Re: Merits of the Free Press
Date: 11 Oct 92 21:58:51 GMT
Organization: Energy, Mines, and Resources, Ottawa

In article <1992Oct9.164131.3571@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>In article <1992Oct9.054048.14643@emr1.emr.ca> knguyen@emr1.emr.ca (Kim Nguyen) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct6.220417.13193@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>>>In article <1992Oct5.102350.10360@ida.liu.se> yngla@ida.liu.se (Yngve Larsson) writes:
>>>>One may have many opinions about the relative merits of a free press, and
>>>>in general I think the press is a slandering, opinionated hypocrite.
>>>>
>>>>The press (reporters and editors) selects the message to be published, and 
>>>>they are very rarely have any knowledge about what they are printing. Thus,
>>>>the information becomes garbled, biased and incomplete.
>>>>
>>>>On the sublect of the Vietnam War however, consider this:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>	If there had been any resemblence of a free press in
>>>>	North Vietnam, there would not have been a Vietnam War.
>>>>
>>>>Of cause, NV was/is a ultra-totalitarian state able to completetly control
>>>>the opinions of the people. They probably won because of this.
>>>>
>>>>comments?
>>>>
>>>Despite the totalitarian nature of N Vietnam, they had credibility
>>>from beating the French.  This, combined with the new colonialists
>>>(the US) _may_ have been enough to provide support for the
>>>government in the north, despite their despotic nature.
>>-------------
>>Totalitarian nature ? Credibility ? They must go hand in hand. Do you know
>>totalitarianism means ? No rival parties, no saying no. In US, people can
>>say no to the draft like Mr. Clint.....; in NVN, you have no right to say
>>no. That is why NVN army have burnt a lot their young men, but they still have
>>more in stock,. From this point, to the world outside, NVN has *credibility*.
>>Is this another bitterness : to create *credibility*, North Vietnam    or
>>any other communist countries abuses their citizens to solidate their
>>*totalitarian nature*.>
-------------->>>
>
>Many totalitarian regimes have had support and credibility from their
>people, at least for a while.  The existence of a large and distant
>enemy helps such regimes preserve this credibility.  Many people will
>support a bad native government in the face of an attack by a foreign
>power.  The nature of totalitarian regimes is that they usually _need_
>such an enemy to deflect opposition.  The US provided such an enemy,
>and continues to do so, at a lesser level, for other despots like
---------------
I agree partially with this logical argument but, in reality, we know that
US is not there as an attacker; they come to share our burden. When US started
to truly involve in SVN in 1963, Communist quickly changed their tone and 
added one more goal as to get rid of invaders. That tone just encourage their
troop and sympathizers but not all because almost Southerners did not buy it.
The attitude of US troop is not like French mercinaries. Their propaganda
can blind theNortherners who had no chance to contact, read and listen to
international news. Finding hard to brainwashing these stubborn people, they
had to reinforce NFL with their regular army.
Some sympathizers appeared. For example, the leading group of Saigon Student
Association in 1971 now turns out to be communist officials. The rest of
demonstration students (including me) never like communist, but some bastards
camouflaged so well that they foiled our purpose. It is clear that we hated
bad government but communist is still our number one enemy. Being defeated
does not mean agree with winner.