From: ttran@cv3000.Prime.COM (T. Tran)
Subject: Re: History Lession/An UPDATE
Organization: Saigon.COM Public Access BBS; Data Line: (408)730-1092
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 04:25:27 GMT


In response to KiM nguyen's posting <1992Dec29.200131.8420@emr1.emr.ca>
                                           [ An ** updated** version. ]

Reading Kim Nguyen's reply, I'm filled with a certain sadness. We're like
two ships passing each other in the night, none really listening to the
other. 
VN is like a big puzzle, which has been broken into a thousand pieces. 
The outlines of some of these pieces have become dimmer and dimmer with time,
due to loss of memory, distant events, personal preferences. Each of us can 
only clearly identify a few pieces, the rest we use our own imagination to
fill them out. So out of it we can create anything we wish; there is no final 
"putting-together" any more.

Instead of addressing the specific points in Kim's reply, which I believe
in view of this, would be pointless, let me try to deal with them in context. 
For we can enumerate a thousand acts, but they by themselves will not have
any meaning unless we provide them with a context. Actually there is sometimes
a tendency to string events together in order to create a context. We're
all familiar with Western movies in this country -- how brutal, blood-thirsty
and inhuman the Indians were. Were they really ?  

The US is a young country, about 350 years old. And it takes 350 years for
a film like "Dancing With Wolves" to be made. People's prejudices are very
deep: no one wants to think badly of themselves. So whatever brutality we
commit, it must be the other side's faults. Our hands are always clean,
for we always have God on our side -- all our priests tell us so.  The poor
have no priest and hence no God on their side, for who would be interested
in their fate, esp. if we all want to get ahead in this world, up and coming
as they say, as we all have to. 


Before I begin, let's clear up one point:

The intention of the Dialogue is NOT to defend communism, but to review
what had happened during the last 150 years, find out why SVN lost, and
from there hope to come to a consensus on what we should do with VN.

Thus, all the points Kim Nguyen tries to make regarding the brutality of 
Communist policies during the war are besides the point: that's not where
we need to focus, unless Kim Nguyen believes they brought about the fall of
SVN -- an unlikely proposition.

So, let me discuss the following issues as contexts to the points Kim Nguyen
raises:

	1/ The US and VN: What brought about the War ?
        2/ Laos
        3/ Cambodia
        4/ Why relies on "foreign books" ?
        5/ The Independence of the HCM/ICP

For this reply, I will quote mostly from Gary Hess's "VN and the US --
Origins and Legacy of War", Twayne, 1990. I'd recommend this book to all
VNese who want to find out about the history of the war. Especially excellent
is the Bibiographical essay at the end: Hess reviews most of all the works
that have been published on VN. As the lastest entry, he has the benefits
of all their researches and wisdom.

Gary Hess, professor of history at Bowling Green Stae University and President
of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, is a "leading
scholar of US relations with VN".


1/ THE US and VN: WHAT BROUGHT ABOUT THE WAR ?

a/ The French War (1858-1954)

   - The OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, supplied Ho Chi Minh and his 
     guerrillas with materials in their fight against the Japanese occupation.
   - The US embraced the August 1945 revolution: a US General entered HN 
     together with the Viet Minh commander (D. Marr).
     The US-VN Friendship Association was founded in HN in 1945, with US
     participation.
   - HCM wrote several letters to President Truman asking for support. Truman
     did not answer.
   - While in Paris searching for French compliance with the Ho-Sainteny Agreement
     of 03/6/1946, HCM "met with US embassy officials." "He urged pressure
     on the French to negotiate in good faith and spoke of his government's
     interest in foreign investment capital". He even "talked of the possibility
     of a US naval base in Cam Ranh Bay." (p. 36).

     The US embassy official, Abbott Low Moffat, urged the US gorvenment to
     support HO, but because the US at the time was more occupied with
     other more important issues, rather than a distant piece of land like 
     Indochina, Moffat's cable did not receive any attention.
   - The French disregarded the Ho-Sainteny agreement, using naval bombarbment
     and superior forces, attacked Hai Phong. A cruiser lobbed cannon balls
     into the city, killing 64 civilians. By December, France took control
     of Hanoi.
   - The US sent Moffat on a mission to VN to prevent war. Moffat assured
     Ho and Giap of "American interest in a peaceful settlement".

     "THE VNESE REITERATED THEIR OVERRIDING COMMITMENT TO INDEPENDENCE,
      WHILE STRESSING THEIR WILLINGNESS OF THEIR PEOPLE TO PAY WHATEVER 
      PRICE WAS NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE THAT OBJECTIVE." (p. 37) 

     Moffat advised them to continue negotiation with the French, an advice
     Ho could not take because he had already been burned badly with the
     Ho-Sainteny Agreement.
     Also, because of the Anmerican distrust of HCM's Comintern involvement,
     Moffat could not go any further. 

     Hess made the following observations:

     "That preoccupation with the Viet Minh's Communist leadership projected
      the worst-case scenario -- a Soviet-dominated communist state in
      VN -- and left the US a hostage of French policy." (p. 37)

     But this American concern about a Soviet-dominated VN was not 
     substantiated by facts:

     - The USSR took no interests in the Viet Minh's problems. It did not
       recognize the DRV, but considered France as the master of Indochina.

     - "MOSCOW MAY HAVE DISTRUSTED HO'S INDEPENDENCE, WHICH HAD BEEN EVIDENT
        IN HIS LOOKING TO THE WEST, ESPECIALLY TO THE U.S., FOR DIPLOMATIC
        AND MATERIAL SUPPORT."  (p. 37)

     - Moscow was more interested in supporting the French Communist Party,
       hoping for an eventual French-Soviet cooperation, in order to sabotage
       the plan to form an European security pact (EDC) the US was touting.
       To give the French Communists leverage for election, Moscow supported a
       get-tough policy with VN, ie., "let your communist brothers be dammned,
       I have much bigger fish to fry".

     But the French, even then, understood the real problem of VN. Even with
     100K French troops, the Viet Minh could not be defeated. The French minister
     of war estimated that it'd require "an expeditionary corps of at leat
     500K men" to hope for any sort of victory.

     General Leclerc summarized the dilemma:

      "ANTI-COMMUNISM WILL BE A USELESS TOOL AS LONG AS THE PROBLEM OF 
       NATIONALISM REMAINS UNRESOLVED... THE CAPITAL PROBLEM NOW IS 
       POLITICAL. IT IS A QUESTION OF COMING TO TERMS WITH AN AWAKING
       XENOPHOBIC NATIONALISM."
                                                                  (p. 38)

     The French, taking Leclerc's advice, searched for "a nationalist leader"
     in SVN, and in all their wisdom, settled on the "playboy emperor" Bao
     Dai.
     By putting up Bao Dai as a figurehead, declaring SVN as an "independent 
     Sate of VN", the French perfomed a magic sleight of hand:
 
     "It enabled the French to respond to critics of their war against the
      Viet Minh, for they could now claim the struggle of INDOCHINA WAS NOT
      A COLONIAL, BUT A CIVIL WAR."

      Hess's observation: "That rationale, of course, completely ignored the
      VAST DIFFERENCES between the Viet Minh and the State of VN in terms of
      nationalist stature and popular support." (p.39).

      But since the France has been able to create (ex nihilo, you would
      agree !) an Independent State of VN, it gained US support !

      US officials, however, knew exactly what they were getting into.
      One wrote that "the majority of the natives stoutly maintain that 
      HCM is the man, and the only one, who represents them and they will
      OPPOSE THE PUTTING FORWARD OF ANY OTHER CANDIDATE AS THE CREATING
      OF BUT ANOTHER PUPPET AND THE ERECTING OF A SMOKE SCREEN OF
      FRANCE'S REAL INTENTION." 

      The US, for strategic reason, had to support France because it needed
      France's cooperation in its containment policy in Europe. VN, a dammned
      small country no one had heard of before, was too little a fish to
      deserve consideration.
     
      Also, as a newly-emerged superpower, with the experience of Korea,
      the US looked at VN in similar light: another small country to be
      swallowed by the monolithic communists.
      Again Hess: "Such an outlook ignored numerous differences in the 
      origins of the two wars."  (p. 41)

      The US then poured aid in to SUPPORT THE FRENCH COLONIAL CONQUEST:
      775 M by 1952, 400 M in 1954 alone.

      By 1953, the French command had 517K troops. 

      The cost of the war in 1953: total French casualties : 150K, half of
      the country's defense budget, and still no light at the end of the
      tunnel.
 
      Preparation for Dien Bien Phu began in late 1953: 
      - General Navarre dropped paratroopers into the valley, hoping to
        prevent the stretching out of French forces by the opening of 
        another front by the VNese in Laos.
        Navarre, thus, fell into Vo Nguyen Giap's trap.
      - The Viet Minh moved in 35K troops by early 1954.
      - US general O'Daniel paid a personal visit to DBP in Feb 54. He
        was greatly reassured of Navarre's strategy and victory in the
        coming battles.

      On May 7,1974 DBP fell.

      The US attempted to organize an international coalition to INTERVENE
      DIRECTLY into VN, but Churchill, the US Congress, refused to go along. 
                                                           (p. 46-47)

 
. 
b/ Geneva Conference: Superpower Interests

      The USSR: wanted to accommodate France in order to prevent the 
                formation of the European Defense Community pact (EDC), 
                also to demonstrate its sincerity in "peaceful coexistence".
                VN's interest, hence, could be sacrificed.

      China:    wanted an interlude from potential conflict with the US
                to concentrate on internal development.
                VN's interest, hence, could be sacrificed.

      USA:      makes sure that it has wiggle room in order to be able to
                intervene later, what secretary of state Dulles called 
                "holding action".
                No interest in the VNese, only interest in the containment
                of communism. Did not even bother to study VNese history.

      NVN:      can't continue the war without support from China/USSR, 
                also leery of potential direct US intervention.

      So, with superpower politics bargaining back and forth on the fate
      of a small nation too weak to go it alone, the unification of VN 
      was compromised. The dies had cast.

c/ The US and the VN War
   
       The abrogation of 1956 national election:
       Again Hess: "If reunification election was held, as scheduled by the
                    Geneva Agreements, no one questioned that VNese people
                    would choose HCM as their leader." (p. 53)

       Why no superpower enforced the Geneva Agreement:
       USSR:    VN was just a small problem, not worth raising the ante'.
       China:   No interest to see a strong VN on its border, preoccupied
                with domestic problems
       France:  Financially destitute, no influence
       USA:     Let's start a "nation-building" program in SVN to draw 
                the line against godless communism.

    THE DIEM REGIME:

       - The US was casting about for someone to replace Bao Dai, for even
         the US knew there was no way they could transform HIM into the
         newly-minted leader of a new SVN. 

       - Initially, US officials had great doubt about Diem. The US
         charge' d'affairs in Saigon reported:
         "Diem is a messiah without a message. His only formulated policy
          is to ask for American assistance in every form...[and] his only
          present emotion, other than a lively appreciation of himself, is
          a blind hatred for the French." (p. 56)
          [Those US officials did have a way with words, didn't they !]

         Hess' comment:
         "Yet the American interest in building an anticommunist bastion
          in SVN NECESSITATED FINDING AN ALTERNATIVE TO HCM, and Diem, for
          all his weaknesses, appeared to be the best of a bad LOT OF
          POTENTIAL LEADERS."

         One US official, Dillon, expressed the American predicament to the
         State department:

         "We are prepared to accept the seemingly ridiculous prospect that
          this yogi-like mystic could assume the charge he is apparently
          about to undertake only because the standard set by his predecessors
          is so low."
       
       - The election of Diem as the new leader of SVN:
         "In an election marked by extensive fraud (although SG had 450K
         registered voters, over 600K votes were cast there." (p. 59)

       - Without US support, Diem could not survive. 
       - The US paid Cao Dai/Hoa Hao leaders $12 M to buy their cooperation for
         Diem.
       - The Viet Minh, though the majority had regrouped to the North,
         still had great influence in the countryside because they gave
         landless peasants land during the French War. 
         Diem took those lands back, returning them to the landlords.
       - "SVN became a one-party country with an elaborate propaganda
         apparatus, concentration camps, secrete police, rigged elections,
         and restricted liberties." (p. 61)

       - The national assembly was a sham because the constitution vested
         all powers in the President, allowing him to rule by decrees.
       - Diem used this power to exterminate all opponents, whether communists
         or not.
       - The brutality of Can and Nhu in their use of the secret service to
         torture and eliminate oppositions (p. 62).

       - But the real downfall of Diem was his policy towards the peasants:
         He did everything to alienate them. (Of course, not intentionally.
         But Diem was always sure of himself -- "I know what's best for my
         country").


    THE THIEU ELECTION:

       - "Despite considerable fraud and intimidation on their behalf",
          Thieu/Ky got only 35 % of the vote, whereras, a nobody, Truong
          Dinh Du, got 17 %. Du advocated a negotiated settlement. 
          DU got into the ballot through a ruse, for all "neutralist"
          elements were prohibited from running. 
 
         The election, in journalist Robert Shaplen's words, was 
         "AN AMERICAN-DIRECTED PERFORMANCE WITH A VNESE CAST".

       - Instead of conscripting young men into the army to fight the communists,
         Thieu used them to build up the police force so that "political
         surveillance and control was even more extensive than under the
         Diem government".
     
        - 100K soldiers - one third of the army -- deserted every year. 
          Only one out of seven in the draft age reported.


    WHY DID THE US LOSE THE WAR:

       Frame of mind: 
         "The only people who have the historical sense of inevitable victory
          are the Americans" (Denis Brogan, p.72).

       The strategic hamlet program:
          They become "concentration camps" because of the government's
          graft and corruption.
 
       First sign of trouble: the Ap bac Battle:
          A VC force of 400 surrounded by 2000 SVN troops with "tecnological
          superiority" in artillery, US helicopters, air power, escaped
          while inflicting heavy casualties on the opponents. (p. 75). 

       The ever-widening morass:
          VNese culture and tradition of uncompromising resistance to foreign
          domination.
          The Catholic-Buddist conflict: In 1959 Diem formally dedicated
          VN to the Virgin Mary (p.75).
          Corruption: the amount of money the US paid for cement could pave
          the whole of VN.

       Change in NVN's strategy:
          After 1954, the NVN's policy was to let the Southern people
          liberate themslves, with only minmal assistance from the North.
          Their hands were completely occupied with making NVN self-sufficent.
                                                                (p. 77)
          Only until December 1963 that NVN made the decision to devote
          the resource in the North to fully support their Southern brethren.
                  

       Paternistic attitude:
          "if the SVNese lacked the resolve to fight themselves and preferred
           to negotiate with the Communists", the US "would interfere to
           save the VNese from themselves"   (p. 88)
           [ Quite a NOVEL concept of independence ]

           [ Hence Minh was overthrown by Khanh because he asserted an
             independent streak: explored the possibility of negotiated
             settlement with the communists.
             Khanh, at first, was totally anti-communist. Then he himself
             came to the conclusion that the only way out was a negotiated
             settlement. Another coup was in order.]

          "US policy implicitly denied VNese history." (p. 88)

           Again Hess:

           "THE AMERICAN WERE FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE CHINESE ,
            FRENCH, AND OTHERS, ALL OF WHOM HAD BEEN FORCED FROM THE
            COUNTRY. HAD THAT HISTORY BEEN STUDIED, Americans might have
            realized that VNese antagonism toward China made it unlikely
            they would seek collaboration with their larger neighbor, much
            less advance its interests in Southest-Asia."  

           "That history rendered NVN and the VC an adversary with much
            nationalist "legitimacy" and underscored the inherent limitattions
            of the American effort at "national building" in the South. 
,

           "Boy, you speak just like an American", Johnson to Ky at the
                    Honolulu conference in 1966.

    
 
    US WAR STRATEGY:

      Rolling Thunder: Steadily applied killing pressure.
            3/1965: destroyed NVN capability to support the South.
            "I'm going up old HCM's leg one inch at a time." (Pres. Johnson)
            Results:   destroyed 300M worth of NVN war-support capabilty
                       lost $900 M worth of aircraft, $1.7 Billion cost
                       of operation support.

      Westmoreland's Search and Destroy:
            Over 100 M pounds of chemical, destroying 1/2 of SVN timberlands.
            Over 100 M tons of bombs in SVN in 1965-1967, more than twice
                       the amount dropped in the North.
            Results:   About 170K communists werre killed in combat in 1965-67
                       53K US/SVN loss.
            
                       Four Million VNese -- one of every four SVNese --
                            became refugees. 

                       Bars and brothels appeared everywhere.


######################################################################


Need I go on ! Please get the book and contemplate it for yourself, "Cry,
Cry, My beloved country. What had they done to you ?"

Hess might have summed up the essence of the US failure in VN: 

     The US military was, after all, destroying much of the fabric of
     rural life; in the culture where the self-contained village was a
     central social entity and where ancestral lands were revered, 
     people came to see the American as a corrosive force. The large
     American mission intended to "save" SVN was, in a very real sense
     DESTROYING THAT COUNTRY MILITARILY, ECONOMICALLY, AND SOCIALLY."
                                                           (p. 103)

In short, because of the US "hubris" that there was nothing in the world 
that US power, technology, and knowhow could not do, the US decided,
paternistically, to create a NEW IDENTITY for the VNese -- A US-sponsored
western-style democracy, WITHOUT ANY REFERENCE TO THE 4000-YEAR HISTORY
OF THE COUNTRY, THE ON-GOING 100-YEAR NATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST FRENCH 
COLONIALSM, AND THE INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF THE VIETNAMESE AGAINST ALL
FOREIGN DOMINATION. It was, in the end, the struggle of military power against
spirit, of foreign arrogance against native determination, and the mass of
poor, unlettered, but uncowered peasants against a foreign-led, dispirited,
compromised, and imported creation without root into the country's tradition,
culture, and history. 


A few observations in terms of this 150-year context:

1/ How similar it was, the echoes from the French War: the same statements,
   the same terminology, the same issues, only a different cast of characters --
   "anti-communism" would fail without building up a "nationalist government", 
   the efforts of "nation building" (isn't this ironic, we don't have to
   build up anything if it's already there, do we ?)", "colonial" versus
   "civil" war, etc.
  
   The French, with their 100-year experience in VN, understood the problem:
   it was fundamentally a political problem, the desire of a people to be
   independent, and no amount of military effort could solve it.

   The US tried the political solution with Diem, but when that failed,
   and with the approaching collapse of the SG regime (what happened to
   the SVN nation that the US talked so much about ? Why nobody rallied
   to save it ? A "real" nation couldn't just disappear like a sack of wheat
   blowing in the wind), it had no choice but to take the military route,
   which General Leclerc knew two decades before was a rat hole he didn't
   want his country to fall into.

   With undbounded optimism (the "sense of inevitable victory"), and complete
   ignorance of VNese history, the US went down the rat hole, to paraphrase
   Johnson, one knucklehead at a time. 

   What were the differences between what France did in "nation-building"
   with Bao Dai, and the US with Diem ?
   It is a matter of incontrovertible history that the US, for strategic
   interests in Europe, financed the final phase of the French colonial
   conquest, and when the French failed, simply continued it.

   I do not ask you to support communism -- nobody does. But history is
   not a crap game, where we can rearrange the table at will. That's the
   card that had been dealt to us; should we put all the blame on the
   communists for fighting against the French, and then the US ? 

2/ Three SVN leaders desired to assert independence by attempting a negotiated
   settlement with the communists to end the horrible bloodshed (Nhu,
   Minh, Khanh).
   [ Truong Dinh DU, a nobody, got 17 % of the vote, half of what Thieu/Ky
   received, because he advocaded negotiation. Without fraud, his percentage
   would be much higher. ]
   Why were they overthrown ? Who was behind the coup ?
   Had there been a free election in SVN, NO ONE would vote for the continuation
   of the war.
   Who should determine the fate of SVN ?

3/ In all his life, HCM made every attempt to ask for US support, against
   the explicit desires of both China and the Soviet Union, to secure
   independence AND PEACE for his country.
   He even went so far as to offer Cam Ranh to the US in the very beginning
   of the Cold War. Was he acting from Comintern order, or in his own way,
   a passionate desire to free his country from the clutches of superpower
   politics ?
   Who should be blamed if his offer was rejected ?
   Had his offer been accepted, there would be NO VN War, NO boat people,
   and none of all the tragedies that Kim Nguyen was so bitter about.

   Again, as a matter of context, who should be blamed ?

4/ But after all, Kim Nguyen was so concerned about the independence of
   Laos and Cambodia (it's almost touching). Why wasn't Kim concerned 
   about the independence of SVN ?

   The decision to carpet bomb both N/and SVN was not made by VNese.
   How 500K US troops decided to fight the war in SVN  did not depend
   on any input by the VNese.
   Who in the world had the right to come into a country like VN, and
   in two years dropped over 1 million ton of chemicals, over 1 million
   ton of bombs to kill 179K people, created 4 M refugees (one out of four
   SVNese, four times the number of boat people) ?
   They had become all nameless; who would speak for them ?
   You see, those poor refugees, they were always at the bottom of the barrel.
   Whatever they sufferred was always out of sight -- they lived and died
   in silence, like so much as "loa`i cho' ro+m". And we, who lived in
   the city, could let the war going for another ten years, without any
   hesitation. Indeed, we led a very charmed life.  

   You see, the Vietnam war is a misnomer; it should be called the American
   War, for the US controlled and directed everything in SVN between
   1954-1975. As Rober Shaplen aptly put it, as an epitaph,

   It was, through and through, "an American-directed performance with
   a Vietnamese cast."

   To paraphrase Johnson, have we all spoken like an American yet ?


Sincerely Yours, 

T. Tran


#########################################################################

For Laos and Cambodia, I refer you to Hess' book. It was the US that started
the chaos first, by overthrowing those leaders who insisted on mainting a
neutral stand vis-vis their communist brethren.

For Cambodia, I will repost my earlier article dealing with it, for it makes
an argument based on what happened more recently.

For the question of the ICP or HCM's independence, the answer could be cl
early seen in the chronology above.

For the issue of "foreign books", I will post a separate item.

I hope you will read Hess' book, and post what you think.

I just want to make a brief remark on the issue of Cambodia/Laos/ and China,
since you seemed so concerned about their relationships with VN. We're so
burned up with hatred and passion that we seem to lose a dispasionate perspective
in looking at hisotry, "Ye^u nhau cau sa'u bo^? ba, ghe't nhau cau sa'u bo^?
ra la`m mu+o+`i". Pardon me if I use a little parody to make the point, for
IT'S A VERY SERIOUS POINT that I want to make:

1. France -- Laos/Cambodia/independence

   - "Oh Great French masters, please forgive us, please take pity on us.
    You have every right to take over Laos, Cambodia, and An Nam (Thailand
    is nearby if your appetite is still good), rape and plunder them. You
    can use the resource of the whole great colonial empire, and the Cambodians,
    the Laotians, even our Vietnamese brethren in the service of the French
    Expeditionary Force, to beat us, to squeeze us, to strangle us. 
    Oh, Great French masters, you have big guns, and big God. For your God
    go with your guns. We all know how big your guns are, we know, they fell
    quite a number of own brethren -- those stupid VNese who didn't know any
    better, who dared to stand up against both your guns and your God.
    We, humble savages, unenlightened, untutored in the Great civilization
    of the Gaulois, should know better. We should ALWAYS stay within our border,
    respect the INDEPENDENCE of our neighbors, for otherwise someone MAY
    ACCUSE OF violating our neighbors' rights !"

2. China -- getting VNese killed

   - "Oh Great Chinese masters, Great Illustrious Chinese masters, you've
      invaded us ten, oh, maybe more, twenty times in the past. You've
      ruled over us, taken our rice, made us your slaves. But our forefathers
      didn't know any better. They dared, God forbid, to stand up and drive
      great masters out, causing so much troubles for great masters in the
      unxpected journey of "cuo^'n go'i ve^` nu+o+'c." Now, if you plan to
      invade us again, oh Great masters, please let us know before hand,
      give us plenty of warning, so that we can all stand aside, take a
      break by hiding in the forests for a while, so that Great masters
      can freely enjoy your time on our land, plunder and burn at will,
      LEST SOMEONE ACCUSE US, God forbid, for standing up to Great masters
      once again, CAUSING the death of untold thousands of innocent VNese ! 
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