Remembrance of 50 Years Ago Today

[PeterRS]

Most of us grew up with it. For some it had been a long drawn out ghastly struggle. For many it would result in even longer bitter memories of the death of colleagues and loved ones. For others it was a mere tangent to history in a part of the world we knew precious little about. For 3 million Vietnamese, they had died where they fought or lived, victims of an illegal war waged as we now know on the mere pretence of enemy action against a US warship.

Although the Vietnam War officially ended with a Peace Deal between Vietnam and the USA in January 1973, one party broke the deal. North Vietnam kept up its activities in the South until it fully united the country. Liberation Day was April 30 1975.

For Americans it had all started in 1954 with the humiliating defeat of the France colonial army at Điện Biên Phủ. The French general in charge committed suicide and France finally pulled out of its Indo-Chinese colonies quickly thereafter. President Truman had tried to stop the French from returning after WWII only to be met with a firm "Non!" by French leader General De Gaulle. De Gaulle then tried to persuade America to enter the war on its side. This time it was President Eisenhower who said "No". On April 27 he wrote to his good friend Edward ‘Swede’ Hazlett, “Any nation that intervenes in a civil war can scarcely expect to win unless the side in whose favor it intervenes possesses a high morale based upon a war purpose or cause in which it believes. The French have used weasel words in promising independence and through this one reason, as much as anything else, have suffered reverses that have been really inexcusable.”

Yet despite Eisenhower's reluctance, with the French finally out of South East Asia the spectre of the "domino theory" had started to raise its ugly head in the corridors of Washington. At the end of his administration in January 1961, Eisenhower’s thoughts about Vietnam being a "civil war" had evaporated and the "domino theory" had gained the upper hand. By this time the United States was providing unwavering support and power to the unstable, utterly corrupt and unpredictable anti-communist government of South Vietnam led by the President Ngô Đình Diệm. Virtually no-one in the USA voiced any criticism of the incompetence of the cigar-chomping Diệm. A staunch Catholic, he promoted Catholic values and permitted that Church exemptions in property acquisition. When in protest Buddhist monks started self-immolating the the streets, Diệm's wife virtually encouraged this by saying, "If Budhists want to have another barbecue, I will be gad to supply the gasoline!" 

By this time, though, he United States had begun its long effort to prop up the south by financing an increase in the South Vietnam army by over 150,000 troops. Following a coup on November 1 that year, Diệm was deposed. On the following day he was assassinated. The coup had been backed by America’s CIA, the first of the CIA’s many actions during the ensuing Vietnam War, although far from the first of such operations in the region - as the peoples of Laos were well aware.

What happened thereafter is less important for we now know so many of the facts. None have been more revealing than those written by Robert McNamara, the former US Secretary of Defense and one of the primary architects of the Vietnam War. In 1995 he wrote an astonishing mea culpa in his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam." He writes, " We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated on the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why."

[vinapu]

13 hours ago, PeterRS said:

- as the peoples of Laos were well aware.

 

too bad that American people weren't