Last edited Sun Aug 26, 2018, 12:48 AM - Edit history (1)
thousands of Vietnamese I have yet to find a single one that thought that the "good guys one".
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) was a ruthless power that killed tens of thousands of innocent farmers.
You don't have to take my word for it, take Ho's
On 18 August 1956, North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh acknowledged the serious errors the government had made in the land reform program. Too many farmers, he said, had been incorrectly classified as "landlords" and executed or imprisoned and too many mistakes had been made in redistributing land. Severe rioting protesting the excesses of the land reform program broke out in November 1956 in one largely Catholic rural district. About 1,000 people were killed or injured and several thousand imprisoned. Democratic Republic of Vietnam initiated a "correction campaign" which by 1958 had resulted in the return of land to many of those harmed by the land reform.[31] As part of the correction campaign as many as 23,748 political prisoners were released by North Vietnam by September 1957.[32]
The "liberation forces" of the North Vietnamese Army forced over 250,000 into re-education camps and forced collectivization for both factories and rural areas and forced tens of thousands of Vietnamese into "New Agricultural Zones" where they were dumped without tools, support, or knowledge of funding.
When I visited Vietnam in November of 1978 every inch of coverage from overhanging eaves was used to provide shelter to the tens of thousands to huddle under during the monsoon rains.
Maybe you think that these middle class and poor residents of Ho Chi Minh Ville deserved their fate.
But the Northern Communists didn't just oppress the Catholics and middle class farmers in the north, hundreds of thousands in the south, they also oppressed the Viet Cong who survived.
I made an unusual connection on Galang Island with
Trương Như Tảng who was Minister of Justice for the Viet Cong. He detailed how the Tet Offensive was actually a move by the North to expose the military arm of the Viet Cong. After liberation the Northern Communists (like Lenin) did not want to share any power, especially with the Viet Cong who included non Communist Social Democrats and other non communist opponents to the Southern Regime. (which is exactly what Lenin did to the Russian Provisional Government, the Mensheviks, Social Democrats, and all).
Even though Tang had spent time in a South Vietnamese Prision he was found to be insufficiently pure and sent to the countryside. He told me that only 3 members of the Viet Cong were accepted and they were put in as tokens in the parliament but never had any power. There were more capitalists who were rehabilitated than Viet Cong.
He escaped and I spent quite a bit of time with him in Galang. He certainly would have agreed with McCain's statement.
This is his story;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C6%B0%C6%A1ng_Nh%C6%B0_T%E1%BA%A3ng
His book where he details how the Northern Communist persecuted the Viet Cong is called "A Vietcong Memoir".
Now here is the interesting post script. Today Vietnam is a country with a strong progressive economy.
That progress is because of Đổi Mới. Đổi Mới is a complete and total rejection of all of the forced collectivist policies and the brutal Leninist policies of the brutal revolutionary leaders of the North.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%E1%BB%95i_M%E1%BB%9Bi
Doi Moi was de facto a top-down reform program that involved a handful of the most influential high-ranking political figures of Vietnam in mid-1980s.[3]
Prior to the Doi Moi, Vietnam faced an economic crisis; inflation soared to over 700 per cent, economic growth slowed down, and export revenues covered less than the total value of imports.[4] In addition, Soviet aid decreased, increasing Vietnam's international isolation.[5] This resulted in intense debate about past faults under the Vietnam's planning system and the need to introduce major changes in the run up to the 6th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam.[4]
One of the important developments which provoked change was the death of Party Secretary, Lê Duẩn, in July 1986.[5] Long-time party leaders, including Trường Chinh and Pham Van Dong were deemed to be partly responsible for the crisis of Vietnamese state socialism and came under attack in the Vietnamese press.[5] In December 1986, the Sixth Party Congress elected as Party Secretary the more liberal Nguyễn Văn Linh, a reformist and former leader of the National Liberation Front.[5]
There were three political movements which urged Vietnam's leaders to take reforms. First, there was strong pressure from technocrats and pro-market reformists for a final solution to the DRV model, based upon the political collapse of hard reform socialism after the 1985 debacle. Second, those benefiting from commercial activities thanks to partial reforms were in favour of further reform as reform brought economic benefits. Third, southern liberals supported reform as they wished to return to the pre 1975 system.[6] Fforde elaborated the second point; during the transition period since the early 1980s, state enterprises accessible to cheap resources earned profits by diverting them onto the free market, which were shared among various groups including workers, manager, and higher levels. This profit sharing provided a power basis for reform and commercialization in the party, pushing for a market economy.[7]
So not only were the policies and actions of the leaders of North Vietnam found to be wrong by Ho Chi Minh, by tens of millions of Vietnamese, by their co-revolutionary partners in the Viet Cong, they were completely rejected by their successors. Bottom line is that everyone agreed that the wrong people won, it just wasn't worth it to continue a war with the massive destruction that it had escalated too.
Interesting thing is Ho Chi Minh only went to Leninism after he was rejected by the Americans and Europeans. For him everything could be sacrificed for independence, especially independence from the Chinese.
I have no proof of this but I believe that had the person called Ho Chi Minh been alive at the end of the war that he would have taken a much softer approach to reunification and the world would have thought that the right person did win the war.
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