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My
first epiphany on what was really happening in Vietnam came to
me while riding along Highway 1 in a deuce and a half going from
here to there or back again. Staring at the passing countryside,
I noticed that running parallel to the road was an old railroad
line. The gauge was unusually narrow and the track extremely rusted.
The rail line was most likely built by the French, probably during
the 30's or 40's, when Vietnam was still a French colony.
What
caught my eye was the condition of the track. Each separate rail
was bent and twisted into wild contortions resembling those corkscrewing
roller coasters so popular at today's amusement parks. Only whoever
did this was clearly not out to have some fun.
The
level of destruction was complete. There was not a single foot of
track left straight. And it went on like this for miles. I began
to wonder how long it would have taken to so methodically destroy
iron railing. And then it occurred to me that this was no doubt
done by the same army that the US fought in 1969.
At
that point I became aware of deep time as it pertained to the Vietnam
conflict. The little bit I had read of the history of Indochina
became concrete. This war I found myself in was something that had
started long before I got there and would no doubt be going on long
after I left.
I
felt what Kurtz must have felt as he steamed up the Congo River
into Conrad's Heart of Darkness, mesmerized at the passing
jungle, impenetrable, blank and dark. Kurtz had the sense of progressing
backwards in time with each new bend and twist of the river.
Conrad's
novel came to be intimately associated with the American experience
in Vietnam. It conveyed not only the horror of what we found out
about ourselves in the dark jungle and remote villages, but also
a sense of mystery, a sense that there were hidden currents driving
events in ways that we never seemed able to really understand. In
modern parlance, we call this being clueless.
America
was clueless then, and is clueless now. This is inevitable given
the fact that Americans persist in viewing the incursion in Vietnam
as an extension of the Cold War. For the US, it was always about
stopping the spread of Communism. Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson
all bought into the domino theory, or at least didn't feel politically
strong enough to resist its proponents.
During
the war that's all you heard about. "Kill a commie for Christ" was
our watchword. And 25 years later many Americans are still convinced
that what we were doing was stemming the Red Tide of Communism,
a noble undertaking done only to make the world a better place.
The
only problem is that this had little to do with the other side's
war aims. Ho Chi Minh started out to rid his land of an oppressive
and greedy colonial occupier, the French. Before it ended, this
battle between a small but determined band of insurgents and one
of the superpowers of that era was to take on as many twists and
turns of fortunes as that railroad line along Highway 1.
Until
World War II, the French controlled Vietnam as a colony. During
the War, the French abandoned their claims to Vietnam. At wars end,
the world was carved up into zones of operations. China got the
northern part, while the British occupied the southern half. What
follows is a complicated tale of intrigue and betrayal that led
to the 1st Indochina War between France and Vietnam, a war that
ended for the French at Dien Bien Phu.
The
1954 Geneva Conference of Foreign Ministers formalized the split
of Vietnam into North and South. The leader of South Vietnam, Ngo
Dinh Diem, refused to permit elections as called for by the Geneva
Conference. This gave the Vietminh a reason to begin a campaign
of disruption that led to the 2nd Indochina War, the one that ended
for the United States on a rooftop in Saigon in April 1975.
The
governments in South Vietnam, supported by the West, failed because
they never had the grass roots support of the peasantry in South
Vietnam. Yes, there was an element of coercion in that loyalty,
but there was also a shrewd understanding of who had history on
their side. The peasants had it right all along. It was only Uncle
Sam who never understood Uncle Ho. What really mattered to Ho Chi
Minh was independence for his country. He was a nationalist first
and a communist second. This is the point that was glossed over
then, and is still not fully accepted today.
John
McCain raised quite a ruckus during his recent trip to Vietnam when
he expressed the thought that the wrong guys had won the war. To
some degree he has a point--life in Vietnam since 1975 has not been
a bed of roses. Leaving aside the usual problems that come when
the winners take their revenge against the losers, the lot of the
average Vietnamese has not improved all that much in the last 25
years.
The
successors to Ho Chi Minh have not done a great job running the
country. Their adherence to an outdated economic philosophy that
even the East Germans finally gave up on has hampered growth. It
didn't help that the United States did its level best to isolate
Vietnam and discourage other countries from doing business there.
If
Ho Chi Minh had been smart enough to lose, perhaps Vietnam might
have been the beneficiary of an Asian Marshall Plan. But, as luck
would have it they won, and they soon discovered that Uncle Sam
is not a gracious loser.
Twenty-five
years later, America still has yet to truly understand just what
the hell happened in Vietnam. The story of Ho Chi Minh's birthing
of a nation is a fascinating one, worthy of attention. He is one
of the great figures of the 20th Century and will be remembered
as such. He had a single goal--to rid his country of foreign powers
so that Vietnam would again be an independent nation. He persisted
for 60 years, through a World War and numerous smaller wars, taking
down two of the world's dominant powers in the process and sustaining
over a million and a half deaths to get it done.
It
is more than a little ironic that this April 2000 finds the United
States absorbed by its two thorniest adversaries from the Cold War
era, Cuba and Vietnam. The saga of Elian Gonzalez reopened old wounds
that go back to the ill-fated invasion at Cuba's Bay of Pigs. And
as we passed the 25th anniversary of the evacuation of Saigon, American
attention was once again focussed inward and, for a brief moment,
asked itself for the hundredth time, what did it all mean?
It
is time for America to finally put aside its grievances against
Vietnam and Cuba and accept them back fully into the community of
nations. History is implacable in its judgment, and I believe that
history will find America betrayed its own dream in the harsh and
unforgiving way it has treated these two countries. Forty years
of bad blood must finally end if we are to have any hope of rediscovering
the idealism and generosity of spirit that truly marked the American
century.
Copyright
© 2000 G.J. Lau All Rights Reserved
G.J.
Lau toils deep in the bowels of the Washington bureaucracy. A long-time
observer of American politics and mores, he now edits his own e-zine,
Singleminded.
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