| | Hong said:
German people who had chosen Hitler, and Chinese people who had chosen Mao, and Vietnamese people who had chosen Ho Chi-Minh"
While you assessment is true in the first two cases, it is not in the third. The Chinese communists had no world super power intervening on their behalf, nor did the National Socialists of Germany. While Mao eventually recieved support from Stalin, it was not a significant portion of the expenditures.
Vietnam, however, was far different, it was not a 'revolution' fought between two competing ideals, it was a small minority of Marxist intellectuals that were well armed and funded by the soviet union that were foistered upon people who had little chance to form any other opinion. To compare the state of North Vietnam, and the funding and growth of the communist movement in North Vietnam, to the internally sustained movements of murderous collectivism in China and Germany is wholly disingenuous and I can't help but think your assessment of this situation is just a manifestation of your predilection to think whites act too much as 'know it alls' when considering 'asian' peoples histories. But you don’t get axiomatic wisdom of the Vietnamese people because of less distant genetic relations, while I am certainly no crystal ball of knowledge on Vietnam, I know you assessment of the history and the context surrounding the Vietnam war is completely wrong, to suggest that South Vietnam was ready to invade the north is completely absurd.
What do you think those North Vietnamese communists fought with? They were not tanks and AK-47's manufactured in the jungles of Vietnam, but weapons of course straight from the Soviet Union and China. How could a peasant rebellion, armed with farming tools, defeat a controlled collectivized military funded and armed by a world super power? Ho Chi Minh met with Stalin and Mao in 1950, received the finest communist education in France, instituted murder quotas, land reforms, a brutal police state, and was well funded and armed from both China and the Soviet Union. The Chinese communists lent almost 400,000 troops to build infrastructure in North Vietnam. There was not even the *potential* for 'self determination' in this case. If you opposed Ho Chi Minh, you were killed, and you were killed by Soviet / Chinese weaponry. The two communist world super powers funded the war, supplied the weapons, and built the infrastructure to fight it. When the people of the North were allowed to ‘choose’ some 500,000 to 750,000 fled the north into the south, while about 30,000 headed north.
By 1975 many of the atrocities of communism were well known, though their true extent of the horror had yet to be revealed (and indeed is still being revealed as secret documents continue to be uncovered) I recommend reading through Nixon’s 1969 speech, here are some notable excerpts, the atrocities of North Vietnam *alone* were all ready well known by this time. There is absolutely no excuse for an elected member of congress to wantonly condemn more than 80 million people to whole sale slaughter and imprisonment that they *knew* communism would bring, and had brought, every single time it rose to power. They "should" have known because they have a responsiblity to be intellectually honest, and a mere 15 minutes of investigation, especially to the resources available to a congressman, would have made the picture quite clear.
Nixon’s “Silent Majority” speech (with many relavent parrallels to today)
In view of these circumstances there were some who urged that I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of all American forces. From a political standpoint this would have been a popular and easy course to follow. After all, we became involved in the war while my predecessor was in office. I could blame the defeat which would be the result of my action on him and come out as the Peacemaker. Some put it to me quite bluntly: This was the only way to avoid allowing Johnson’s war to become Nixon's war.
But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election. I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation and on the future of peace and freedom in America and in the world.
Fifteen years ago North Vietnam, with the logistical support of Communist China and the Soviet Union, launched a campaign to impose a Communist government on South Vietnam by instigating and supporting a revolution.
For the South Vietnamese, our precipitate withdrawal would inevitably allow the Communists to repeat the massacres which followed their takeover in the North 15 years before.
--They then murdered more than 50,000 people and hundreds of thousands more died in slave labor camps.
--We saw a prelude of what would happen in South Vietnam when the Communists entered the city of Hue last year. During their brief rule there, there was a bloody reign of terror in which 3,000 civilians were clubbed, shot to death, and buried in mass graves.
--With the sudden collapse of our support, these atrocities of Hue would become the nightmare of the entire nation-and particularly for the million and a half Catholic refugees who fled to South Vietnam when the Communists took over in the North.
For the future of peace, precipitate withdrawal would thus be a disaster of immense magnitude.
--A nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends.
--Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest.
--This would spark violence wherever our commitments help maintain the peace-in the Middle East, in Berlin, eventually even in the Western Hemisphere.
Ultimately, this would cost more lives. It would not bring peace; it would bring more war.
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The Vietnam war was...canceled, not lost.
