A South Vietnamese's Viewpoint
About the Vietnam War
1946-1975
You are the Heroes - The Song By Andy Le
Errors and Lies (Distorted Events)
On the back cover of the book Known and Unknown, we read Donald Rumsfeld's statement, "This war (The Vietnam War) has been marked by so many lies and evasions, that it is not right to have the war end with one last lie."
I wrote these history texts, based on my experience: what I saw, heard, read and thought. The war started when I was a teenager. I left Saigon as a senior. So, I was living with the war and the post-war era.
After April 1975, I was jailed in a re-education camp: hard work, hunger, health deterioration and frustration about the loss of freedom. I was determined to find out the reasons of the fall of Saigon. The course of "The Vietnam War" at CSU Long Beach and the assigned history books I read gave me a different picture from the one I had in my mind.
The inexact words were used widely Vietcong and the North Vietnam's Army: Viet means Vietnamese; Cong, Communist, Vietcong was Vietnamese Communists. The North Vietnam's Army were also Vietnamese Communists. So there was no difference between Vietcong and the North Vietnam's troops. They were all commanded by Hanoi Politburo. But the use of words of Vietcong and the North Vietnam's troops appeared that Vietcong was Communist but the North Vietnam's troops were not. That was a big mistake. The American officials, the American Media and American historians were all stupidly duped by Hanoi. They all were and are Vietcong.
The National Liberation Front (NLF) and The North Vietnam's army
The central power of the Vietnam's Communist Party is called Politburo, composed of a certain number of members. During the Vietcong War in the Southern Vietnam, the National Liberation Front was secretly commanded by some Politburo members such as Lê Duẫn, Phạm Hùng, Võ văn Kiệt... and obviously governed by Nguyễn Hữu Thọ as leader. Its army was organized into units of guerrillas. The National Liberation Front did not have a capital. A few members of the NLF lived in the jungles; others in Hanoi.
In the North, the Communist government had an army of divisions of infantries...Therefore Communist guerrillas in the South and divisions of infantries in the North were all called Vietcong soldiers. The American reporters and historians were confused about that notion when they wrote reports and history books, saying that Vietcong were in the South and the North Vietnam's divisions of army were in the North. They had been duped by Vietcong about those ambiguous words.
The 1968 Tết Offensive was a disaster for Vietcong; the majority of the guerrilla units were wiped out. The Politburo in Hanoi decided to send south divisions of regular infantries across the BếnHải River in the 1972 Easter Offensive: another failure. So the NLF soldiers in the south were southern Vietcong; the North Vietnam's Army were northern Vietcong. They all Vietnamese Communist soldiers
On May 1st. 1975. the southern VCs including their government disappeared without a word or an announcement.
The Vietcong War
Under the pressure of the Cold War, the Geneva Convention in 1954 divided Vietnam into two parts: the northern part, a Communist Country and the southern part, a Free Nation. Both regions of Vietnam enjoyed a rather long period of peace. Then, in 1960 HồChí Minh and his Communist Party started a new war with the ĐồngKhởi uprising. Armed with new weapons and powerful tanks, made in the Soviet Union, and fed with the Chinese foods, the northern Vietcong infiltrated the Free Nation in the south along the HồChí Minh Trail or crossed the Bến Hải River to occupy Quảng Trị Citadel. Therefore, Vietcong started the war: It must be called the Vietcong War. It was wrong to call it the Johnson War or the Nixon War.
Was the War Sacred?
In his book Sacred War,William J. Duiker wanted to emphasize the concept of national independence and unity as a sacred issue to virtually all Vietnamese. That was Duiker's thinking, but the real and historic events contradicted it. Duiker also admitted that "[the] material in the Vietnamese side of the war is relatively scarce in the English language..." (Duiker 272) Therefore his book was based solely upon a long list of documentary sources, the indirect ones. I felt something missing in his thought.
Sacred War was the English translation of Hồ Chí Minh's words, Thánh Chiến. Was the Vietcong War sacred? Duiker misunderstood the word sacred because he did not know how Hồ Chí Minh became the head of the government. Hồ Chí Minh said, "Cướp chính quyền=snatch the government." He was not elected. After having seized the power, he wiped out other patriots. Vietcong stole all properties and rice fields by killing their owners through the kangaroo tribunals. Vietcong ruled the Vietnamese people by the stomach policy: If you did not side with me, you and your family, including your parents, sisters, and brothers wouldn't have rice to eat. That was not sacred at all. That measure was barbarous, but extremely effective.
By Stalin's and Mao Zedong's orders, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov and Zhou Enlai told Phạm Văn Đồng to partition Vietnam into two parts along the Bến Hải River. No real patriot carried out that horrendous act to his/her own nation. But Hồ Chí Minh did. Therefore he was not a nationalist at all.
Was the Communist government in the North national independent? It needed Soviet weapons for its armies and Chinese foods to feed its soldiers and northern people. So the Vietcong government was not national independent.
Was the issue of national unity sacred and necessary in 1954? Vietnam was then underdeveloped and Vietnamese people were very poor. The economy and the education were backward and weak. The people welfare mattered. The Vietnamese in the North wanted peace and prosperity. But HồChí Minh and his Communist party did not care about them. They preferred war to peace, poorness to prosperity, begging to working.
The people of the South also wanted peace instead of war. Facing the armed, aggressive Vietcong, the Southern Vietnamese had to defend their freedom and their democracy. So, Duiker did not understand or ignored the reasons why almost one million northern Vietnamese moved from Hanoi to Saigon in 1954 and why another million Vietnamese fled Saigon by fishing boats after 1975. Duiker was deadly wrong to say that the Vietcong War was a sacred issue to virtually all Vietnamese. Duiker enjoys liberty and prosperity in the America without sensing their existence. He breathes air in and out without feeling its existence.
Senator Mike Mansfield said, "The Vietnam War was Wrong." Why?
Why did Vietcong fight? Hồ Chí Minh wanted to establish a Communist regime throughout Vietnam. In 1975 the Communist side won the war. In 2012 what do Vietnamese people have? A minority of party members are extremely rich and barbarous, protected by an army and by divisions of policemen while the majority of people are poor and jobless. The Vietnamese do not have the human rights and freedom. The media is controlled; the internet, blocked by fire wall. The government from the top to the bottom is corrupted and the economy is failing.
Why did the Southern Free Vietnamese fight? The Saigon people defended their freedom and democracy. Why did Georges Washington, the first President of the USA fight? Because of Independence, Liberty, and democracy. If the Vietnam War were wrong, the war waged by Georges Washington would be wrong, too; and the Second World War would be wrong, either...
Was Hồ Chí Minh a revolutionary nationalist?
Hồ Chí Minh and his party members are called Vietcong (Viet=Vietnamese; Cong=Communist). What have they done so far?
First, they robbed the power; they stole all properties and land; they then divided Vietnam into two parts in 1954. Finally they reunited Vietnam by war with the price of 2 million northern lives, 300 thousand southern soldiers, thousands of prisoners, perished in re-education camps, and a half million boat people, drowned in the South Vietnam Sea. How and how much did the Soviet Union and the Red China help Hanoi? In Dien Bien Phu Battle, Chinese General La Qui Ba and his troops helped VC General Vo Nguyen Giap to win the battle. During the Vietnam War (1965-1975) Chinese QuangZhai and Li Xiaobing wrote that the Chinese Liberation Troops sent Hanoi Anti-Aircraft Division and Engineers Corps of 25 thousand to 35 thousand men. In 1967 the Red China sent Hanoi 17 anti-aircraft divisions. The Soviet Union sent Hanoi the arsenal of 1,000 SAM-2s and middle-range rockets and tanks...
Second, Vietcong created a nation of a minority of Vietcong oppressors and a majority of slave people, a country without laws, freedom, justice, and human rights. They rule the country by force, kidnapping and prisons.
Third, Hanoi government was not freely elected by the people, but chosen by the Communist party members. It is not a government of the Vietnamese people, but it is a ruling organization of the Communist Party.
So, no revolutionary nationalist has done that to govern his/her country. Ho Chi Minh was not a revolutionary nationalist.
The Fall of Saigon in 1975 and its sequels:
On January 2, 1973 the House Democratic caucus voted 154 to 75 to cut off all funds to Indochina. On January 4, the Senate's Democratic caucus passed a resolution similar to the House's by a 36 to 12 vote. Later Kissinger wrote, "The 93rd Congress was threatening to abandon all our allies in Indochina." In November 1974, Congress voted 291 Democrats to 144 Republicans and Senate voted 61 Democrats to 39 Republicans to cut off all military and financial aids to South Vietnam. NguyễnTiến Hưng's book title was "When Our Allies ran away,..." clearly expressed the intention of the 93rd Congress: From that day on, no American has been present in Indochina.
The first sequence was the internment of the Saigon Government officials and military officers in Vietcong re-education jails set up from the North to the South Vietnam. Thousands of detainees were tortured, murdered and died of malnutrition, hard work, diseases... without mercy. The majority of Democrats in Congress 93rd washed their hands just as Pontius Pilate, Roman Procurator of Judea A.D. 26-36 had done about the condemnation and execution of Jesus Christ.
Colonel Ho Ngoc Can, Chuong Thien Province Chief, was executed at Can Tho Market.
The second outcome was "Boat People Diaspora": Million Vietnamese went to sea for the dream of the Freedom journey, half of them were drowned in the sea while Anti-Vietnam War activists, pleased, ignored them. Please read the book Boat People:Personal Stories from the Vietnamese Exodus 1976-1996 by Carina Hoang. The Daily News Người Việt carries it.
After the Americans withdrew from Vietnam, the Pacific Ocean has been replaced by the growing Chinese Giant. Now, 2012, Chinese's presence is everywhere, in land and on the South East Sea. China built air trip and houses on Spratly Islands; It's threatening the free waterway from the Strait of Malacca to South Korea and trying to keep the United States of America out of the Orient.
The third sequel was the September 11, 2001 attack in New York, USA. Before the eyes of the Americans' enemies, the USA have been a paper tiger. Under the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the anti-war activists such as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry..., Washington Post's, New York Times' writers... dominated the American opinion. The national security was slacked, loosed and negligent: There was no strict control of people coming in or out of the country. The Islamist terrorists profited from that slacked national security and they hijacked commercial passenger jets to destroy the Twin Tower and damaged the Pentagon and our national economy.
Those sequels were the results of the short-sighted political view of Democrats.
Mỹ Lai Massacre:
My Lai was a village in Quang Ngai Province. It was a "bean-rice" area where lived side by side Vietcong and nationalist families. At night, Vietcong guerrillas usually sneaked into their houses to get food, medicine and intelligence information.
The so-called My Lai Massacre occurred on March 16, 1968. The historian George Donelson Moss wrote that "thirteen soldiers--four officers and nine enlisted men--were charged with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity...All of the soldiers were acquitted, except Lieutenant William Calley. Callely's 1st Platoon was estimated to have killed over 200 villagers." Here's a contradiction nonsense: "all of the soldiers were acquitted" and "Calley's 1st. Platoon was estimated to have killed over 200 villagers...A court martial convicted Calley of mass murder." (Moss 259) Why were the soldiers of the 1st. Platoon acquitted? How could only Calley kill 200 villagers? Can we count the bodies in the Life Magazine pictures? (pix. Moss 260) Yes, we can, but it's not 200. The number 200 was not accurate. Earlier Moss reported the number of 300 to 400 civilians. Seymour Hersh reported 503 villagers. American reporters and historians played with the number of casualties. It was a fictionalized story.
A big question had never been asked so far after 40 years. Why did Calley fire those villagers? Was there any killing provocation? Yes, there was. After Calley’s soldiers had searched through the village and they did not find any VC guerrilla, Calley ordered his men to retreat from the village. As soon as Calley's GIs got out the village, firing from the houses killed many American soldiers. If you and I had been there, we'd have had the same question as Calley did, "Who fired? Who killed my men?" The answer on his mind was clear, "No male Vietcong, they must be these women." But they had no weapon? Well, they could hide them after having shot.
But why did Calley kill these women? Moss wrote, because the Vietnam War was "unpopular and immoral", because "the 11th Infantry Brigade" was "characterized {as} poor leadership, inadequate training, lack of discipline and thuggery." (Moss 314) These accusations were false, showing that the American historians and journalists knew nothing about guerrilla warfare. The war that the South Vietnamese fought Vietcong for freedom and democracy was not unpopular and immoral.
What made Calley kill those female guerrillas was vengeance for his dead comrades in arms. No human being could control his/her behavior when his/her soldiers got killed. Old guys and babies were shot dead: They were "collateral damages" or they were the human shield for Vietcong to survive. Who fathered those babies? There must have been male VCs somewhere in the caves. Anti-war activists siding with Communists were criminals. Just think about Neil Sheehan, a friend of Vietcong General Pham Xuan An's, a "Perfect Spy's", about Mike Wallace's comment's "baby killers"...
Those American historians and journalists did not have a good knowledge of guerrilla warfare, jungle as well as urban: mobile suicide bombing in crowded places, kidnapping, road mining, and hiding in civilian crowds for snipping. Killing some dozens of female guerrillas was nothing with some thousands of Huế residents buried-alive Massacre. We, Vietnamese Americans, could picture out the contrast of the insensitive, ruthless faces of anti-war activists with the agonizing ones of boat people and re-education detainees. (George Donelson Moss: Vietnam: An American Ordeal, Sixth edition, Prentice Hall, 2010.)
Huế Massacre:
The 1968 Tet Offensive occurred on Jan. 31st, 1968. VC attacked 34 cities in the South Vietnam. The VC casualties were high with 58,375 dead and 9,461 captured.
In Hue, the number of buried-alive people were 3,000+ in 19 mass graves.
Please read the book entitled The 68 Massacre at Hue was published by the Vietnamese Laity Movement in the Diaspora.
The second outcome was "Boat People Diaspora": Million Vietnamese went to sea for the dream of the Freedom journey, half of them were drowned in the sea while Anti-Vietnam War activists, pleased, ignored them. Please read the book Boat People: Personal Stories from the Vietnamese Exodus 1976-1996 by Carina Hoang. The Daily News Người Việt carries it.
The third sequel was the September 11, 2001 attack in New York, USA. Before the eyes of the Americans' enemies, the USA have been a paper tiger. Under the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the anti-war activists such as Ted Kennedy, John Kerry..., Washington Post's, New York Times' writers... dominated the American opinion. The national security was slacked, loosed and negligent: There was no strict control of people coming in or out of the country. The Islamist terrorists profited from that slacked national security and they hijacked commercial passenger jets to destroy the Twin Tower and damaged the Pentagon and our national economy. 
But why did Calley kill these women? Moss wrote, because the Vietnam War was "unpopular and immoral", because "the 11th Infantry Brigade" was "characterized {as} poor leadership, inadequate training, lack of discipline and thuggery." (Moss 314) These accusations were false, showing that the American historians and journalists knew nothing about guerrilla warfare. The war that the South Vietnamese fought Vietcong for freedom and democracy was not unpopular and immoral. 
The 1968 Tet Offensive occurred on Jan. 31st, 1968. VC attacked 34 cities in the South Vietnam. The VC casualties were high with 58,375 dead and 9,461 captured.