Trip to Vietnam Revives Hatred of Communism
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
·It was difficult to control my emotions -- specifically, my anger -- during my visit to Vietnam last week. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people -- their intelligence, love of life, dignity and hard work -- the more rage I felt for the communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, communists still rule the country. Yet, Vietnam today has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So what exactly did the 2 million Vietnamese who died in the Vietnam War die for? I would like to ask one of the communist bosses who run Vietnam that question. "Comrade, you have disowned everything your Communist party stood for: communal property, collectivized agriculture, central planning and militarism, among other things. Looking back, then, for what precisely did your beloved Ho Chi Minh and your party sacrifice millions of your fellow Vietnamese?"
There is no good answer. There are only a lie and a truth, and the truth is not good.
The lie is the response offered by the Vietnamese communists and which was repeated, like virtually all communist lies, by the world's non-communist left. It was (and continues to be) taught in virtually every Western university and was and continues to be spread by virtually every news medium on the planet: The Vietnam communists, i.e., the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, were merely fighting for national independence against foreign control of their country.
First, they fought the French, then the Japanese and then the Americans. American baby boomers will remember being told over and over that Ho Chi Minh was Vietnam's George Washington, that he loved the American Constitution, after which he modeled his own, and wanted nothing more than Vietnamese independence.
Here is the truth: Every communist dictator in the world has been a megalomaniacal, cult of personality, power hungry, bloodthirsty thug. Ho Chi Minh was no different. He murdered his opponents, tortured only God knows how many innocent Vietnamese, threatened millions into fighting for him -- yes, for him and his blood soaked Vietnamese Communist Party, backed by the greatest murderer of all time, Mao Zedong. But the moral idiots in America chanted "Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh" at antiwar rallies, and they depicted America as the real murderers of Vietnamese -- "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"
The Vietnamese communists were not fighting America for Vietnamese independence. America was never interested in controlling the Vietnamese people, and there is a perfect parallel to prove this: the Korean War. Did America fight the Korean communists in order to control Korea? Or did 37,000 Americans die in Korea so that Koreans could be free? Who was (and remains) a freer human being -- a Korean living under Korean communist rule in North Korea or a Korean living in that part of Korea where America defeated the Korean communists?
And who was a freer human being in Vietnam -- those who lived in non-communist South Vietnam (with all its flaws) or those who lived under Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh's communists in North Vietnam?
America fights to liberate countries, not to rule over them. It was the Vietnamese Communist Party, not America, that was interested in controlling the Vietnamese people. But the lie was spread so widely and so effectively that most of the world -- except American supporters of the war and the Vietnamese boat people and other Vietnamese who yearned for liberty -- believed that America was fighting for tin, tungsten and the wholly fictitious "American empire" while the Vietnamese communists were fighting for Vietnamese freedom.
I went to the "Vietnam War Remnants Museum" -- the Communist Party's three-floor exhibit of anti-American photos. Nothing surprised me -- not the absence of a single word critical of the communist North Vietnamese or of the Viet Cong; not a word about the widespread threats on the lives of anyone who did not fight for the communists; not a word about those who risked their lives to escape by boat, preferring to risk dying by drowning, being eaten by sharks or being tortured or gang-raped by pirates, rather than to live under the communists who "liberated" South Vietnam.
Equally unsurprising is that there is little difference between the history of the Vietnam War as told by the Communist Party of Vietnam and what just about any college student will be told in just about any college by just about any professor in America, Europe, Asia or Latin America.
I will end with the subject with which I began -- the Vietnamese. It is impossible to visit Vietnam and not be impressed by the people. I hope I live to see the day when the people of Vietnam, freed from the communist lies that still permeate their daily lives, understand that every Vietnamese death in the war against America was a wasted life, one more of the 140 million human sacrifices on the altar of the most bloodthirsty false god in history: communism.
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/dennis-prager/2011/02/15/trip-to-vietnam-revives-hatred-of-communism/
Recall what happened when the communists invaded the South of Vietnam in 1975 when we had all of our military forces out of the country. They broke their agreement, and then our own Congress broke the U.S. agreement with South Vietnam to intervene if the north attacked the South. The Paris Peace accords were a totally farce, and we should not have been there. I place blame squarely on LBJ, who micromanaged the war with the intent to retain some popularity here with voters, while trying weakly to discourage the communists. As expected, he achieved neither goal. Nixon should have taken Curtis Lemay's advice to LBJ--bomb Hanoi flat. We had the ability, but not the resolve. That entire fiasco has encouraged every two bit dictator to try us for the last 40 years. Quadaffi has recently begun flapping his mouth again encouraging the Palestinians. We need to take another shot at him and show the world we will not tolerate harassment from pissants.
MichaelSSEC-- political correctness has turned into speech police. Next to happen is some of us being tossed into jail for expressing opinions about politically or racially sensitive issues. It will happen here, as it has happened in Europe. Cops love to arrest people, and they need little excuse to do so.
Posted February 15, 2011 at 10:09:06 AM
I was a young man then. I fought to keep the south free as did most of the Americans that were there. I saw to much death and destruction wrought by the north I loved the country, it was beautiful, especially the central highlands, the beaches at Na Trang but I hated the Viet Cong and the NVA Regulars. 57,000 of us died trying to do something for those people that they did not want. We fought a war that our leaders had not the will to win. You meet and close with the enemy and kill them any damn way you can and all we heard was that this or that civilian was killed and we were monsters.
If we had had the will to win, we could have won. Why was there a list of targets that were sacrosanct? Why did so many of our men die. If we had used the same rules of engagement when we fought the second world war, General Lemay, MacArthur, Patton, Eisenhower and a host of other of our countries leaders would have been tried as
war criminals. You must take the enemies will to fight away, even if you have to kill them in ways that are not pretty. Dead is dead, no matter how you got that way. The civilian North Vietnanese grew food for their troops..end that by killing the farmers in any way that you can as well as factory works that were producing materials for the war. Russian ships hauling tanks, bullets, RPG's etc should have been sunk before they got to the ports, electric power plants should have been destroyed as should every building in the north as well as the people in them. You must take the enemies will to fight away. When a man is worried about his family being killed he will soon lose the desire to fight.
I personaly don't care a whit about the Vietnamese and any of the products that they currently produce for the world market. Let the communist purchase their products. I'm bitter and I'll go to my grave that way.
Posted February 15, 2011 at 7:50:11 PM
Tiếc là không sành tiếng Anh, lâu lắm rồi nay mới lại nghe được một bài dịch tiếng Anh, đọc nghe sướng cả tai sáng cảm mắt, ấm cả lòng. Cảm ơn người dịch và BBT. Xin hãy truyền tay nhau làm sao cho bài dịch này được chuyển đi rộng khắp. Chúng tôi cũng đang chuẩn bị để xin phép ông Việt Thường và các tác giả Nam Nhân Trọng Tín, Chính Khí Việt, DL Hà Tiến Nhất, Liên Thành...để có thể được phép dịch các bài viết có giá trị sang tiếng Đức, để góp phần vạch mặt tội ác bọn Việt gian CS cho cả thế giới phương Tây được biết.
ReplyDeleteTrân trọng
Khán thính giả tại Đức.
Tôi thì có thêm một ý kiến đó là lựa những bài lột tội làm Việt gian tiêu biểu nhất của ông Việt Thường và những nhà báo chân chính khác dịch sang tiếng Anh và phổ biến rộng rãi. Làm vậy để quốc tế tránh bị lừa bởi đám cuội phản tỉnh mà nghĩ rằng CS đang tiến bộ tích cực.
ReplyDeleteNhất trí với VHL!
ReplyDeleteTiếng Anh, tiếng Đức đều có giá trị cả nếu trước hết tôn trọng tác giả tác quyền, lột tả được chính xác ý tác giả.
Thức ăn ngon còn phải biết cách giọn cho ăn đúng lúc đúng chỗ, đúng người sành ăn nữa. Quý ở chỗ có Người biết nấu ăn giỏi, thấu biết tránh nghiệm "nghề, ngiệp". Người sành ăn không thiếu.
Chúng tôi sẽ học hỏi để đóng góp được một phần nhỏ nào dó.
Trân trọng
Khán thính giả tại Đức