{"id":91932,"date":"2017-05-08T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=91932"},"modified":"2017-05-06T19:17:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T18:17:03","slug":"just-because-the-golden-arches-are-in-vietnam-doesnt-mean-the-us-won-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/05\/just-because-the-golden-arches-are-in-vietnam-doesnt-mean-the-us-won-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Because the Golden Arches Are in Vietnam Doesn\u2019t Mean the US Won the War"},"content":{"rendered":"

5 May 2017 – <\/em>As we reflect on the 42nd<\/sup> anniversary of the merciful and jubilant end of the American War in Viet Nam, I have good news to share with US Americans, especially those who remember, or came of age in, that turbulent era:\u00a0 Viet Nam is alive and well and, indeed, prospering in many respects. In fact, it\u2019s faring better than the superpower it defeated in terms of optimism, dynamism, and hope.<\/p>\n

This leads me to my second message.\u00a0 Contrary to what you may have heard from the US media, overseas Vietnamese, or other sources, each with its own ax to grind, the United States lost the war even though Viet Nam now has a free market economy.\u00a0 Sadly, this is a message that has not penetrated the hearts and minds of most, including those who should know better, among them a public intellectual whom I deeply admire for his courage in speaking out about important issues of the day and his sober recognition that he is a refugee not an immigrant.<\/p>\n

Last December, Viet Thanh Nguyen, a chaired professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer<\/em><\/a>, described by Amazon as \u201cthrilling, rhythmic, and astonishing, as is the rest of Nguyen\u2019s enthralling portrayal of the Vietnam War,\u201d made the stunning pronouncement in a TV interview<\/a> that \u201cthe US won this conflict\u201d (8:03) because Viet Nam adopted a capitalist system, what is officially referred to as a socialist-oriented market economy.<\/p>\n

I could see many viewers nodding their heads in solemn agreement.\u00a0 \u201cYes\u201d, I could hear them proudly and confidently saying to themselves, chests puffed out and hearts beating red, white, and blue, we belatedly yet ultimately triumphed because Viet Nam acquiesced and became like US.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t that our goal from the beginning?<\/em><\/p>\n

The Big Lie<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a line, a fairy tale, a lie<\/em> that I\u2019ve heard many times.\u00a0 It somehow makes US Americans feel good that the \u201ccommies\u201d finally came around and saw the light.\u00a0 It\u2019s a psychological and emotional salve that reassures the gullible, the uninformed, and the nationalists that the sacrifices on their side were not in vain.\u00a0 The problem is it\u2019s dead wrong.<\/p>\n

3.8 million of Viet Thanh Nguyen\u2019s fellow Vietnamese and over 58,000 US Americans did not <\/em>die in a war of economic systems or ideologies.\u00a0 The world is not binary and the cause for which they gave their all was not about a free market vs. a centrally planned economy.\u00a0 It was about Vietnamese governing Viet Nam without continued foreign interference, occupation, and war.\u00a0 Viet Nam won the war because it expelled yet another foreign invader.<\/p>\n

Despite what embittered Vietnamese-Americans and diehard veterans who desperately want to believe, and want you to believe<\/em>, that the loss of limbs, life and sanity were not in vain, it\u2019s really that simple.<\/p>\n

The \u201chardline communists\u201d of whom you spoke, Mr. Viet, were also pragmatists \u2013 out of necessity.\u00a0 They made the fateful decision to bend rather than break with the \u0110\u1ed5i M\u1edbi (renovation) reforms of 1986, which began to bear fruit in the mid-1990s during my first visit to the country of your birth.\u00a0 Viet Nam has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is considered to be one of the great success stories of the developing world.\u00a0 It also ranks 5th<\/sup><\/a> among countries sending their young people to study in the US.<\/p>\n

In spite of extremes of wealth and poverty that are characteristic of any rapidly developing economy, Viet Nam\u2019s government has been praised for converting wealth<\/a> into national well-being, i.e., helping to create a rising tide that raises all boats, certainly not a claim the US can make, where extreme wealth concentration and a resulting oligarchy are the order of the day.\u00a0 (20 US Americans own as much as wealth<\/a> as 50% of the population.)<\/p>\n

The Communist Party is not a monolith, as you know.\u00a0 In fact, there\u2019s probably more diversity of opinion within this one party than in the US in which \u201cthere is only one party\u2026\u00a0 the Property Party \u2026 and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat\u201d, as another US writer and public intellectual, Gore Vidal, once described the US political system.\u00a0 I know this because Viet Nam is not a country I visit from time to time; I have lived here for over a decade.<\/p>\n

Of Errand Boys (and Girls)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever been to H\u00e0ng D\u01b0\u01a1ng<\/em> Cemetery, where about 2,000 independence fighters are buried, most in unmarked graves, on an island used by the French, South Vietnamese, and US Americans as a penal colony in which 20,000 Vietnamese died?\u00a0 Many US Americans who lived through that era know C\u00f4n S\u01a1n, part of the C\u00f4n \u0110\u1ea3o Archipelago off the coast of southern Viet Nam, a melancholy and now peaceful island, as the place where the tiger cages were \u201cdiscovered\u201d by Tom Harkin and Don Luce in 1970.<\/p>\n

In this memorial cemetery is the grave of national heroine V\u00f5 Th\u1ecb S\u00e1u, a Vietnamese schoolgirl who fought against the French colonialists, was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death, becoming the first woman to be executed at C\u00f4n S\u01a1n Prison.\u00a0 Every night, a throng of people, mostly Vietnamese, along with a few curious tourists, make the pilgrimage to her grave to pray, burn incense, pay their respects, and leave offerings.<\/p>\n

Before her execution in March 1952 at the tender age of 19, S\u00e1u spoke of \u201cthe colonialists who stole Viet Nam and the errand boys who sold it to them,\u201d in reference to fellow Vietnamese who did the bidding of the French and, later, the US Americans. You know that the official country of your birth, \u201cSouth Vietnam\u201d, would have ceased to exist in 1956, four years after S\u00e1u\u2019s death by firing squad, if the US had not intervened and ignored calls for a national election, as stipulated by the Geneva Accords of 1954.\u00a0 Those who supported the Republic of Viet Nam and US patronage in thought, word, and deed, especially in deed, were the \u201cerrand boys\u201d of whom S\u00e1u spoke.<\/p>\n

It is said that on the morning of S\u00e1u\u2019s execution the prison chaplain offered to baptize her and \u201cwash away her sins\u201d to which she replied \u201cI have no sins.\u00a0 Baptize the people who are about to kill me.\u201d\u00a0 \u2026I ask only for one thing.\u00a0 When you come to shoot me, don\u2019t cover my face.\u00a0 I am brave enough to look down the barrel.\u201d \u00a0If you know this part of your country\u2019s history and understand it, you understand beyond the shadow of a doubt that the war was not about capitalism vs. communism.<\/p>\n

Reality Check<\/strong><\/p>\n

The myth that the war was a battle of diametrically opposed ideologies is so pervasive that even some young Vietnamese studying in the US have internalized it.\u00a0 In a summer 2016 essay entitled What Vietnam Can Teach Us About a Divided America<\/em><\/a> the author \u2013 on the occasion of Remembrance Day, July 27th<\/sup>, a national holiday in Viet Nam for remembering those who died and were wounded in the service of their country, a Vietnamese undergraduate enrolled at a southern university and a graduate of one of the top high schools in Viet Nam, remarked that while listening to her grandfather\u2019s wartime stories, she \u201ccouldn\u2019t help admiring and yet pitying my grandfather, a soldier risking his own life and sacrificing everything he had for the ideology he believed in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reality check:\u00a0 Her grandfather and millions of others who courageously fought against the US military, its allies, and that of its client state did so for the noble cause of independence not on behalf of an ideology. From a Vietnamese perspective, the war was not about competing economic and social systems.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t need his granddaughter\u2019s pity; he needs her understanding, deepest respect, and eternal gratitude.\u00a0 He has mine, and I am neither a relative nor am I Vietnamese.<\/p>\n

The US was not ultimately victorious because there are now Starbucks, McDonald\u2019s, Dunkin\u2019 Donuts, and Popeyes dotting Viet Nam\u2019s commercial landscape.\u00a0 The US didn\u2019t win because Pepsi and Coca-Cola are battling for the palates and wallets of thirsty, sugar-deprived Vietnamese, or because prominently displayed Amway advertisements greet visitors as they exit the N\u1ed9i B\u00e0i (Hanoi) and T\u00e2n S\u01a1n Nh\u1ea5t (HCMC) international airports.<\/p>\n

Viet Nam won because its cause was just, its sacrifice supreme, and its military leadership brilliant. While April 30, 1975 was the day Saigon fell for the US and those locals who hitched their collective cart to the South Vietnamese client state, it was a day of liberation and celebration for most Vietnamese.\u00a0 It was the day Viet Nam became a unified, independent, and sovereign nation.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

Mark A. Ashwill<\/em> is a Hanoi-based international educator who has lived and worked in Viet Nam for over a decade. He is the author of <\/em>Vietnam Today: A Guide to a Nation at a Crossroads<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 May 2017 – As we reflect on the 42nd anniversary of the merciful and jubilant end of the American War in Viet Nam, I have good news to share with US Americans, especially those who remember, or came of age in, that turbulent era: Viet Nam is alive and well and, indeed, prospering in many respects. In fact, it\u2019s faring better than the superpower it defeated in terms of optimism, dynamism, and hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}