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What Went Wrong in Vietnam

By VVAW

From the beginnings of VVAW in 1967 straight through the final victory of the people of Vietnam in 1975, VVAW stood firmly with the goals of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in South Vietnam and the government of North Vietnam. We not only believed the statement by Ho Chi Minh that, "Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence, "but fully supported the efforts of the Vietnamese people around the world, we rejoiced with the final victory of the Vietnamese people when the U.S. was finally tossed out and the corrupt and dictatorial government of South Vietnam was forced to fell the country.

In part because we so firmly supported the cause of liberation in Vietnam we hesitated to comment on Vietnam we hesitated to comment on Vietnam's increasing dependence on the Soviet Union, though we viewed this development with increasing alarm. We could not see how a government and a people which had fought so well against U.S. imperialism could fall into the arms of the other great imperialist power and exchange the bold struggle against U.S. aggression against the people of Vietnam for a love-in with the Russians whose purposes were much the same. With Vietnam's invasion of neighboring Cambodia and with the border war with China, the designs of the Vietnamese government became clearer—they wished to dominate all of Southeast Asia and turn it into a great Indochina over which the Vietnamese would have control.

Some of the problems facing the people of Vietnam today were made clear in an interview with Truong Nhu Tang, a founding member of the NLF in 1960 and Minister of Justice in the Provisional Revolutionary government (PRG) from 1969 to 1976. Under the Russian dominated version of Vietnam which sprang up after the success of the liberation struggle, Truong Nhu Tang escaped Vietnam to France where he now works in a tire factory.

"As one who has given my entire adult life to the cause of the Vietnamese nation, "he said, "I mut tell you that the liberation in Vietnam has been betrayed." The present government of Vietnam, he said, is carrying out a repression more sever than that of the old Thieu regime in South Vietnam. The government, he said, "has sold out Vietnamese national interests to the Soviet Union and is continuing to make war in Kampuchea (Cambodia) and Laos in order to create a Soviet-Vietnamese sphere of influence where once there was an American one."

Under the Soviet puppet regime, Truong states, there are severe food shortages, political repression, persecution of the ethnic Chinese and heavy battlefield casualties among the Vietnamese troops inside Kampuchea. In addition to these substantial problems, there is the failure of the Soviet Union to live up to the promises it has made concerning economic aid. One result of this, according to Truong, is the beginning of a resistance movement inside Vietnam, based on throwing over the present power structure controlled by Le Duan, secretary general of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and the most powerful figure in present-day Vietnam.

As in the past, the key posts in the government are held by relatives of the rulers; Le Duan has sons in key military positions of power, a brother-in-law as chief of the propaganda commission's secret service and other in-laws and nephews scattered throughout the government and the military. Le Duc Tho (chief of the organizational department of the Vietnamese Communist Party) has brothers in key party positions—all of this being reminiscent of the days when South Vietnamese President Diem ran his country like it was a family-owned business. It is a long ways from the freedom and independence for which the people of Vietnam sacrificed so much for so many years.

For hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese for whom the victory in the liberation struggle might have meant an ear of peace and rebuilding it has instead meant more fighting—invading Kampuchea and involved in a border war with China. Meanwhile they have seen their country fall more and more under the wing of the Soviet Union whose policies in other areas of the world and with other satellites (as in the case of Cuba) has meant economic disaster.

Truong now speaks of "liberation betrayed." For the people of South Vietnam who bore the brunt of the years of war, and for members of what was the Provisional Revolutionary government (PRG) which gave political leadership to the fight against the American invasion of the country, the loss has been extreme. Although Ho chi Minh had talked of gradual reunification of Vietnam the Hanoi government didn't wait. Few members of the PRG ended up with any position in the "unified" government, and even those seem to have little real power. And always in the background lurked the Soviet Union ready to gobble up whatever it could and use Vietnam to its own ends.

There is little doubt that the war of liberation in Vietnam went sour. For those of us who supported the struggle in Vietnam in every way we could, we can only look with regret at what has happened, but that in no way changes the fact that our support was right. We stood shoulder to shoulder with the Vietnamese people in their struggle for liberation—a struggle which was not only right but victorious—and celebrated with them. That the fruits of their struggle have turned sour only means that we will stand again with the people of that country when their struggle begins anew.