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Vietnam: Right or Wrong

By VVAW

THE VIEW FROM 1979

There is much talk and writing nowadays concerning the situation inside Vietnam and with Vietnam's foreign policy. Militarists and politicians are claiming they were right about the nature of Vietnam and that the anti-war movement was wrong. Form there they go on to explain why we "lost in Vietnam."

The facts about Vietnam and U.S. involvement are apparent even from government and military publications. We were there for the political reason of defeating a guerilla movement. We were going to show the world that what the French, the Japanese and the Nazis were not able to do, we would accomplish. We'd show that military, technological and industrial might could take on all corners and win. The best a colonial people could expect was to reach some accommodation with U.S. imperialism and get a few crumbs with the lion's share going to some American corporation. Economically, Vietnam had oil, rubber, tin and rice as Texaco, Exxon, Shell and Michelin can attest. Of course the press secretary for the Pentagon or the President didn't say this at the time. Instead there was talk of an independent Vietnam (which apparently meant independent of the Vietnamese people)—a separate country in the South even though Vietnam (North and South) had been one country for thousands of years split up (most recently) by U.S. intrigues in the 1950's.

Veterans saw the reality of this aggression first hand as the triggermen for the gangsters in Congress and on Wall Street. Destroying the country and killing the people to "save them" did not make sense. And there wasn't much sense in the fact that the only people who seemed to want us in Vietnam were the corrupt Saigon generals, the pimps, drug pushers and prostitutes. At the same time we could see that the well-trained and equipped American troops armed with technological miracles and massive bombings could not defeat the NLF or North Vietnamese on the battlefield—and we couldn't win the hearts and minds of the people.

The U.S. lost that war and that was a good thing. We were in the wrong. We were the aggressors, the torturers, the thieves—there is no doubt we were the "bad guys."

Today, however, the Vietnamese leaders don't have a lot to be proud of. They took the victories of the Vietnamese people and sold them for 30 pieces of silver. Disregarding Ho Chi Minh's dictum that "Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence, " they have invaded Kampuchea (formerly Cambodia), installed a puppet regime, stationed more than 100,000 troops there and are robbing that country;s resources in a replay of the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. They have sold out their ports and resources to the USSR. Soviet troops and ships are now at Cam Ranh Bay, and the Vietnamese economy is at the tender mercy of COMECOM, a Soviet controlled economic pact.

While seeing themselves as the conquerors of Indochina, they also act as frontmen for Soviet interests. This included provocations against China, claiming territory on the border and islands populated by Chinese fishermen. Internally, they have persecuted the Chinese minority in a fashion reminiscent of the Nazi attacks on the Jews, and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee the country. They even attack the heroes of wars against the French and the U.S. on the basis of their nationality.

The Vietnamese rulers are not being let off the hook. Just as world opinion condemned the U.S. involvement, the Vietnamese attack on Kampuchea has been condemned. The Vietnamese puppet government in Cambodia was not seated by the UN while the legitimate government retains its seat. Industrial countries like Sweden have cut off aid. The Peoples Republic of China countered with an attack of Vietnamese-held territory, then pulled back as they said they would do at the outset.

In Cambodia the Vietnamese are restricted to the cities while the Khmer Rouge control the countryside. Units of puppet troops have even defected to the Khmer guerillas taking their officers along. Vietnamese troops have even begun to desert to Thailand. All of this is very similar to what happened to the last aggressor in Indochina—and points to a similar fate awaiting these new aggressors.

Against this backdrop we find the hundreds of thousands of refugees—the "boat people"—fleeing from Vietnam. These are not the same people who jumped the Vietnamese ship as the U.S. was being forced out back in 1975. At the pullout we collected the scum of Vietnam—the generals with their suitcases full of gold, the tortures and assassins running from their just trials, the drug pushers and the pimps (remember reading about brothels set up at the time?)

The new group is different. They have been forced out by persecution of the Vietnamese government; they are the Chinese national minority, many Buddhists, draft-age youth who don't want to fight in Kampuchea. Even a member of the Central Committee, Secretary to the Vietnamese National Assembly, and long-time comrade in arms of Ho Chi Minh defected to China, accusing Vietnamese leaders of subservience to the USSR and condemning Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea.

China has already accepted a quarter of a million refugees as permanent residents and has said she will accept more. Not only should the U.S. pressure other countries to take in the refugees, but the U.S. should take more also. When Soviet Jews manage to escape from the USSR, they are welcomed here with open arms; the Vietnamese fleeing persecution differ only in that they come in ragged boats instead of airliners.

Some Americans attack the influx of Vietnamese because , they say, "they'll take jobs from Americans." The charge is a smokescreen. If the U.S. Took in 250,000 vietnamese ( as China has), of which perhaps 100,000 would be potentially employable, we're talking about .1% of the U.S. workforce—and that's not much. We all know that there's work that needs to be done. And if the question is money, how about a special profits tax on the corporations ( and the rich who run them) which piled up profits off our sweat and blood during the Vietnam war?

During the Indochina War, VVAW stood 100% behind the Vietnamese and their leaders as they fought for liberation. It is not a change today to oppose them; yesterday, they were right and today they are wrong. Yesterday they were leading their people into liberation and today they're leading them into servitude. Our support must be based on the situation as it exists and on what we can see as just.