The Vietnam Tragedy

The Vietnam Tragedy

I would like to write something about a tragedy called Vietnam, but
then I wonder if I am qualified for the task at all. To do justice to
such a subject, one has to be a historian keenly interesed in the
tragedy and willing to spend years doing research which includes
interviewing relevant historical personages whose actions had an
impact on contemporary Vietnamese history. In addition, i am aware
that putting my thoughts down on paper would expose myself to
criticisms, some of which can be unconstructive and unpleasant, but I
am ploughing ahead due to the urgency of the situation and the scope
of the tragedy. I am offering what at best are merely my personal
impressions based on some facts.

Impressions don't carry with them a strong conviction as ideas. Ideas
in turn do not necessarily lead to truths and verities, especially in
religion and politics. While ideas in religion lack verification and
require blind acceptance from the faithful or induce outright
rejection from the skeptical on the basis of the fantasticality of
the religious dogmas, in politics such a verification does occur, but
the process takes a long time.

For thousands of years, rulers relied on an idea called the divine
right for legitimacy. They either claimed they were gods or sons of
God or had the support of God. Such a quaint idea had a long sway over
the populace because of widespread ignorance though there were some
few exceptions in some periods of Ancient Greece and later in Ancient
Rome when the ideas of democracy and rules by representation flourished.

Although atheism, and by implication a direct challenge to the idea of
divine right, occured in Ancient Greece and was held by some Indian
thinkers of antiquity, it didn't become a contending idea and force
until The Age of Enlightenment. It and the idea of democracy
challenged the divine right of rule. Since then democracy slowly took
root and displaced the divine right of rule when 20th century arrived.
Atheism's progress has been slower but steady. I doubt if it ever
displaces theism as a prevailing mode of thinking of humans no matter
how widespread scientific knowledge is disseminated. There is
something about humans that make most of them fall in love and stay in
love with illusions and delusions.

The Midde Ages witnessed the rise of the merchant class and with it,
the idea of capitalism and the political power that money could bring.
The Industrial Revolution brought about subsequent intolerable abuses
of workers. Several ideas were advanced to combat the abuses, one of
which was Communism, a product of a philosopher, which, among other
things, called for the dictatorship of the proletariat and class
warfare in lieu of national unity and solidarity

As an idea, communism is not bad by itself though it is idealistic and
fails to address squarely the pervasive propensity of humans to place
self-interest over common interests. Sure enough, the application of
communism in both politics and economics has proven disastrous.

The blueprint set by Lenin on how to seize political power and hang
on to it led directly to a repressive totalitarianism of the worst
kind, responsible for over 100 million deaths and utter human
degradation. It turned out there was no such thing as dictatorship of
the proletariat; instead, there have existed the dictatorship of a
ruling clique in the name of the party, the exclusive authority in the
country.

In the realm of economics, communist central planning as opposed to
capitalist market economy, proved to be inferior. A look at the
disparity in economic achievements between the former East Germany and
former West Germany and between the present North and South Korea
would prove the point.

It is the tragedy of Vietnam that Communism as an ideology caught the
eye of the young nationalist Nguyen Tat Thanh. He was trained by
Russia and later was helped by Red China in his struggle to expel the
French colonists. The Vietminh movement under his leadership utilized
outright lies and ruthless cunning in exterminating those fellow
compatriots who didn't share its communist ideology. Even back in the
1940's and 1950's, there were many Vietnamese who found communist
ideology distasteful and inhuman as it reduced humans to the level of
pure animal existence where lies were welcome and betrayal and
complete ruthlessness commonly practiced. Thus, it was no surprise
that when Vietnam was partitioned in 1954, a million people in North
Vietnam opted for life under a non-communist, market economy regime.
Dissatisfied with ruling just half of Vietnam, Nguyen Tat Thanh, now
commonly known with the alias Ho Chi Minh, decided to invade South
Vietnam, just like his counterpart in North Korea did in 1950. The
Vietnam tragedy got worse with this invasion which caused the deaths
of around 4 million Vietnamese, immense destruction of the
infrastructure of both North and South Vietnam, damage to the ecology
and the morals, the dislocation of 3 million Vietnamese who sought
refuge from communism, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands who
perished in an effort to seek freedom. The Vietnamese paid a very high
price for the experiment of unifying the country under communism. The
experiment was successful because of unflagging support of Red China
which helped Ho Chi Minh (HCM) with the ulterior motive of taking over
Vietnam itself at a later date. Such later date is happening right
now. One of the reasons I state communism is a tragedy for Vietnam is
because the class warfare adopted enthusiastically by HCM and his
lieutenants has alienated large segments of Vietnamese society. The
segments harbor intense contempt and hatred for the VCP, espcially its
leadership, and thus don't want to shed blood to protect the VCP even
if there is an all-out invasion of Vietnam by China. This lack of the
will to resist is posing a clear and present danger to the survival of
the Vietnamese. Disunity is always a harbinger of defeat. We cannot
blame the attitude of those segments of Vietnamese society. Earlier in
the fight against the French colonists, they responded to the appeal
of nationalism advocated by the communists, only to see that the
ruling clique of the communists enjoyed all the fruits of sacrifice by
blood contributed by all Vietnamese, once the French were kicked out
of the country. What Vietnam needs is a movement that transcends the
narrow interests of the VCP and is fiercely nationalist in character
for any chance to repel the Chinese to succeed.

Red China was also involved with Communist uprisings in Malaya (name
of the country then) and Indonesia in the 1950's and 1960's, but
fortunately for these countries, the uprisings were crushed decisively
thanks to the following factors:

1. Most of the rebels and their sympathizers were of Chinese
extraction. They generally didn't receive the support of the non-
Chinese population.
2. The antipathy of Islam, a religion of most ethnic Malays and
Indonesians, towards Communism.
3. Most significantly, because of the geographical distance of these
two countries from Red China, a source that fomented troubles, Red
China was not in a position to assist unimpededly their communist
brethren as it did to the Vietnamese communists.

Due to their escape from the scourge of communism, these two countries
have moved on and surpassed Vietnam in standard of living and
democratic way of life while Vietnam is mired in corruption,
ineptitude, breakdown of morality, and dictatorship. More importantly,
these two countries are not facing any danger of losing sovereignty
over their own countries whereas Vietnam is forced to yield land and
sea to China. Such is the tragedy of Vietnam, the tragedy of embracing
a bankrupt ideology which was repudiated even in the land of its
origin, the tragedy of blindly following the footsteps of China.

Faced with such tragedy and the irony that after going through immense
suffering and losing millions of people in the struggle to oust the
French colonists and in the quest to unify the country under the
banner of communism, Vietnam is being taken over piece by piece by the
its alleged Big Brother Communist China, an array of opposition to the
Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) is emerging in Vietnam. Some
optimistic and over-enthusiastic anti-communists in overseas
Vietnamese communities claim that the emerging opposition consisting
of outspoken lawyers, scholars, technocrats, religious leaders,
students, and retired party officials constitutes "a perfect storm"
that threatens to blow away once and for all the VCP out of the
country and into oblivion,

I contend that the metaphor of "a perfect storm" is a hyperbole. At
best, the opposition at its current stage of development is no more
than a squall that does nothing to the regime other than bringing some
rains of annoyance and anger to the VCP, because in response to the
rains, the Hanoi regime has brought out its reliable umbrella of
repression via imprisonment whereby the state would not provide
sustenance to the prisoners. Such responsibility falls on the families
and friends of the prisoners. To rule over others by the threat of
inducing starvation has been a well-honed and evil technique of the
Vietnamese Communists. At present, the squall appears to be stalling
and is in danger of petering out. For the squall to strengthen to a
status worthy to be called "a perfect storm", the opposition has
somehow to galvanize the support of the populace. If the Vietnamese
from all walks of life are persuaded to overcome the human instinct of
self-preservation and decide en masse that they want to take their
destiny into their own hands and thus take to the streets in all the
main cities of Vietnam and demand that the VCP act responsibly with
respect to various issues, especially the urgent issue of China's
encroachment on Viet territory, then and only then do we have a
perfect storm that would blow the VCP out of existence and bring into
its place a form of government that would respond to the needs of the
people, hence the country.

Wissai