Exploding the Myths About Vietnam

AS the war in Afghanistan drags on with no definitive victory in sight for the United States and American troops begin to withdraw, comparisons to the Vietnam War are once again in the air, 50 years after both Washington and Hanoi decided to beef up their forces in South Vietnam. “Just take a run through the essential Vietnam War checklist,” wrote Tom Engelhardt in Mother Jones magazine, noting “there’s ‘quagmire’ ” and “the idea of winning ‘hearts and minds’ ” as well as “bomb-able, or in our era drone-able, ‘sanctuaries’ across the border” and even “a one-man version of My Lai.” Although these analogies are particularly attractive to critics — who see America’s battle in Afghanistan as even more futile than Vietnam and advocate a quick exit — they are deeply flawed.

Among the many problems with drawing lessons from Vietnam and applying them to Afghanistan is that the history of the Vietnam War is often completely misunderstood. The war’s history is constantly evolving as new evidence emerges, particularly from the other side. Since too little attention was paid to understanding the enemy’s motivations, internal dynamics, and foreign relations, we have always had an incomplete and incorrect picture of that war. If we are to learn from the past, then, it’s worth parting the bamboo curtain that has long concealed decision making in North Vietnam to dispel some ingrained myths of that oft-invoked war.

IT is commonly believed that North Vietnam decided to go to war in 1959-60 to save the southern insurgency from eradication and that the Communist Party enjoyed the unflagging support of the Vietnamese people until the war’s end in 1975. But recent evidence reveals that the party’s resolution to go to war in South Vietnam was intimately connected to problems at home. Revolutionary war was an effective way to deflect attention from domestic problems, including a devastating land reform campaign, a dissident intellectual movement and an unsuccessful state plan for socialist transformation of the economy.

One of the greatest misconceptions of the Vietnam War is that Ho Chi Minh was the uncontested leader of North Vietnam. In reality, Ho was a figurehead while Le Duan, a man who resides in the marginalia of history, was the architect, main strategist and commander in chief of North Vietnam’s war effort. The quiet, stern Mr. Duan shunned the spotlight but he possessed the iron will, focus and administrative skill necessary to dominate the Communist Party.

Along with his right-hand man, the indomitable Le Duc Tho, who would later spar with Henry A. Kissinger during the Paris peace negotiations, Mr. Duan constructed a sturdy militarist empire that still looms over Hanoi today. Their hawkish policies led North Vietnam to war against Saigon and then Washington, and ensured that a negotiated peace would never take the place of total victory. Mr. Duan ruled the party with an iron fist and saw Ho and Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, renowned for defeating the French at Dien Bien Phu, as the greatest threats to his authority. He sidelined Ho, General Giap and their supporters when making nearly all key decisions.

In 1963-4, Mr. Duan blackmailed Ho into silence when the aging leader opposed the controversial decision to escalate the war and seek all-out victory before American forces could intervene. And in 1967-8, there was a large-scale purge in Hanoi when Ho, General Giap and their allies opposed Mr. Duan’s plans for the Tet Offensive. Although the southern war initially rallied North Vietnamese to support the party, it soon became a quagmire. Mr. Duan and Mr. Tho reacted by creating a garrison state that labeled any resistance to their war policies as treason. By increasing the powers of internal security forces and ideological police and subjugating the southern insurgency to Hanoi, they were able to wage total war at their discretion until 1975...  Read the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/opinion/sunday/what-we-dont-know-about-vietnam-can-still-hurt-us.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

NB: To my mind this article is an apologia for neo-colonialism and attempt at rendering strategic advice to US policy makers. Who attempted to divide Vietnamese permanently into North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese? Who sabotaged the implementation of the Geneva Accords of 1954? Did not the Accords forbid any further foreign interference in Vietnam? Were Le Duan and 'hawkish' communists also responsible for the cancellation in 1956 of nationwide elections mandated under the accords? Who propped up the regime that resulted from Ngo Din Diem's coup of 1955?

The only unexceptional sentence in this article is this: "it is a myth that America defeated itself in the Vietnam War.." But it is followed by a stunning observation: "It was Mr. Duan’s bid for victory in 1964 that prompted America to intervene decisively." Really! The Vietnamese were fighting in and for their own country. The US had turned up in a country 13,000 km away, in pursuit of Cold War aims, and contemptuous of the fact that the Vietminh had been their allies in the war against Japan and the Axis powers. 

This is propagandistic history: Dilip