| Author | Message | ||
     Reindog |
President Phony spoke about how Ho Chi Minh was inspired by Thomas Jefferson. Tell that to the 58000 Americans who died. Tell that to the tens of thousands of brave Vietnamese people who took to boats to escape Uncle Ho. Tell that to the multitudes that Ho Chi Minh slaughtered. President Phony never disappoints. Go play some golf, Mr. President. Your besmirching of America and praise of our enemies is getting more than old. Get off the stage. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/obama_ says_mass_murderer_ho_chi_minh_was_inspired_by_jef ferson.html | ||
| Nik |
Look up who trained Uncle Ho when he was fighting the Japanese if you really want to be mad. | ||
| Hybridmomentspass |
Know much about Ho Chi Minh? He truly was awed at several of the American leaders, especially Truman during the 14 points stuff He wanted to meet Truman, didnt happen and he was pissed off. He was vulnerable to Communist ideals and was swayed to that side. That doesnt change the fact that he turned away from ideals that America/Americans value. That due to his actions many of our brave men died on battlefields over there. But how many in history have started with 'good' ideas and turned 'bad' in the end? | ||
| Nik |
He was vulnerable to Communist ideals and was swayed to that side. He was a communist long before then, having been involved with the Comintern in the Soviet Union. | ||
| Roderick |
I knew this subject was going to come up here. First...It is very good odds that I am the only Viet-American on this board. I was borned in Sai Gon. I survived the 1968 Tet Offensive. I fled in 1975 when I was 12 yrs old. Now...The history that is presented to American adults and taught to American children is that the US kinda sorta 'betrayed' Ho Chi Minh, as if Ho quoting the US Declaration of Independence somehow made him palatable to the US back in WW II. Nonsense. It is recorded in the famous Pentagon Papers that Roosevelt in a conversation with Cordell Hull (SecState) that with consent from Russia (Stalin) and China (Chiang Kai-shek), Indochina was to be turned over to a UN trusteeship with the goal towards independence. Indochina at that time includes Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pen t1.html
Roosevelt died before war's end, but until Aug-Sept 1945, Truman have no reasons to deviate from this plan. It was a noble idea and a reasonably sound process. But then it begs the question of how did France ended up in Viet Nam anyway. Popular (mis)conception is that the US 'supported' France's return to Indochina as colonial master. An ally returning a favor to an ally. Western racism at work. http://www.vietnamgear.com/March6agreement.aspx
In Mar 1946, a few months after the official WW II end, Ho Chi Minh and Jean Sainteny made a deal. Not that difficult to guess the national origin of the second name. The deal was for Viet Nam was to enter the French Union as a semi-autonomous member, like how Puerto Rico is to the US. In return, France would officially recognize the Viet Minh as 'legitimate' government of all of Viet Nam. To ensure a rapid transition of status and installation of government, France would 'assist' the Viet Minh in 'persuading' rival Vietnamese Nationalists in accepting the Viet Minh as authority. To sum it up, the Viet Minh and France slaughtered political rivals in North Viet Nam, ensuring the Viet Minh take over. My grandfather, before he took most of the clan southward, remember how the Viet Minh forced people to line up on roadside waving French flags welcoming French landing ships and disembarking French soldiers. To make the deal acceptable to objectors in his circle, Ho allegedly said: It is better to smell French shit for 100 yrs than to eat Chinese shit for 1000. The US was under no obligation to accept anything Ho said in self promotion. If anything, Truman's hesitancy about Viet Nam in general and doubt about Ho in particular was appropriate given how the US originally planned to have the country into UN trusteeship. Ho's communist leanings were already well known among the OSS agents there. France was desperate for anything to legitimize her return to Indochina to reclaim what was lost and most likely denied by a greater power that have great distaste for what France was and wanted to be again. The Ho-Sainteny Agreement was the proverbial stab in the back for the US. Then once the Viet Minh cemented their rule in North Viet Nam, Ho turned against France and shrewdly brought to the fore the evils of colonialism and with France's friendship to the US, let the world's peoples interpret the implication as they see fit. It worked and well enough to distract even France who was a partner in that deal. Item One: If France was not greedy, Ho and the Viet Minh would most likely be politically defanged and at best a vocal party in this speculative parliament. While the Viet Minh was busy murdering fellow Viet Nationalists, Mao completed his communist conquest of mainland China (1949). Then Mao responded to Ho's request for help in booting France out of Viet Nam. France eventually fought a retreating war to South Viet Nam. Fear of communism was already going in the US and that overrode any hard feelings the US had over France's treachery regarding the Ho-Sainteny Agreement. The US ended up making public statements about supporting France's claim to Indochina. It may have been factually wrong regarding said 'support', but the damages were done to US image. Item Two: Mao was under no obligation to answer Ho's call for help. He had an entire country to recover from the ravages of war, particularly Manchuria which was annexed by Imperial Japan. If the greed from France and China were not there, there would be no Vietnam War as we know it today. Ho Chi Minh was no doubt a great patriot, but so were many other Vietnamese Nationalists. Ho just happened to have superior perception and sense on how to maneuver and manipulate people and situations. Some Lefty will try to justify the Ho-Sainteny Agreement by pointing out that there was a deal between France and Chiang Kai-shek for France to relieve Chinese soldiers, who relieved Japanese soldiers at the end of WW II. It is seemingly a reasonable argument given the fact that even though Japan surrendered, Japanese troops were authorized by Allied powers to keep arms and positions of authority to maintain order in their areas of occupation until an Allied representative arrived to relieve them of that duty. For Indochina, Chiang Kai-shek was that representative. Then he needed his troops to fight a civil war against Mao. So an official transference of authority was needed. The rebuttal to that silly argument is that why the need to insert Viet Nam into the French Union at all? Why not just simply say that the Viet Minh will recognize France in Viet Nam solely for the purpose of relieving Chinese troops so they can leave for an emergency in their homeland? I fixed jets in the USAF for ten yrs. Nothing spectacular. I felt I had to do my part in defending the US against an evil ideology, no matter how invisible my role might be. I have been inside Victor Alert shelters and stood in quiet awe in front of F-111Es loaded with pairs of B61s. I lived thru a war as a child and was ready to go into another one as an adult. And now I see Americans twice elected a gullible and inexperienced man and an intellectual enemy of the country that I fled to and helped defended. He merely may have parroted what the Vietnamese President fed him about Ho, but even if I am to grant him that generosity, there is enough in Obama's background that convinced me that he is not the appropriate leader for the US. | ||
| Aesquire |
Thanks for the history. You are correct that Barry Dunham admires Ho, Stalin, and Mao. Far more than he appreciates Jefferson. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Roderick, Thank you for sharing your knowledge and insight. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Roderick, thank you for that, fantastic post. I'm sorry you had to flee for your life, but I'm proud to call you an American! | ||
| Oldog |
Again thank you not only for sharing but for your service to our great country, Some who were born here, seem to have lost site of how valuable our freedom is and what has been paid for it. | ||
| Two_seasons |
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else. Winston Churchill | ||
| Reindog |
Roderick, Thank you. I have worked with some fantastic engineers who escaped by boat with their families from Vietnam in 1975 and their stories are nothing short of horrific. Some female family members did not make it because of pirates. I will not repeat details that they have confided with me but it has made me aware of the ignorance that the Left proudly proclaims. The feckless Congress of 1975 is similar to the 2013 session. May the detractors of Liberty and Freedom rot in hell for all eternity. Again, thank you. May President Phony wake up and begin to lead but I doubt he will ever do so. | ||
| Kenm123t |
Great Post We would like to here more about the history of your native country Ken | ||
| Blake |
Great thread, and great post Roderick. Thanks for taking time to share. I can't despise anyone more than the scum in congress who saw to it that America abandoned the people of Vietnam. | ||
| Pwnzor |
My mom's neighbors escaped from Cambodia in 1975 in a cargo container. One of them died on the trip, and the rest of them spent 35 days in the dark with a rotting corpse. Now they are college professors and so are their kids! They're what I would consider to be VERY conservative in their political views. Imagine that. | ||
| Roderick |
One of the most egregious deception the Left done and continues to do today is to teach American children that the US 'invaded' Viet Nam. The word 'invasion' generally have a negative connotation associated to it and by extension to the country that did the act. It is generally associated with territorial expansion, like how Imperial Japan did to Manchuria, with the intent to make the victim a colonial interest, like how the Europeans carved up mainland China, or with resource grab, like how Iraq did to Kuwait. An invasion is essentially an uninvited trespass of internationally recognized borders and usually not very good things happens to the natives. The average American adult and worse, student, have no response to this charge precisely because they are usually too emotionally stunned by the charge to exercise any intellectual investigation and critical thinking to the charge. The counter to this nonsense is to ask straight questions as to why did the US 'invaded' Viet Nam. For what? Oil? Colonialism? Women? Annexation? Viet Nam was a country but had two distinct political entities: North Viet Nam and South Viet Nam. Each have its own government, currency, economic model, and foreign policy. Which Viet Nam did the US supposedly 'invaded'? And how when one of them invited the US to be an ally? And finally, is it wrong for anyone, let alone the for the US, to resist communism and communist expansion? South Viet Nam was no paragon of democratic virtues as wanted by the American Founders. But the fact that during the war, there was a constant stream of refugees southward, and after the war was the Boat People, should tell the average Americans that what the refugees ran in terror from was far worse than what their Leftist intellectuals and celebrities tries to hide. The American students, from grade school to the university level, have been conditioned by Leftist intellectuals and academicians not to ask critical questions regarding the Vietnam War. National self criticism is never a bad thing for a people to do. It is how the country and the people grow, especially when the country and people are of immigrant stock. The US in many ways led the world in this critical act but for the years I spent as an immigrant and citizen in the US, I have seen this positive act degenerated into self hatred chic or cool instead of a genuine intellectual endeavor. And when this attitude is mentally ingrained during the most formative years of a person's life, it will be near impossible to exorcise in adulthood. The worst is when this attitude is carried into government. Viet Nam is not the Indian Wars of the American 18-19th century. That wound is largely healed. Viet Nam is just one generation away from this current one and will continue to be exploited by the Left to indoctrinate the next generation of Americans to hate their country because of its imperfections instead of loving it in spite of the same. Convenient alliances are unfortunate consequences of this imperfect and ideologically competing world. The US must learn the lessons of Viet Nam that ideological allies, or even those not so ideologically aligned, should not be taken lightly, no matter how imperfect they may be. Their next generations of peoples and leaders will remember what America and Americans did and may not be kind to American friendly gestures in the future when America needs alliances, convenient or else. The average Americans must learn and understand that for their country to lead, for a people that generation after generation boasts of their immigrant forefathers, America needs these alliances. The average Americans must understand that fidelity is a two-way street and when America serves as a goal for what these allies want to be or at least to feel safe amongst, and most of them likely to be of inferior economic and political statures, the faithfulness of those who struggled to leave their homelands, took public oaths to abandon allegiances to the same, and to become Americans are immeasurable in both tangible and intangible ways. | ||
| Alfau |
I often wonder about the eucalyptus trees we Australians planted in Phoc Toy province, Viet-Nam. Every day without fail I think of Viet-Nam and American stupidity. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
We shall not learn the lessons of history. We are at current, aligning against Russia in our support of Al-Quaeda in their efforts to overthrow Assad.... My bet is he is assassinated by our 'proxy' and it gets hot. The question is whether it is this year or next. They have already killed 100,000 in the region.... a nice little murder at the state executive level is just enough to kick of the Arch Duke meme It will be a very interesting year. and the O NEEDS a war to distract from the crap that he is pulling - so it is a race to see if it is a ginned domestic martial law first, or international war second ; make no mistake, one will be used to justify the other. | ||
| Strokizator |
Every day without fail I think of . . . American stupidity. Hey now, it's OK for us to call ourselves stupid but not for others. If you're married I'm sure that when your wife complains about her family you're know better than to say "Yeah, your sister's a b*itch". Keep it up and we'll send Quigley back there to straighten things out. | ||
| Aesquire |
Great Movie, but I have to agree with the Aussie. Between the LBJ/McNamara version of "war", and Congress abandoning the Vietnamese to mass murder and reeducation camps, our Government was stupid, permanently harmed American Relations with the planet, and selfishly short sighted. Ditto the US involvement with the Afghans to help them free themselves from Soviet rule, ( a good thing ) and ignoring them to be ruled by the Taliban, a ruthless gangster group without the honor of the Mafia and the religious fanaticism to throw acid in the face of little girls for going to school. In the case of Afghanistan, it was stupid, careless and eventually very costly. ( but not, I think, with malice. Freaking selfish, yeah. The Politicians were too concerned with getting and keeping their jobs to actually do them. ) In the case of Vietnam it was both willful treason by anti-war dupes of the Soviets and insane concepts of war as diplomacy by other means, ( by LBJ's admin. ) also heavily influenced by Marxist thought. The result was dishonor most foul. Is "Quigley Down Under" a popular film in Australia? ( one of the greatest allies of all time, and some of the greatest folk on Earth. ) | ||
| Alfau |
I get to fight but not allowed to see the stupidity. You are wrong and stupid for thinking that. | ||
| Cityxslicker |
Criticize all you want ; nothing is carved in stone - not even the Constitution ; apparently. but if you are just gonna whine - the really it is better to go ride ! If I can show you how to tear down the system, crash it, and make sure that those in charge of it are given their due Tale of Two Cities ending; let me know. I am spending the next three months enrolling everybody with a pulse into the new federal system, while simultaneously helping every independent Dr and Small clinic I can to OPT out of the CMS/Medicare/Medicaid trap. To kill Marxist Leninist cycle of stupidity: Overwhelm the system Lead the Performers Out / show them how to Go Galt Drop Revenue in Taxes that contribute. (go change your with-holding ; dry up their monthly contributions from employees) It gives both the left and the right what they want.... and it KILLS this beast. Enjoy the show, feel free to join in at your own locality. Remember - Cemetaries are fair game; let the dead enroll ! It is a lie as old as Gogol. | ||
| Strokizator |
You are wrong and stupid for thinking that. I'm often wrong but never stupid. I guess you failed to see the humor in my response. Who's stupid now? | ||
| Alfau |
Ok Sorry Stroker. | ||
| Roderick |
I posted my life's history and my opinion on some news/blogs sites that have a decidedly 'liberal' and/or very high 'Leftist' bias, thegrio.com for example, which is Left and black to boot. After a couple days, a few sites deleted my comment, thegrio.com is one of them. It really saddens me, not because they deleted my comment, but more because they failed to live up to the high minded principles they use to self-righteously condemn conservatives. This is not the America I grew up in. But then again, I grew up in the pre-historic (Internet) era where if you do not like contestant opinions, either leave or do not go to where they may be. I would have thought that when you create a place where anyone can access and to deposit their opinions as you encourage them to do, your own 'public square', so to speak, even though it is yours and you are master there, the fact that you allow a subject to be open for debate mean contestant opinions are welcome. And if the opinionator have experiences that you do not have and opined in a polite manner, his/her opinion should be welcomed. I guess a conservative Vietnamese-American, one who actually lived through one of America's most socially divisive era and issue, is simply too radical for liberals/leftists to contemplate. It is not that I resent being pigeonholed, I just find it curious that for a political group that espouses diversity in opinions and considers itself to be more 'enlightened' in every way, the intolerance is strikingly irreconcilable and it really amazing that they do not recognize the contradiction. Roderick | ||
| Oldog |
Roderick: Politics now a days seems to be quite devicive. For instance go to MSNBC and read an article about a current concern then go to the comments after it, note the derision for the conservative view, and media ( FOX ) Then go to Fox or Breitbart read a similar piece and the comments, much the same especialy about the "media" from the other side,( ridicule of the left ) Juan Williams of fox news, wrote a book about how open debate and civil discussion seem to be going away. Have you watched the "typical left talking heads" their common reaction on tv in a discussion / debate setting, seems to be that they shout over ( or try to ) their opponent or try to shift the subject distorting the facts, which they deny when called on it, attempt to ridicule the speaker miss represent the issue or facts. it really is beyond belief to watch when it happens, but notice that they talk alot about feelings and "I / we" feel that [X] is the best way its [ practice, law, view ] not fair we need to do [x] to protect the children for the good of the [ citizens, children, community, country ] when you peal back the emotion and look at the issue as a series of FACTS they ( the left ) typically come up short or wrong. On the black site The black community has some legitimate complaints, but it has some serious issues to address, from my White perspective, the "progressive blacks" tend to be some what reactive, and easily misled, Al sharptons recent actions and part of the that community's actions are a prime example. IMO. again thanks for your posting earlier. its refreshing to learn the well considered view point of a reasonable person with a wider world view and experience than my own. | ||
| 86129squids |
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| Oldog |
Glad your with me squids, but won't that say that your stupid too?   | ||
| 86129squids |
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