9thIDdoc
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- Aug 8, 2011
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No doubt that Ho was an opportunist who would take whatever help he could get from whoever he could get it from and his folks did indeed get substantial help from us during WW II in his fight against the Japanese. But I believe that Ho was all about Ho and would have used the trappings any form of government as long as he could be de facto leader/ruler/chairman/whatever. I think China was shocked to find that his personal brand of Communism was not theirs'. I think his actions once in power prove him a monster.As for myself I always considered Ho a nationalist who cared more about his nation and his people than any political idelogy. Kinda like Trump does today. He wound up with the commies only because those assholes were more than willing to give him the help he was asking so as to betray him and his people later in the same way they are taking dumbshits in this country in today.So he became an aggressive Communist Imperialist. Wonderful. A shame he didn't just commit suicide. So many fewer people would have been tortured and murdered. So many more people would have had basic human rights. You worship a monster.Not odd at all that the Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh sought a decent relationship with the U.S., and France too. Here is an interesting background USMB thread where I added my own comments and fascinating links:The odd thing is Ho Chi Minh approached president Woodrow Wilson for aid long before he approached communist countries for help and aid to rid themselves of the french imperialist as far back as WWI and Wilson's league of nations but he was ignored by Wilson and all subsequent american presidents becausd they all had their heads shoved so far up France's ass. He also patterened Vietnam's constitution after our own.9thIDdoc —
What you call “a country called French Indochina” that “would later be divided into countries known as Laos, Cambodia, North and South Vietnam” was just a French colony. The peoples of these areas, their economies, cultures, languages and histories, were very distinct. But “North” and “South” Vietnam shared a common language, culture and a long complex history that went back more than a thousand years before the French and Japanese occupations.
As for the Geneva Accords ending French rule and the terrible decision of the U.S. not to sign them, but rather sabotage the elections that would have re-unified the country democratically under Vietnam’s popular leader Ho Chi Minh, read this quote from President Eisenhower himself ...
“I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader...”
Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-56
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Compnay, Inc., 1963), p. 372 [boldface mine]
Also, for a fuller view of Eisenhower’s view on the military and political situation in French-occupied Vietnam in those days, see:
President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the likelihood that Ho Chi Minh would win a national election in Vietnam in 1955
Ho was actually something of a Francophile as a youth. His father, as I recall, was a Confucian scholar. Ho was not only the founder and leader of the Communist Party of Vietnam but a true nationalist. He was an educated man who worked his way around the world as a young man, including to the U.S. He understood U.S. racism, French colonialism, historic Chinese-Vietnamese conflicts and also their deep cultural connections. A real pity that our country missed so many opportunities to establish a working relationship with this man and his movement.
If we had had the brains and the guts to give him the help he had asked us for first, Vietnam would be a free nation today and a shining example of free enterprise and free choice instead of yet another commie outpost as it now is.