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8/29/2012 12 Comments

Who was Ho Chi Minh & why was a city named for him?

Vietnam: Retrospective Part 3 of 8

HO CHI MINH was generally regarded by anti-war demonstrators as the George Washington of Vietnam leading the popular revolution that ultimately defeated French and then American occupiers, making way for a free and independent society. Furthermore, the myth-makers explain that America's support of the French drove Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese into the arms of the communists. In fact, that message seems to remain alive today in American schools and on American campuses where teachers and professors pass on the myth to their students.

Ho Chi Minh

It is hard to understand how men like Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara become popular icons, celebrities actually, in the United States. Only ignorance can account for this. Men such as these do not stand up well under close scrutiny. Looking at Ho Chi Minh, for example, he betrayed the Vietnamese nationalistic movement. He delivered the country into the hands of the communists after they fought so long and well to free themselves from the French colonialists.

No, Ho Chi Minh is nothing like George Washington. I should know. Washington and I share a birthdate, and I was reminded of this fact every year in the form of a cake embellished with cherries alluding to the myth of Washington cutting down his father's cherry tree and then owning up to it. As I studied history, I was fascinated to learn that Washington was far more complex and interesting as a real man. The myths fabricated to endear him to the citizenry and elevate him to giant proportions were distracting to me. I can imagine the same being true of any Vietnamese child learning about Bac Ho – Uncle Ho.

“Truth is what is beneficial to the Fatherland and to the people. What is detrimental to the interests of the Fatherland and people is not truth. To strive to serve the Fatherland and the people is to obey the truth.” - Volume IV of Ho Chi Minh's Selected Works, from a 1956 speech.

In fact, it’s difficult to find any parallels between the Father of America and the Father of Vietnam. For the Father of America to be compared to Ho, Washington would have had to have begun his career engineering the slaughter of American revolutionaries.

Ho Chi Minh was abroad during the Second World War. He studied in America, Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and China. He returned to France to help form the Communist Party there, and then returned to Vietnam when the war ended. The Vietnamese Nationalists welcomed him as a hero until they learned that Ho had signed agreements with the French allowing them to return with armed forces to reclaim the colony Japan had driven them from. The Nationalists fled to the hills and formed a revolutionary army, the Viet Minh, to fight for independence. Ho followed with French and Vietnamese forces bent on annihilating them.

Ho's problem with the Nationalists was that they were not fighting for a communist state. Once he eradicated their leadership, he was able to transform the Viet Minh into a communist revolutionary army.

Ho's history is also out of step with Washington's in that he did not suffer the privations and dangers of the battlefield. I'm not claiming that he was a coward. Ho simply was not up to the rigors of the battlefield. He suffered from tuberculosis. Other Vietnamese heroes led the front-line fight against the French and later the Americans.

Phan Boi Chau

If anyone deserved the distinction as Vietnam's Father, it was Phan Boi Chau. He led the nationalist movement towards a free and democratic Vietnam which was antithetical to Ho's vision of a communist state. Chau might have succeeded but for the fact that Ho Chi Minh and his allies helped the French capture the leader of the Viet Minh in 1925 and execute him.

Ho then made his move to take command of the Viet Minh. Using his connections with the Soviets, he was able to offer them the promise of virtually unlimited funding and supplies. It was an offer they could not afford to reject. Once embedded as their new leader, Ho refashioned the Viet Minh (Free Vietnamese) into the Viet Cong (Red Vietnamese).

With the defeat of the French foreign legion at Diem Ben Phu, the opposing sides met in Geneva to fashion a peace treaty. Ho was clearly upset that non-communist leaders from the Viet Minh sent their own representatives to the meeting. After much dickering, an agreement was fashioned to divide Vietnam into a communist enclave in the north and an anti-communist enclave in the south.

The agreement crafted in Geneva also provided for free elections to unify the country at a later date. This provision of the treaty was seriously flawed inasmuch as the country was to be divided into two irreconcilable halves.

The parties also agreed to allow Vietnamese to choose which half they wanted to live in. Ho was confident that his cause would prevail. However, he was greatly disappointed when hundreds of thousands queued up to flee communism. Ho was forced to allow a token amount to make the trek so as to appear to honor the accord.

One must wonder: What caused so many to flee communism? Why can’t communism exist without the leadership of a strong tyrant and enforced loyalties?

12 Comments

Caleb Pirtle link

8/30/2012 01:15:06 am

When I first saw your headline, I immediately thought: "Everybody knows Ho Chi Minh." Then it dawned on me that no one younger than my generation has any idea who he was. He fits right in there with Castro, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin as adversaries who should never be forgotten.

Jack Durish link

8/30/2012 02:57:55 am

The greater problem is that the part of the younger generation who "thinks" they know him by what they are being taught in school or watching television documentaries produced by Vietnam era newscasters reliving their glory days.

Phạm Nhật Minh link

3/12/2013 04:29:58 am

So you meant Vietnamese people should be skeptical and humble to US, right? How ridiculous, Hồ Chí Minh, Phan Bội Châu or other Vietnamese patriots who contributed all their minds and strengths to the liberation of Vietnam, they have earned respects from all castes in Vietnam. Therefore, there is no point for you to compare and constrast in a blabbering way just like your article. Sincerely!

Jack Durish

3/12/2013 04:57:29 am

I suppose a person could presume that is what I meant if they had a bias. It's a universal truth among all that people see what they expect to see, hear what they expect to hear. But, no, I never implied anything about the Vietnamese subjugating themselves to America.

There is no doubt that the nationalists exemplified by Phan Boi Chau (forgive me, I have neither the knowledge nor the character set to spell his name correctly) contributed their all to the liberation of Vietnam. They accomplished much against imperialists such as China, Japan, and France. Unfortunately, to me, it appears that Ho Chi Minh (same excuse) was not struggling so much for the benefit of the Vietnamese as Soviet imperialism. That brought the American imperialists who were fighting, not the Vietnamese, but rather the Soviets. Then, as the African proverb says, "When two bulls fight, it is the grass that suffers".

Once upon a time, America served as an example of the blessings of liberty. Unfortunately, those who wanted to share those blessings found it easier to come here rather than institute them in their native lands. We have benefited mightily from their arrival (including the Vietnamese refugees who came to the US).

I have spoken of late with other Veterans who have visited Vietnam recently and they speak hopefully of the progress there. It makes me glad. I can only hope that their freedom to prosper was somehow enhanced by the ultimate fall of the Soviet Union.

Don Laird link

8/31/2012 06:41:49 am

I read your article on Bac Ho with some sadness. I fear that you are greatly misrepresenting a great man.
Now, before you chalk me up to one of those that has been educated by the schools to think one way, or that I've been fed propoganda, read what I have to say, and note some errors in your facts.

So, first, you translated the name of Viet Minh wrong- it does not mean "free men", but rather "intelligent man"; this is because they were made up of the educated and intellectuals of the time. Also "Viet Cong" does not translate to "Red Men", the Vietnamese word for "red" is "Do". "Cong" means "Community"- I speak Vietnamese, so don't challenge me on this.
In regards to Phan Boi Chau, Ho Chi Minh only met him when they were younger, and they greatly admired each others work. Minh had nothing to do with his death. He was captured by the French, and held in Hoa Lau prison (what you would know as the Hanoi Hilton). He died in Hue late in his life. In the 1940's, not 1925, like you claim. IF Minh did not like him, this would be well known, and there wouldn't be a street in pretty much every town named after him.
Now, I don't know where you got this nonsense of Ho Chi Minh working with the French. I would LOVE to see your source on that. Apart from living in France he had nothing to do with the French military. Unlike Washington who did take orders from his soon-to-be enemy...
Now it is true that the Viet Minh killed other groups- noted should be the Trotsyists, but the time period was full of rival gangs, and there needed to be unity.
Ho Chi Minh was a Communist insomuch as it was a means to an end- he needed support from Communists in China and the USSR. America's involvement with the French IS indeed the reason for this. Had America supported a united Vietnam from the get go, rather than support French colonialism, further conflict would have been avoided.

Jack Durish link

8/31/2012 07:29:19 am

Thank you for your comments. As to the interpretations, I cannot argue with someone who speaks Vietnamese. In an earlier posting "Habla Usted Vietnamese" I demonstrated quite well that I had and still have no facility with the language, thus I am not in a position to argue that point. However, I have studied eleven languages in my lifetime and discovered that interpretations may vary depending upon the person doing the interpreting. Indeed, this has been the cause of many misunderstandings. For example, I suppose that "Free" and "Intelligent" may be somewhat synonymous, but I can't see how I was misled on "Red" and "Community."

I'm sorry that you got the impression that I maligned Phan Boi Chau. I didn't intend that in any way. Looking back at my words, I see only that I referred to him as a nationalist leader.

Yes, Ho and Phan were acquainted. My sources indicate that they corresponded from time to time while Ho was out of the country and that Ho passed the word onto the French when Phan was scheduled to leave Vietnam on a mission to secure support for the Viet Minh nationalist movement. It was during that trip that the French intercepted him and imprisoned him at Hao Lu. My sources indicate that he was executed there before the French left the country.

My information is gleaned from several sources, including books, CIA public documents, etc. They speak clearly that Ho returned to Vietnam as a communist.

As to America supporting French colonialism, I think that you'll find that Truman had no great love of it. Indeed, there have been rumors that he authorized training and supplies for the Viet Minh. Indeed, this association was the source of rumors that Ho might have been a CIA agent.

When the French caught the U.S. helping the Viet Minh, they demanded that they act more like "allies" and stop supporting the insurrection against their rule in their former colony. Truman was embarrassed at being caught and agreed. He went so far as to provide the French with a few WWII surplus Dakotas (DC-3 transports) that were in mothballs in another Southeast Asian country.

Finally, as to the "nonsense" about Ho working with the French. I believe that the three-sided negotiations in Geneva that resulted in the partition of Vietnam left the French siding with Ho more than with the other Vietnamese at the meeting. The French felt they had a better chance of holding onto some of their commercial interests (especially rubber plantations) if Vietnam were partitioned. I know that sounds confused and it would seem that the French must have been confused to side with Ho in that argument inasmuch as he wanted land reforms in a unified Vietnam that would have been contrary to French interests. However, when have the French not been confused.

On a personal note, I remember that our base camp abutted a French-owned rubber plantation. It annoyed most of my fellow junior officers when we found our senior officers hosting the French at our officer's club. We wondered among ourselves what the French were still doing there.

I will take your input and rehash this material at a later date. I hope that you will continue to monitor my postings and help keep me on the right path.

BTW, what is the source of your knowledge in these matters?

Don Laird link

8/31/2012 07:37:51 am

I have read many books on the American War, and I also live and work on Hanoi.

Jack Durish link

8/31/2012 08:02:39 am

Unfortunately, most of the books written by Americans about the war in Vietnam are as much propaganda as if they had been written by the Soviets. They are written by anti-war activists still attempting to justify their treatment of returning veterans.

Don Laird link

8/31/2012 08:59:47 am

You're missing the point about Pham. Here is what you wrote:
"If anyone deserved the distinction as Vietnam's Father, it was Phan Boi Chau. He led the nationalist movement towards a free and democratic Vietnam which was antithetical to Ho's vision of a communist state. Chau might have succeeded but for the fact that Ho Chi Minh and his allies helped the French capture the leader of the Viet Minh in 1925 and execute him."
Pham died in Hue, in 1940...not 1925 in Hanoi.

The result of the Accord put North Vietnam in control of the Viet Minh, and South Vietnam in control of Bao Dai- who abdicated his thrown. Elections were to be held, until America feared that Ho Chi Minh would have one, and made Vietnam a communist state; this is just more of America interfering with the world.
The reason for the flood of people is simple: Catholicism. The French brought Catholicism and ingrained it deeply, especially in the North- Hai Phong and Hanoi specifically. With the French controlling the south, people went where Mary went.

Don Laird link

8/31/2012 07:00:42 am

One last thing:
It is quite well known that Washington was Ho Chi Minh's hero. He patterned his life after him.

Jack Durish link

8/31/2012 07:31:12 am

There have been other tyrants who have "patterned" their life (image) after George Washington, especially when they sought aid and assistance from America. Unfortunately, we have given them what they wanted just because they claimed there was a communist insurrection in their nation.

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Who was Ho Chi Minh & why was a city named for him?

Vietnam: Retrospective Part 3 of 8

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