Where is the Saigon government and its army?

This seminar has been absolutely awesome so far. Most of our lectures have been awesome and we have had some very prominent and interesting guest lecturers - Bao Ninh, Madame Ninh, Ambassador Michalak, Chuck Searcy, Col. Sauvageot, Mike Eiland to name a few. The diversity of the speakers has helped us learn the history of Vietnam War from different perspectives. However, I feel that we are missing the perspective of one important group of people, i.e. the members of Saigon government and its army. Most of the speakers who have spoken on a topic related to the war have spoken from the perspective of the North Vietnamese people or the American people.

I didn't realize what I had been missing until today morning when Madame Ninh shared some of her experiences with us. She used to collect political intelligence for the NLF in early 1970's. In this context, she said that NLF was very sophisticated not only in the battlefield but also in the political arena. She also told us that Saigon government was nowhere near the NLF in terms of political sophistication. This was the point when I felt like I wanted to hear what the people from the Saigon government and its army would say in response to her. This is just one instance among many when a "Saigon perspective" would have been interesting to listen to.

It is not like the "Saigon perspective" was never mentioned during the course of the seminar. How Saigon government and its army perceived different events and how they reacted to them have often been mentioned and discussed in the class but having someone from the Saigon side come and speak to us in person would have been much more meaningful than just studying the Saigon side.

However, if I am correct, what I would like to see would not be that easy to arrange. First of all, we are in Hanoi, which was the capital of North Vietnam. Therefore, we are bound to get more of North Vietnamese perspective. And because we are in an American university and because most of us are Americans, we are bound to get more of American perspective. And also, I would guess that many prominent and less prominent people in the Saigon administration and ARVN have left the country already. So probably that makes it difficult for us to get the "Saigon perspective" in the seminar. And even if they were in Vietnam, they may not have the complete freedom of expression to share whatever he wants to share with us. Therefore, the lack of "Saigon perspective" may have existed despite the efforts of Desaix and the seminar administrators to include it. Maybe if I asked Desaix this question, I would get the answer in a couple of sentences, and then this post would just be useless.

I don't mean to blame anyone or criticise anyone by this post. I have not even talked to Desaix about this. So I don't think I have a right to be critical. I am just writing what I felt. During the course of the seminar, I felt like Hanoi government is more "real" than Saigon government. I wouldn't be surprised if other friends in the seminar didn't think so because I have this tendency to think of something as "real" only after seeing it for real with my own eyes. And so far, I have not seen any trace of Saigon government or its army.

We are learning about Vietnam War doesn't mean that we need to see everything about it. However, since we are in Vietnam to learn about the war, I would have liked to see someone from the Saigon side. Whenever I tried to think of the war from the point of view of the speakers and lecturers who have spoken to us, Saigon side has been absent just like it was in the minds of the US policymakers when Johnson decided to Americanize the war in 1965. Maybe, this is the reason Saigon side has maintained such a low profile in the seminar.

Nepal can probably learn more from Vietnam than from the West

I would like share with you all some of my thoughts that may or may not deserve a place in this blog:

When I have been outside of Nepal, I don't think I have thought as much about my country as I have done in the past five weeks. Of course, much of this stems from the fact that Vietnam (at least Hanoi and the countryside) looks very similar to Nepal. But I would attribute it more to the fact that I am studying a developing country for the first time.

In Nepal, people always look up to developed countries like the US, the UK, Germany, Japan, and so on. So I have always thought that the road to development lies only in the expertise of these countries. And probably when I go back home to Nepal and tell my relatives and neighbors that I went to Vietnam to study, they will probably think that I wasted my time here. But this Global Seminar is the one time I could connect whatever I was learning inside and outside the classroom to my country. In the past five weeks, I have realized that I had been underestimating the value of knowledge one developing country can impart to another one.

I am not necessarily talking about the rapid economic development that is happening in Vietnam right now and how much Nepal could learn from it. Of course, that is a big lesson that Nepal could take from Vietnam. But from a personal perspective, when I studied the Vietnamese history and how the landless tenants and the peasants were oppressed, how they were mobilized using Leninist ideas, how they were motivated to fight a war, I feel like I have come to better understand the lives of the people in the countryside that led to the beginning of the 10 year-long civil war in my own country that supposedly ended in 2006. It is fascinating for me to learn that the communist revolutions in Vietnam and Nepal had so many similarities. Literally, when I was reading about the Vietnamese people in the 1930's, I could visualize my own people and how miserable their lives are.

But yet, Vietnam has been able to overcome a lot of challenges and has been able to march on the road to economic development in recent days. And I think, in practical terms, Vietnam's story would be more relevant to Nepal than an American or a British story. When I hear bits and pieces about America's or Britain's historical events, I cannot connect to them in the same way I can connect to a Vietnamese historical event. I think it has a lot to do with the type of people that inhabit these two different societies, the type of culture they have had, the type of economic systems they have had and the historical paths that these countries have taken. And clearly, Nepal is more similar to Vietnam on these grounds. I think this extends to the stories of economic development. Western countries and the Asian countries have different people, society, economy and circumstances. Hence, whatever works in France may not work in Nepal. The business model of Sweden may not work in Nepal because the Swedes may have a different way of doing business than the Nepalese. The agriculture machinery the Americans use may not serve the Nepalese as well because the land distribution in the US is different from that in Nepal.

Thus, I think it is time to stop, look back and evaluate Nepal's development strategy. It might be better for Nepal to look up to a country more similar to itself for advice than going for a country far above in the development spectrum that has different types of people, cultures, and societies. And Vietnam is not a bad option.

Pho Binh

On our Seminar trip to Ho Chi Minh City two weekends ago, Todd Kramer and I stopped by a restaurant called Pho Binh which we found described on an online travel website. While it doesn't look like much, Pho Binh has an incredible history: the second floor of the restaurant served as the staging area for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The place wasn't far from our hotel--around 10 minutes by taxi--and was, except for one trendy-looking Vietnamese man sitting in the back, entirely empty. The only indication that Pho Binh is historically important was a plaque over the door written in Vietnamese, apparently placed there by the local government. 

There was no menu, since Pho Binh serves only one dish--noodle soup with either beef, chicken, or vegetables--which Todd and I both ordered. About halfway through our meal, our waiter, who turned out to be the restaurant's owner, came over to ask us if we wanted a tour of the place. We followed him upstairs to the room where Tet was planned and executed, which is now a sort of homemade museum of the "American War", as well as a shrine to the ancestors of the family that owns the restaurant. The centerpiece of the shrine is a picture of Ngo Toai, the current owner's father, who was a double-agent during the Vietnam War. Pho Binh used to serve plenty of American soldiers and was down the street from the headquarters of the military police in the days of the Saigon Government. Toai was a passionate revolutionary and follower of Ho Chi Minh, though, and so was given the task of feeding and housing the Viet Cong fighters who were planning Tet on the second floor of his restaurant.

After our tour, as we were finishing our soup, our waiter brought us two books belonging to his family. One was a guest book which he asked us to sign, and the other was a photo album/scrapbook with pictures and newspaper articles documenting Pho Binh's history since the end of the war. The guestbook had a number of really interesting entries--one, written by an Australian woman living in England, included the line: "what the Americans did to your country was despicable...they deserved to lose the war." Several were from students from Europe, Asia, and South America.

Ngo Toai paid a heavy price for his involvement in Tet: when the Americans and South Vietnamese discovered that he had aided and abetted V.C. fighters, he was tortured, beaten, and almost killed. He returned to Pho Binh after the Fall of Saigon in 1975, though, and worked there until his death three years ago. 

The most moving part of the whole experience, for me, was a set of pictures at the end of the Pho Binh scrapbook, which show Ngo hugging former American soldiers who've been visiting his restaurant for more than a decade. It demonstrated, I thought, how easily ordinary people like Ngo Toai can suddenly and unexpectedly get swept up in history-making events that are much, much bigger than themselves. It was also the most vivid example I'd seen of the way that most Vietnamese people here treat Americans: as genuinely good people who because of a lack of cultural understanding and the misguided beliefs and actions of a few influential leaders became bogged down in a war of attrition they little understood. It was encouraging to see that the owner of a restaurant which once fed Viet Cong guerillas had made peace with the invading forces who had abused him and his family. In context, though, it makes sense. The locals call the dish served at Pho Binh "Peace Soup."

Hanoi III: Week V by Desaix Anderson

Hanoi III: Week V by Desaix Anderson
The Seminar moved beyond the historical details of America’s war with Vietnam to broad discussions of the geostrategic dimensions of the war, the Soviet Union’s role in the war, and analysis from several points of view of “Why Who Won and Why Who Lost the War.” We examined Vietnam’s integration into the political, economic, and security institutions of the region, and the road to normalization of relations between Vietnam and the United States. We also looked at the contemporary literature which engaged as Vietnam began to reform its economic system through the “Doi Moi” or renovation policies which began in 1986 when Secretary General Le Duan died and reformist, Nguyen van Linh took over leadership of the party and nation.
We examined whether fundamental decisions taking by the United States led to war rather than resolution of the issues concerning Indochina. US cooperation with Ho Chi Minh from 1943 to 1945 through the OSS (later the CIA) and US military “Deer Team” might have led to acceptance of Ho Chi Minh as a legitimate nationalist leader. But we chose, instead, to support restoration of French rule in Indochina which led to two wars. Could the US have built on that cooperation to insist that France negotiate independence for Vietnam after World War II and, thereby, avoided both the French and American Wars. Similarly, France accepted its defeat after Dienbienphu and accepted the Geneva Accords, but the United States refused to accept the Geneva Accords as a definitive end of war with Vietnam. Caught up in fears of the Soviet Union, Mao Tse-dong’s victory in China, Senator Joe McCarthy’s campaign against the “Red Scare” pushed the United States into a rabid fear of communism and irrational analysis of events in Indochina. The Cold War dictated policies rather than a careful reading of Ho Chi Minh’s intentions and policies that might have averted the tragedies for both America and Vietnam of war.
We also looked at strategic errors President Johnson may have made, stemming from faulty analysis of Ho Chi Minh’s intentions rather than viewing the issues as a function of the Cold War, which led to escalation rather than resolution of the conflict. The discussion of why who won and why who lost the war similarly examined the problems of a s succession of South Vietnamese governments, Johnson’s and Westmoreland’s militarization and Americanization of the war and the attendant emasculization of the government and army of the south in the face of the iron determination of Hanoi to pursue the nationalist goals of the independence and reunification of Vietnam.
After successfully mastering the mid-term exam in which it was clear all the students understand what we have been talking about, the students also focused on their seminar papers and spent time seeking a manageable topic and the possible Vietnamese sources of insights and commentaries. The subject matter ranges from Vietnam’s response to the global financial crisis, to evolution of art in the wake of Vietnam’s economic transition, to the role of street vendors in the economic life of Hanoi.
At week’s end, most of the students took advantage of a free week-end to take the train to Sapa, the mythic resort high in the mountains of northern Vietnam, where mists mingle with clouds in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

Hanoi III Week IV

Hanoi III Week 4
We spent the week academically on the Nixon years: Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war and “Vietnamization,” his plan to turn the war back over to the Vietnamese to carry out. In his frustration about ending the war, Nixon employed his “madman theory” to suggest to Hanoi that he detested communism and was prepared to use almost any weapon to ensure victory over North Vietnam. As part of this strategy, Nixon took the war to Cambodia and Laos, thus complicating resolution of the war in Vietnam itself. We also explored Nixon’s strategic moves to improve relations with the Soviet Union and normalize relations with China, partly in hopes of obtaining Soviet and Chinese support to end the war. Neither cooperated, out of concern that pressure on Hanoi risked alienating North Vietnamese leadership and encourage Hanoi to move to embrace of one or the other side in the Sino-Soviet schism.
We were also treated to a thoughtful analysis by a key participant on the Paris negotiations of the strategies of each side and negotiations of the Paris Accords that ended the war in January 1973, following the traumatic confrontation between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu and the subsequent “Christmas bombing” of the Hanoi-Haiphong corridor of North Vietnam.
We also heard my description of post-Accord circumstances in the Mekong Delta after the United States military forces departed from Vietnam. We examined conditions in the South from 1973-1975 as Hanoi undertook “socialist transformation” to reform South Vietnam’s economy according to communist theory, resulting in enormous economic hardship and passive resistance to those policies.
We finished the week in Dai Bai Village, Bac Ninh Province, forty kilometers North of Hanoi with the poignant task of cleaning up a Vietnamese Peoples Army of Vietnam cemetery. We found graves of those killed in the first Indochina war with the French, many from the “American War,” and one tombstone from February 1979 during the brief war against the Chinese invasion to “teach Vietnam a lesson, and one from 1984, evidently of a soldier killed during Vietnam’s 1979-1989 invasion and occupation of Cambodia.
We also called on several families whose sons or husbands died during our war with Vietnam and one former soldier who had been shot in the head at point blank range by American soldiers fighting in South Vietnam. We were uniformly received hospitably, but occasionally tearfully. One young woman whose father had been disabled during the war and been taken to a hospital just before our visit broke down in tears. One 87-year old “gold star Mother,” who lost her husband when she was 25, seemed moved to tears in meeting with the children of the ‘former enemy.”
The Princetonians performed admirably with songs that I had not heard before and also a terrific dancer who emerged from the students midst to add luster to the performance.
To wrap up a very good week, we attended the American Chamber of Commerce Fourth of July festival and treated with hot dogs, fried chicken, ice cream and Budweiser. An extraordinary gymnast dazzled us with his athletic feats and then with an eight-foot long python wrapped around his body. The gymnast also invited two blue-eyed children to join him the python’s embrace. Two Mothers were joyful when the two children were released from the embrace. There were also dogs that incompetently refused to jump through hoops, and monkeys that more dutifully performed. After the Star - Spangled Banner and short remarks by the American Ambassador, the evening concluded on a happy note.

Hanoi III Week IV

Hanoi III Week III from Desaix Anderson
Week Three in Vietnam was a strong week substantively and in our field research.
We started the w eek with a seminar on the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s 1953-56 land reform which both Mao and Stalin compellingly urged the Vietnamese to embark. Based on Chinas land reform and contradicting Ho Chi Minh’s efforts to be inclusive of all social and economic classes into the revolution, the reform, based on China’s experience, pitted peasants against landlords in fierce confrontation. Landlords were denounced as traitors and many put to death. Ho Chi Minh in the latter stages apologized to the Vietnamese people for the mistakes made and the Secretary General of the Communist Party, who had led the reforms, was demoted.
This session as followed by a magnificent session with the author of “Sorrow of War,” Bao Ninh. Mr. Ninh was in wonderful spirits and responded poignantly and honestly to a variety of pointed questions about the book, his life, and philsosophy. It was the best of three sessions we have had with Bao Ninh since the seminar began in June 2007, in part, because of the excellent questions posed by the students.
We also looked at the US mIlitary strategy, as well as rising resistance in South Vietnam. Finally, we explored the “Tet” offensive of 1968, its causes, planning, purposes, and aftermath, including the shocked political reaction in the United States to this dramatic event.
Following on this heavy substantive event, we thoroughly enjoyed a week0-end in Ho Chi Minh City, still called Saigon by most residents. HCM City contrasted dramatically with Hanoi with its sleek modern buildings, upscale shopping on Dong Khoi Street, formerly known at Tu Do Street, where many a GI found love and solace. The well-kept gardens and modernized business district reminded many of other glass and steel cities of Southeast Asia. Others fondly remembered the busy, old quarters of Hanoi, the more intellectual and cultural Hanoi, and wondered where Vietnam’s future lay. Everyone enjoyed “Apocolypse Now,,” in the entertainment heart of Ho Chi Minh City.
We also had a half day in the Cu Chi tunnels, which enthralled all because of the incredible efforts of the Viet Cong in tunneling hundreds of miles underground to avoid the destruction of B-52 bombs and a US military base only five miles away, from whence such attacks as “Tet” provided safe space for those carrying out the massive attacks January 31, 1968.

Hanoi III Week II

Hanoi III: Week # II June 15-19, 2009 by Desaix Anderson
Academically, we covered the brief period of US cooperation with Ho Chi Minh in 1943-45, when an Office of Strategic Services (OSS - CIA predecessor) and a Defense Deer Team worked closely and productively with Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh. Ho Chi Minh hoped this cooperation foreshadowed US support for Vietnam’s independence from France, but the US official position remained neutral and then shifted to support France’s re-imposition of French rule and the First Indochina War ensued, reversing the position of President Roosevelt who thought a UN Trusteeship should be installed until Vietnam could become fully independent. Ho Chi Minh wrote President Truman and Secretary of State Cordell Hull at least eleven letters seeking US support. We also examined the Geneva Accords in 1954 which offered another opportunity for a settlement in Vietnam after the French were defeated at Dienbienphu, but America and the newly-installed Prime Minister of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, “Understood” but did not support the Geneva Accords.
Reflecting Soviet take-over of Eastern Europe, Mao’s victory In China, the North Korean invasion of South Korea, supported by Moscow and Beijing, and the hysteria incited by Senator Joe McCarthy , heightened fears of Communist takeover of Vietnam was essentially emplaced in the Cold War Context.
We traced the policies and their impact on Vietnam of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. We then looked at the escalation, militarization, Americanization of the Vietnam War by President Johnson. We also looked at the policies of South Vietnam Prime Minister and later President Ngo Dinh Diem’s policies, the Buddhist crisis and the crisis this led to crisis in South Vietnam’s relations with the US.
Princeton Professor David Leheny delivered a masterful discussion of the rising resistance movement and sympathies in the US and around the globe. I discussed the “American military man,” drawing on writers like James Webb’s and Tim O’Brian’s terrific books on Vietnam.
This week-end, despite numerous logistical fiascos, we had a great time in Hue and Hoi An, in central Vietnam. The magic, cultural, and intellectual life of Hue came to life for us, as well as the history of the Imperial Palace and Citadel and a visit to the late nineteenth Century Emperor Thu Duc’s tomb. Hoi An provided a mad search for pink, purple, and pink sport shoes (male choices) , jackets, and other assorted purchases by the students, evidently thinking ahead for Christmas. We also explored this seventeenth Century trading port, Hot An, with Japan, China, Holland, and India and the wonderful restoration of the village by UNESCO.
A handful of the intrepid took a swimming visit to Hoi An’s China Beach before we departed for our flight back to Hanoi.