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.