When your muse sings to you
Nov. 27th, 2004 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greybetaYou write. And write. And write.
Random factoid: At one point in my Quiz Bowl career, I could name all nine muses and what what area of the arts they were supposed to inspire. I knew their mother was Mnemosyne. But all I remember now is that Clio is the muse of history because the history department newsletter takes the title of "Clio".
Where was I? Oh, yes, if you recall I randomly decided to write 3,000 to 4,000 words on the most profound ethical dilemma I have ever faced. I wanted to try to win some money off this Elie Wiesel Ethics Contest that needs to be postmarked by Friday, December 3rd.
And you know what? It's really hard to make an essay about ethics interesting without sounding too condescending. I mean, these people did, but they wrote some freaking ridiculous stuff.
But, in my quest to become a better writer, I gave it my best effort. It took some time, but I finally decided to use one of my most influential childhood experiences.
I could always use some help editing help/suggestions. Be warned though, this is definitely not light reading. Also, you may be as harsh or critical as you like as long as you have a point (i.e. saying my writing sucks doesn't work, but saying my writing sucks because of "X, Y, and Z don't make sense" does). Email me at greybeta at livejounal dot com (or whatever forwarding address livejournal set me up with) if you prefer email or if you'd like a word copy.
Also, I don't like the title. It works, but I know it could be better. But I suck at coming up with titles.
Abandonment: When Nation Building Fails
In Washington, D.C., you will find a powerful memorial designed by Maya Lin. It’s a simple black wall, covered with names. Each name represents a life lost in a land far, far away from America. When I first walked past those names, I felt a haunting chill go down my spine. It’s one thing to hear that 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam; it’s another to walk past each and every name. Names transcend numbers, for each name seems to want to tell you a story about their family, their childhood, their future. But their story is silenced in stone, their lives ended in my motherland of Vietnam.
For those who lived through those times, Vietnam invokes an unrivaled passion. Those were troubling and turbulent times, marked by violence and rioting. Youths unable to vote fought to protect the honor of their country. Several American administrations charged these energetic youths with defending the free world against the specter of communism. And the slaughter they would see firsthand would change their lives forever. People they ate and slept with died in all sorts of gruesome manners. The worst thing about it was that friendly fire took the lives of their friends every so often.
When the Vietnam Veterans returned, many did not receive a hero’s welcome. By the end of the American involvement in Vietnam, the antiwar movement had eclipsed the importance of greeting our soldiers. The veterans worked hard to restore their own honor, and slowly but surely they claimed what was rightfully theirs. But for some, they felt spurned by those they were trying to save. For example, this editorial caused uproar in my household when I was a sixth-grader:
Reader puzzled by absence of Asians at memorial service
12-4-96
In 1973 President Richard Nixon declared an end to The United States’ role in the Vietnam War. In 1974 I turned 18 and registered with the Selective Service. One year is all that separated me from the possibility of being sent to fight in Asia. Naturally, I have many friends who did go.
Our family attended the evening memorial services on Veterans Day at the Vietnam Memorial Wall model that was at Ben Geren Park in Fort Smith. It was a very touching service. As names of local fallen soldiers were read, a candle was lit for each name as well as in representation of the many names that were not read.
An Honor Guard, bagpipes, a bugle and a salute by the Barling Fire Department furthered the stirring of emotions among the crowd. Many grown men and women made no attempt to hide their tender emotions as they hugged one another. Looking around, you could just about guess who were fathers and mothers and who were siblings of the heroes who died in obedience to their country’s bidding. It was only proper that such a time of memoriam be closed with a moment of bowed heads in respect for the loved ones. Even I—as unemotional as I am—was moved to tears.
One thing about the whole event really disturbed me; out of all the ungrateful Asians, I did not see a single one out there paying tribute to the brave men and women who were slaughtered in the rice paddies so that they could come to this otherwise great land of ours to be spoon-fed by Congress at our expense! I wonder if any of those soldiers ever imagined what their sacrifice would do to their community?
Knowing he would receive backlash for what he had written, the author of this editorial withheld his name. I do not think it is a bad guess to say that he knew somebody who died in Vietnam. He truly believed that the Vietnamese who had come to America had not shown gratitude for the opportunity they had been given. While I do not think he writes for a bad reason, I do believe he is misguided.
When my dad first read the article, I remember him getting riled up about it. With my mother’s help, he wrote the following response:
I went to visit the Wall here, but what about us, our land
12-25-96
To respond to the article “Reader puzzled by absence of Asians at memorial service” by Name withheld, I’m an Asian, a Vietnamese who settled in the U.S.A. since 19080. When Name withheld was 18 years old (1974), I was a cadet of the Vietnamese National Military Academy, a famous military school in Southeast Asia. From 1948 to 1975, more than 5,000 graduated, but over 3,000 died in the war. Currently, about 2,000 are living somewhere around the world, many of them disabled or badly scarred.
After April 1975, like many others, I was put into a central camp by the communist authority (called “re-education camp”). While the world believed that the Vietnam War was over, only the Vietnamese people realized that it was not!
At age 21, I was one of the youngest officers of the ARVN (South VN troop) to become a prisoner of war. I learned a lot of lessons, saw the retaliations, and could see my dark future. Through my background in the war, I understand the sacrifices of a soldier, and I know how it hurts when people neglect my comrades and me. Therefore, on Saturday Nov. 9, I brought my wife and my children to Ben Geren Regional Park to salute to all the heroes, not only for that day but for the rest of my life!
Now I want to express my opinion why our people might seem ungrateful: Because we experienced hardships many long years, and the war destroyed all moral tradition, we preferred a selfish living style, and we don’t trust any of our leaders. Because our leaders could not do what they wanted for their own country, they were controlled by Paris, by Moscow, by Washington, D.C., by Beijing, all for the superpower country’s benefit. The distrust among our people resulted in our inability to form a community with a leader. Without a leader, our people have no direction.
It is good the Americans have a Wall for remembrance. What about the 300,000 ARVN who died fighting side by side with American soldiers against the communists? They got no respect and many Vietnamese people don’t remember them, even though these people have relatives who sacrificed during the war. In Vietnam, the VC retaliated by annihilating their graveyards, and history seems forgetful of them.
Before you label us “ungrateful Asians,” I ask you to consider the White House and Congress who used our land to win the Cold War, all participants in the anti-VN war movement, and the people who broke their promise to protect the freedom of South VN. These are the main reasons we had to leave our homeland.
Unbeknownst to Name Withheld, my family had actually gone to visit the traveling Vietnam Wall when it passed through my hometown that year. We simply had not attended the memorial service on Veterans’ Day. At the time, I did not want to go. Why was my dad dragging the family out to go see a boring wall with a bunch of names on it? I recall my dad saying something to indicate that I would understand one day, that I would understand the meaning of sacrifice.
Since my dad graduated from the military academy, he knows the bond that only comrades on a battlefield can share. He also knows the pains of being on the losing side, the one that history often forgets. He has seen how the communists treated the graves of his fellow soldiers, and how they tried to teach him the foolishness of listening to Americans. He remembers the feeling of being abandoned by America in Vietnam’s greatest time of need.
Growing up, I heard two versions of the same story. In one version, the mighty superpower America cannot afford to sustain a weaker Vietnam. In the other, the mighty superpower America betrays an unsuspecting Vietnam. I often wondered how the two incompatible views came to co-exist with each other. The only thing that I knew for sure was that my dad did not agree with the first view.
Because I planned on studying electrical engineering, I did not worry about reconciling the opposing views. The Vietnamese culture values doctors, pharmacists, and engineers; moreover, history does not offer many lucrative jobs. I was going to make money, and talk of the past could be reserved for the dinner table. But then a remarkable incident happened in my freshman year. An endowed chair in the history department wrote me a letter, urging me to consider studying history. Apparently, I had made an impression on this professor in his honors class on ancient Greek society, and I had talents that could be used in history that would not be used in engineering. However, I planned on telling him that I was just an engineer, out to make money. But in person I could not tell him that. Instead, the conversation came to a point where he said that I would know whether I could do history or not by doing some research. The key was picking a topic that would interest me. I naturally picked something that I had heard about since my childhood—the Vietnam War.
My first assignment was finding a research advisor. I eventually found a sagely professor of history whose specialty was American foreign diplomacy in China and Russia. He would be the most knowledgeable about my subject, and he had me start my research by reading a list of background books. To my surprise, the list accommodated all sorts of views. While many books held the conventional notion that Vietnam was a bad war, some argued the value or necessity of it. I sought to find the correct view, but I could find nothing to help me determine the correct one. I was confused. How could it be that history could be so controversial, with no one holding the truth? My research advisor told me that we often do not have all the facts in our hands, and historians must often guess the motives of the characters in any particular story. I would have to weigh firsthand accounts against the documentary evidence.
To focus my work, I needed to choose a specific area of study. By chance I learned about a conference about the first South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. The theme for the conference was “The Rise and Fall of Ngo Dinh Diem and Its Implications for Vietnam and the United States.” I concentrated on Diem, a Catholic who studied seminary in America before getting involved in South Vietnamese politics. A product of western schools and a stanch anticommunist, Diem was America’s ideal choice to be the leader for emerging South Vietnam.
In contrast to the great hopes at the beginning of the Diem administration, most Vietnam War historians describe the Diem regime as corrupt and inefficient. Diem relied too heavily on his family and political party to the point that some of his own countrymen charged him with nepotism. Millions of dollars in foreign aid found its way to the pockets of government officials instead of the people of Vietnam. High-ranking military officers were accused of selling rice and arms to the enemy. Summarily, many people paint the Diem regime in a dim light.
Intrigued by the negativity against Diem, I set out to do interviews with those involved in the war on the first South Vietnamese president. I discovered vastly divergent opinions. One officer claimed that the communists, the Americans, and the Diem regime were no good. Another declared that none of the South Vietnamese leadership could have saved Vietnam due to America’s meddlesome behavior. Yet another maintained that Diem was an effective leader quite capable of leading South Vietnam to victory. For the first time in my life, I encountered the emotionality of war. I could never hope to capture the fiery passion of those who fought to protect Vietnam, of those who witnessed brutalities far beyond the comprehension of human reason.
Despite my best efforts in research, I still had quite the dilemma. I always thought historians were neutral observers of the truth, but my research slowly began to teach me that history was much more subjective than I had first believed. I have heard once that the job of historians is to white out other countries’ histories, enhancing the history of their country. But I lived at the concurrence of two different cultures, two peoples co-existing with different histories. I wanted to rectify that, beginning with my own research.
Like a bolt of lightning, it made sense. North Vietnam saw China, France, and now the United States striving to direct the destiny of the dragon that was Vietnam. South Vietnam viewed the communist ideology as detrimental to the future of the country. The Soviet Union and China took advantage of an opportunity to bolster Marxist ideals. America looked at Vietnam as a battleground between the free world and communism. In a sense, everyone read the same poem but interpreted it differently.
After some meditation upon my conundrum, I came up with the idea that Diem fought against American superiority. Diem had to walk a treacherous line between his own people and America. He personally despised communism, and he knew that he required American help to counteract the Soviet and Chinese aid to Ho Chi Minh. However, he could not afford to look like a mere puppet pulled by American strings.
As for the American side, by early 1963 it became clear to Kennedy that Diem had to be removed because he did not follow the American plan. Some of Kennedy’s closest advisors, like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, assert that Kennedy would have withdrawn all American troops by 1965. These well-laid plans dissipated on November 1st, 1963. On that day South Vietnamese generals carried out a coup against Diem with the understanding that America would not stop them. What nobody in Kennedy’s administration could have predicted was the brutal way in which Diem was assassinated. Photos record several bloody gunshot wounds all over the body of the first South Vietnamese president.
Undoubtedly, Diem’s death shattered whatever plans Kennedy had for a clean exit out of Vietnam. Would Kennedy have withdrawn the troops, or did he now feel personally responsible to Vietnam? We will never know what Kennedy intended to do because he was assassinated three weeks later. Lyndon Baines Johnson became President, and he followed what he believed Kennedy would do. Feeling obligated to South Vietnam, Johnson escalated the war. America now took over strategic planning for beating the Vietnamese communists.
Remarkably, America did not have a plan to replace Diem. The generals who carried out the coup predictably fought one another for control of South Vietnam. The leadership of the nation became a revolving door. Johnson’s administration finally settled on the general who they thought could best control the situation, but Nguyen Van Thieu proved to be even more corrupt than Ngo Dinh Diem.
When the ground war dragged much longer than anticipated, Richard M. Nixon began the process known as Vietnamization. The South Vietnamese became abruptly capable of defending itself. America then promised billions of dollars in economic and military aid to prevent the complete collapse of South Vietnam. Congress, though, found it to be a waste and cut the programs intended to help South Vietnam. Just two years after the Treaty of Paris of 1973, South Vietnam ceased to exist with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Thirty years later, we hear a familiar story. Under the banner of promoting freedom and democracy, America builds a nation in the hopes that it will develop liberties and prosperity for its people. If this sounds familiar, then it is because there are many striking resemblances between the Vietnam and Iraq conflict. America once supported both Ngo Dinh Diem and Saddam Hussein simply because those leaders could maintain a balance of power, Southeast Asia in the former case and the Middle East in the latter one. America faces the intangibles of a population with a different social outlook and educational background. America listens to both hawks and doves pleading for divergent goals. America finds widespread international backing in both cases.
Much like Kennedy holds the ultimate responsibility for approving Ngo Dinh Diem’s overthrow, Bush will shoulder the blame for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Through the involvement of another nation’s regime change, an American president inextricably ties the fate of that nation with the fate of America. Failure to bring freedom to that nation would tarnish America’s reputation as a defender of democracy. America’s promises would ring hollow in the future.
Notably, a dangerous “ism” shapes both the domestic and foreign interests of America. Communism’s red specter and terrorism’s axis of evil threaten to upset democracy. American politicians turn the adherents of communism and terrorism into inhumane barbarians espousing a philosophy contradictory to the idea of freedom. But while South Vietnam came to represent a bulwark of freedom, Iraq came to represent a menace to freedom.
Perhaps, American advisors whipped Johnson and Bush into the same frenzy that entranced the Athenian democracy in Thucydides’ history. The Athenians convinced themselves of the invincible superiority of their army and the certain inferiority of the Sicilian forces. The campaign would be lightning quick and relatively painless. They were quite unaware of the difficulties of a foreign land where Sicilian cavalry and overcautious commanders would spell the defeat of the Athenians.
At this point, Iraq has become much of the same quagmire that Vietnam became. Though we control Iraq’s government and economy, insurgents take every opportunity to kill our soldiers. Each American death emboldens our enemies and weakens our morale. We must choose whether or not those sacrifices will contribute to our policy of bringing democracy to the world. As the self-proclaimed harbinger of freedom, America is easily caught up in idealistic struggles, the clash between civilizations. It becomes harder for America to grasp the psyche of the people we are supposedly trying to enlighten. Democracy rarely comes without bloodshed, and it often requires patient education of the native population. America cannot instantly transplant democracy in a nation unfamiliar with principles like voting and representation.
Presently, the biggest difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that we still have a chance to get it right in Iraq. We have to be mindful of the lessons we learned in Vietnam. America now reigns as the only superpower, capable of bringing good to the world or imploding on itself like the Roman Republic. We must empathize with the Iraqi people when realizing our goal of spreading democracy. Let us be aware of the repercussions of abandoning Iraq like we did Vietnam. We must not forget the sacrifices of men and women of all nationalities in this struggle. Abandonment, the result of failing to build a nation, leads to emotionally charged letters like the ones written by Name Withheld and my dad, who are filled with memories of lost hopes and dreams.
Random factoid: At one point in my Quiz Bowl career, I could name all nine muses and what what area of the arts they were supposed to inspire. I knew their mother was Mnemosyne. But all I remember now is that Clio is the muse of history because the history department newsletter takes the title of "Clio".
Where was I? Oh, yes, if you recall I randomly decided to write 3,000 to 4,000 words on the most profound ethical dilemma I have ever faced. I wanted to try to win some money off this Elie Wiesel Ethics Contest that needs to be postmarked by Friday, December 3rd.
And you know what? It's really hard to make an essay about ethics interesting without sounding too condescending. I mean, these people did, but they wrote some freaking ridiculous stuff.
But, in my quest to become a better writer, I gave it my best effort. It took some time, but I finally decided to use one of my most influential childhood experiences.
I could always use some help editing help/suggestions. Be warned though, this is definitely not light reading. Also, you may be as harsh or critical as you like as long as you have a point (i.e. saying my writing sucks doesn't work, but saying my writing sucks because of "X, Y, and Z don't make sense" does). Email me at greybeta at livejounal dot com (or whatever forwarding address livejournal set me up with) if you prefer email or if you'd like a word copy.
Also, I don't like the title. It works, but I know it could be better. But I suck at coming up with titles.
Abandonment: When Nation Building Fails
In Washington, D.C., you will find a powerful memorial designed by Maya Lin. It’s a simple black wall, covered with names. Each name represents a life lost in a land far, far away from America. When I first walked past those names, I felt a haunting chill go down my spine. It’s one thing to hear that 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam; it’s another to walk past each and every name. Names transcend numbers, for each name seems to want to tell you a story about their family, their childhood, their future. But their story is silenced in stone, their lives ended in my motherland of Vietnam.
For those who lived through those times, Vietnam invokes an unrivaled passion. Those were troubling and turbulent times, marked by violence and rioting. Youths unable to vote fought to protect the honor of their country. Several American administrations charged these energetic youths with defending the free world against the specter of communism. And the slaughter they would see firsthand would change their lives forever. People they ate and slept with died in all sorts of gruesome manners. The worst thing about it was that friendly fire took the lives of their friends every so often.
When the Vietnam Veterans returned, many did not receive a hero’s welcome. By the end of the American involvement in Vietnam, the antiwar movement had eclipsed the importance of greeting our soldiers. The veterans worked hard to restore their own honor, and slowly but surely they claimed what was rightfully theirs. But for some, they felt spurned by those they were trying to save. For example, this editorial caused uproar in my household when I was a sixth-grader:
Reader puzzled by absence of Asians at memorial service
12-4-96
In 1973 President Richard Nixon declared an end to The United States’ role in the Vietnam War. In 1974 I turned 18 and registered with the Selective Service. One year is all that separated me from the possibility of being sent to fight in Asia. Naturally, I have many friends who did go.
Our family attended the evening memorial services on Veterans Day at the Vietnam Memorial Wall model that was at Ben Geren Park in Fort Smith. It was a very touching service. As names of local fallen soldiers were read, a candle was lit for each name as well as in representation of the many names that were not read.
An Honor Guard, bagpipes, a bugle and a salute by the Barling Fire Department furthered the stirring of emotions among the crowd. Many grown men and women made no attempt to hide their tender emotions as they hugged one another. Looking around, you could just about guess who were fathers and mothers and who were siblings of the heroes who died in obedience to their country’s bidding. It was only proper that such a time of memoriam be closed with a moment of bowed heads in respect for the loved ones. Even I—as unemotional as I am—was moved to tears.
One thing about the whole event really disturbed me; out of all the ungrateful Asians, I did not see a single one out there paying tribute to the brave men and women who were slaughtered in the rice paddies so that they could come to this otherwise great land of ours to be spoon-fed by Congress at our expense! I wonder if any of those soldiers ever imagined what their sacrifice would do to their community?
Knowing he would receive backlash for what he had written, the author of this editorial withheld his name. I do not think it is a bad guess to say that he knew somebody who died in Vietnam. He truly believed that the Vietnamese who had come to America had not shown gratitude for the opportunity they had been given. While I do not think he writes for a bad reason, I do believe he is misguided.
When my dad first read the article, I remember him getting riled up about it. With my mother’s help, he wrote the following response:
I went to visit the Wall here, but what about us, our land
12-25-96
To respond to the article “Reader puzzled by absence of Asians at memorial service” by Name withheld, I’m an Asian, a Vietnamese who settled in the U.S.A. since 19080. When Name withheld was 18 years old (1974), I was a cadet of the Vietnamese National Military Academy, a famous military school in Southeast Asia. From 1948 to 1975, more than 5,000 graduated, but over 3,000 died in the war. Currently, about 2,000 are living somewhere around the world, many of them disabled or badly scarred.
After April 1975, like many others, I was put into a central camp by the communist authority (called “re-education camp”). While the world believed that the Vietnam War was over, only the Vietnamese people realized that it was not!
At age 21, I was one of the youngest officers of the ARVN (South VN troop) to become a prisoner of war. I learned a lot of lessons, saw the retaliations, and could see my dark future. Through my background in the war, I understand the sacrifices of a soldier, and I know how it hurts when people neglect my comrades and me. Therefore, on Saturday Nov. 9, I brought my wife and my children to Ben Geren Regional Park to salute to all the heroes, not only for that day but for the rest of my life!
Now I want to express my opinion why our people might seem ungrateful: Because we experienced hardships many long years, and the war destroyed all moral tradition, we preferred a selfish living style, and we don’t trust any of our leaders. Because our leaders could not do what they wanted for their own country, they were controlled by Paris, by Moscow, by Washington, D.C., by Beijing, all for the superpower country’s benefit. The distrust among our people resulted in our inability to form a community with a leader. Without a leader, our people have no direction.
It is good the Americans have a Wall for remembrance. What about the 300,000 ARVN who died fighting side by side with American soldiers against the communists? They got no respect and many Vietnamese people don’t remember them, even though these people have relatives who sacrificed during the war. In Vietnam, the VC retaliated by annihilating their graveyards, and history seems forgetful of them.
Before you label us “ungrateful Asians,” I ask you to consider the White House and Congress who used our land to win the Cold War, all participants in the anti-VN war movement, and the people who broke their promise to protect the freedom of South VN. These are the main reasons we had to leave our homeland.
Unbeknownst to Name Withheld, my family had actually gone to visit the traveling Vietnam Wall when it passed through my hometown that year. We simply had not attended the memorial service on Veterans’ Day. At the time, I did not want to go. Why was my dad dragging the family out to go see a boring wall with a bunch of names on it? I recall my dad saying something to indicate that I would understand one day, that I would understand the meaning of sacrifice.
Since my dad graduated from the military academy, he knows the bond that only comrades on a battlefield can share. He also knows the pains of being on the losing side, the one that history often forgets. He has seen how the communists treated the graves of his fellow soldiers, and how they tried to teach him the foolishness of listening to Americans. He remembers the feeling of being abandoned by America in Vietnam’s greatest time of need.
Growing up, I heard two versions of the same story. In one version, the mighty superpower America cannot afford to sustain a weaker Vietnam. In the other, the mighty superpower America betrays an unsuspecting Vietnam. I often wondered how the two incompatible views came to co-exist with each other. The only thing that I knew for sure was that my dad did not agree with the first view.
Because I planned on studying electrical engineering, I did not worry about reconciling the opposing views. The Vietnamese culture values doctors, pharmacists, and engineers; moreover, history does not offer many lucrative jobs. I was going to make money, and talk of the past could be reserved for the dinner table. But then a remarkable incident happened in my freshman year. An endowed chair in the history department wrote me a letter, urging me to consider studying history. Apparently, I had made an impression on this professor in his honors class on ancient Greek society, and I had talents that could be used in history that would not be used in engineering. However, I planned on telling him that I was just an engineer, out to make money. But in person I could not tell him that. Instead, the conversation came to a point where he said that I would know whether I could do history or not by doing some research. The key was picking a topic that would interest me. I naturally picked something that I had heard about since my childhood—the Vietnam War.
My first assignment was finding a research advisor. I eventually found a sagely professor of history whose specialty was American foreign diplomacy in China and Russia. He would be the most knowledgeable about my subject, and he had me start my research by reading a list of background books. To my surprise, the list accommodated all sorts of views. While many books held the conventional notion that Vietnam was a bad war, some argued the value or necessity of it. I sought to find the correct view, but I could find nothing to help me determine the correct one. I was confused. How could it be that history could be so controversial, with no one holding the truth? My research advisor told me that we often do not have all the facts in our hands, and historians must often guess the motives of the characters in any particular story. I would have to weigh firsthand accounts against the documentary evidence.
To focus my work, I needed to choose a specific area of study. By chance I learned about a conference about the first South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. The theme for the conference was “The Rise and Fall of Ngo Dinh Diem and Its Implications for Vietnam and the United States.” I concentrated on Diem, a Catholic who studied seminary in America before getting involved in South Vietnamese politics. A product of western schools and a stanch anticommunist, Diem was America’s ideal choice to be the leader for emerging South Vietnam.
In contrast to the great hopes at the beginning of the Diem administration, most Vietnam War historians describe the Diem regime as corrupt and inefficient. Diem relied too heavily on his family and political party to the point that some of his own countrymen charged him with nepotism. Millions of dollars in foreign aid found its way to the pockets of government officials instead of the people of Vietnam. High-ranking military officers were accused of selling rice and arms to the enemy. Summarily, many people paint the Diem regime in a dim light.
Intrigued by the negativity against Diem, I set out to do interviews with those involved in the war on the first South Vietnamese president. I discovered vastly divergent opinions. One officer claimed that the communists, the Americans, and the Diem regime were no good. Another declared that none of the South Vietnamese leadership could have saved Vietnam due to America’s meddlesome behavior. Yet another maintained that Diem was an effective leader quite capable of leading South Vietnam to victory. For the first time in my life, I encountered the emotionality of war. I could never hope to capture the fiery passion of those who fought to protect Vietnam, of those who witnessed brutalities far beyond the comprehension of human reason.
Despite my best efforts in research, I still had quite the dilemma. I always thought historians were neutral observers of the truth, but my research slowly began to teach me that history was much more subjective than I had first believed. I have heard once that the job of historians is to white out other countries’ histories, enhancing the history of their country. But I lived at the concurrence of two different cultures, two peoples co-existing with different histories. I wanted to rectify that, beginning with my own research.
Like a bolt of lightning, it made sense. North Vietnam saw China, France, and now the United States striving to direct the destiny of the dragon that was Vietnam. South Vietnam viewed the communist ideology as detrimental to the future of the country. The Soviet Union and China took advantage of an opportunity to bolster Marxist ideals. America looked at Vietnam as a battleground between the free world and communism. In a sense, everyone read the same poem but interpreted it differently.
After some meditation upon my conundrum, I came up with the idea that Diem fought against American superiority. Diem had to walk a treacherous line between his own people and America. He personally despised communism, and he knew that he required American help to counteract the Soviet and Chinese aid to Ho Chi Minh. However, he could not afford to look like a mere puppet pulled by American strings.
As for the American side, by early 1963 it became clear to Kennedy that Diem had to be removed because he did not follow the American plan. Some of Kennedy’s closest advisors, like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, assert that Kennedy would have withdrawn all American troops by 1965. These well-laid plans dissipated on November 1st, 1963. On that day South Vietnamese generals carried out a coup against Diem with the understanding that America would not stop them. What nobody in Kennedy’s administration could have predicted was the brutal way in which Diem was assassinated. Photos record several bloody gunshot wounds all over the body of the first South Vietnamese president.
Undoubtedly, Diem’s death shattered whatever plans Kennedy had for a clean exit out of Vietnam. Would Kennedy have withdrawn the troops, or did he now feel personally responsible to Vietnam? We will never know what Kennedy intended to do because he was assassinated three weeks later. Lyndon Baines Johnson became President, and he followed what he believed Kennedy would do. Feeling obligated to South Vietnam, Johnson escalated the war. America now took over strategic planning for beating the Vietnamese communists.
Remarkably, America did not have a plan to replace Diem. The generals who carried out the coup predictably fought one another for control of South Vietnam. The leadership of the nation became a revolving door. Johnson’s administration finally settled on the general who they thought could best control the situation, but Nguyen Van Thieu proved to be even more corrupt than Ngo Dinh Diem.
When the ground war dragged much longer than anticipated, Richard M. Nixon began the process known as Vietnamization. The South Vietnamese became abruptly capable of defending itself. America then promised billions of dollars in economic and military aid to prevent the complete collapse of South Vietnam. Congress, though, found it to be a waste and cut the programs intended to help South Vietnam. Just two years after the Treaty of Paris of 1973, South Vietnam ceased to exist with the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
Thirty years later, we hear a familiar story. Under the banner of promoting freedom and democracy, America builds a nation in the hopes that it will develop liberties and prosperity for its people. If this sounds familiar, then it is because there are many striking resemblances between the Vietnam and Iraq conflict. America once supported both Ngo Dinh Diem and Saddam Hussein simply because those leaders could maintain a balance of power, Southeast Asia in the former case and the Middle East in the latter one. America faces the intangibles of a population with a different social outlook and educational background. America listens to both hawks and doves pleading for divergent goals. America finds widespread international backing in both cases.
Much like Kennedy holds the ultimate responsibility for approving Ngo Dinh Diem’s overthrow, Bush will shoulder the blame for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Through the involvement of another nation’s regime change, an American president inextricably ties the fate of that nation with the fate of America. Failure to bring freedom to that nation would tarnish America’s reputation as a defender of democracy. America’s promises would ring hollow in the future.
Notably, a dangerous “ism” shapes both the domestic and foreign interests of America. Communism’s red specter and terrorism’s axis of evil threaten to upset democracy. American politicians turn the adherents of communism and terrorism into inhumane barbarians espousing a philosophy contradictory to the idea of freedom. But while South Vietnam came to represent a bulwark of freedom, Iraq came to represent a menace to freedom.
Perhaps, American advisors whipped Johnson and Bush into the same frenzy that entranced the Athenian democracy in Thucydides’ history. The Athenians convinced themselves of the invincible superiority of their army and the certain inferiority of the Sicilian forces. The campaign would be lightning quick and relatively painless. They were quite unaware of the difficulties of a foreign land where Sicilian cavalry and overcautious commanders would spell the defeat of the Athenians.
At this point, Iraq has become much of the same quagmire that Vietnam became. Though we control Iraq’s government and economy, insurgents take every opportunity to kill our soldiers. Each American death emboldens our enemies and weakens our morale. We must choose whether or not those sacrifices will contribute to our policy of bringing democracy to the world. As the self-proclaimed harbinger of freedom, America is easily caught up in idealistic struggles, the clash between civilizations. It becomes harder for America to grasp the psyche of the people we are supposedly trying to enlighten. Democracy rarely comes without bloodshed, and it often requires patient education of the native population. America cannot instantly transplant democracy in a nation unfamiliar with principles like voting and representation.
Presently, the biggest difference between Vietnam and Iraq is that we still have a chance to get it right in Iraq. We have to be mindful of the lessons we learned in Vietnam. America now reigns as the only superpower, capable of bringing good to the world or imploding on itself like the Roman Republic. We must empathize with the Iraqi people when realizing our goal of spreading democracy. Let us be aware of the repercussions of abandoning Iraq like we did Vietnam. We must not forget the sacrifices of men and women of all nationalities in this struggle. Abandonment, the result of failing to build a nation, leads to emotionally charged letters like the ones written by Name Withheld and my dad, who are filled with memories of lost hopes and dreams.
