THE US DEFENSE SECRETARY IN VIETNAM
The American Secretary of Defense William Cohen concluded his official visit to Vietnam on Wednesday, March 15. He told reporters on his way out after his three days visiting Hanoi and Saigon beginning Monday, that his visit has been a success.
The fact that Vietnam Communist Party top leaders and its government officials including the chief of state and the prime minister highly appreciated the meetings with Cohen confirms that success . The VCP has overtly express its wish to welcome Cohen since last year when he intended to make a trip to Vietnam but canceled it later.
As to the anti-Communist Vietnamese, Secretary Cohen has to act according to policies made in Washington. However, many of them, particularly Vietnamese as American citizens, wouldn't take some of what Cohen were doing in Vietnam.
First of all, the Defense Secretary shouldn't have accepted a brick from Hanoi Hilton, the former central prison where American downed pilots were detained as POWs during the Vietnam War. In the early 1990s, the prison was demolished for space to erect a tall business building. According to news agencies, some Hanoi official presented the brick to Cohen but more details have not been reported.
The brick, despite all explanations that Hanoi party leaders might have given, could only be the symbol of the defeat that Washington had suffered in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam Communist regime often plays practical jokes to make the selected personage a laughingstock, maybe not in the media, but in its political classes of its party members and people in general.
Two years ago, US Ambassador Pete Peterson accepted a brick from the same dismantled Hanoi Hilton when he was visiting a group of local workers searching for remains of the American jet pilots crashed at the site in the Pan-Handle area. The brick could only be a token to remind Peterson that "Once you were locked up in our prison."
In some cases, the VCP even made up stories to ridicule American big wheels. One of those was Henry Kissinger. After Kissinger's visit to Hanoi, a story ran in the Communist party and North Vietnamese people that Kissinger was all of a sweat when he entered the Hanoi War Museum and saw a large banderole hung over the main entrance which read "Nothing is more precious than Independence and Freedom. - Ho Chi Minh." And Kissinger was frightened so much that he had to sign the Paris Agreement.
Hanoi claims that there were 300,000 of its soldiers still unaccounted for. Cohen has taken it for granted when he referred to the claim. His Department of Defense must have been well aware of the issue. If there were 1.1 million Communist soldiers killed in the Vietnam War as Hanoi admitted some years ago, at least 95 percent of them must be listed as missing in action because most of the Communist KIAs fell on battlefields not under the Communist control and the Communist commanders had no time nor willing to recover their dead comrades to bury in marked graves. Most of the fallen soldiers had no dog tag, ID card or identification paper. How could the American government help Hanoi when it does not want to do the task itself?
Another issue is about the Agent Orange or dioxin, found in defoliation chemical sprayed over dense vegetation areas in Communist secret bases and along the two sides of South Vietnam major roads.
On one hand, Hanoi staged an endless drama showing how the wretched victims of the chemical. To consolidate its claim, Hanoi recently awarded bonus pay to its veterans who were classified as Agent Orange victims. The real purpose has been to support its ruse to demand some special aid from the US government. But on the other hand, Hanoi still impedes foreign researchers coming to Vietnam to study possible harmful effects of Agent Orange.
If a North Vietnamese, American or a South Korean soldier is really affected by the defoliant, why no one has ever asked how about the South Vietnamese veterans in combat units who were exposed to the chemical as much as - or much more than - those from North Vietnam, America and South Korea? Among South Vietnamese émigrés in Western countries, there are thousands of former South Vietnamese Army officers who had been operating month after month before 1975 in sprayed areas.
On the humorous side of the visit, the press media had a story to tell.
While in Saigon, the US Defense Secretary met with Communist army Lt. Gen. Phan Trung Kien, Commanding Officer of the 7th Military Region (Saigon and the surrounding areas).
To please the American guest, Phan Trung Kien said that during the Vietnam War when he was a low ranking VC operative, he was interested in the singing career of Jane Fonda, the renowned war protester. Poor Jane! He switched her career without her consent. He didn't know she is only an actress.
Cohen thought that Kien must have mistaken Fonda for another antiwar activist. "I think he meant Joan Baez," Cohen told reporters.
No, Mr. Cohen. Phan Trung Kien didn't mistake. He just told a lie. Kien could have been a brave warrior but not a listener of American music especially in time of war.
ARTS OR PROPAGANDA?
An exhibit of 40 lithograph images of Ho Chi Minh is scheduled for Saturday, March 18 in Oakland, California and supposed to last 5 weeks.
The exhibit at Pacific Bridge Gallery prompted a movement of protest by the Vietnamese all over North California, with probable participation of Vietnamese Americans from nearby locations such as South California and Seattle, WA. Demonstrations with thousands of people are expected.
The protesters claimed that Ho Chi Minh has not been any kind of hero, nor patriot, or liberator or anything but a staunch international Communist who is responsible for the most bloodiest war in the history of Vietnam. Besides, Ho Chi Minh was a sex maniac who had had many sex slaves, one of them was Nong Thi Xuan, who was killed by order or, at least, tacit approval of Ho Chi Minh.
His life is full of lies, from his birthday to made up anecdotes extolling him to the skies. He wrote his biography with stories to deify himself under the name of a non-existing person as its author. No state leader even the worst dictator in the world has done anything so base like his.
The organizers argue that the exhibit is only an art display and its purpose is to invoke a discussion of Ho Chi Minh's life.
The argument seems to be fallacious. A discussion of a person's life does not necessarily require a presentation of his colorful portraits. Such discussion should only be held in a seminar or conference participated by an equal number of panelists representing each of the two sides of the issue in an open atmosphere without propaganda tricks.
The way the exhibit is held proves its apparent propaganda purpose. Vietnamese refugees support the idea of discussing the life of any one, even demons such as Hitler. But certainly no one would accept the exhibit of paintings that are aimed at embellishing the romantic images of the principal to the Holocaust.
As social order is concerned, exhibiting Ho's portraits near the Vietnamese community may cause unrest, similar to hanging Hitler's colorful pictures in the Jewish neighborhood for provocation, not in the true spirit of the First Amendment.
One of the arguments of C. David Thomas, the artist who painted the 40 Ho Chi Minh's portraits, compares Ho Chi Minh with George Washington. There is nothing the more humiliating to Washington than such comparison.
During the last few years, the Vietnam Communist Party top leaders are trying to boost efforts to save Ho Chi Minh's image while more and more secrets in his life have been revealed. A strategy aimed at refurbishing Ho Chi Minh icon is to shift the blames for his crimes to his subordinates.
It was true that due to his sickness since 1967 to his death on September 2, 1969, he was nothing more than a "cadavre vivant" (French for living corpse, according to a Hanoi doctor whose work was close to Ho). He may not be directly responsible for the horrible massacre in the Hue 1968 Tet Offensive. But during his time until 1967, he had been the very author of many bloody purging campaigns that included the 1953-56 Land Reform that put to death tens of thousands of landlords by Middle-Age execution methods such as hanging, lapidation, locking up without food and water, burying alive.
It is worth noticing that Ho Chi Minh himself was playing his best tricks to pass the charges for his wrongdoings on someone else. In the Land Reform, the scapegoat was Ho Viet Thang, the under minister of the Agriculture Ministry.
Arguing that he was unable to control his underlings or to stop them from committing the atrocities is totally unfounded and might inadvertently, if not deliberately support the Hanoi's scheme.
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