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Commentary: Time for Vietnamese to Be Heard on Vietnam War
American academics, politicians and journalists continue to
pontificate about the Vietnam War...without the input of Vietnamese
By Thai A. Nguyen-Khoa, New America Media
OAKLAND, Calif. - Feb 23, 2006 - Thirty-three years after the U.S.
withdrawal from Vietnam and the ensuing debacle, America has still not
learned the lessons of the war. Despite its utter defeat in 1975,
America loves to listen to its favorite sons and daughters rehash the
war's shortcomings in the pretext of finding wisdom and relieving future
generations of angst and sorrow. But the voice of the Vietnamese people,
here and in Vietnam, is always an afterthought.
Thus for two days (March 10-11), the John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library in Boston will host a conference on "Vietnam and the
Presidency," under the auspices of the National Archives and all 12
presidential libraries. Conference organizers have invited an impressive
list of political big-shots, including former secretaries of state Henry
Kissinger and Alexander Haig Jr., Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), first
Ambassador to Vietnam Pete Petersen, television journalist Dan Rather
and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors David Halberstam and Frances
Fitzgerald. President Jimmy Carter will speak via video. The organizers
claim to address a wide range of issues and new information, yet
curiously, not a single Vietnamese was among the invitees.
In politics, the media and academia, the voice of Vietnamese and
Vietnamese-Americans is rarely heard. From the "Vietnam as History"
conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington,
D.C., to the (USC) University of Southern California's "Vietnam
Reconsidered" event in early 1983 to the recent Oakland Museum
conference and exhibit, "What's Going On: California and the Vietnam
Era" to the upcoming JFK library conference, the Vietnamese voice has
always been circumscribed and gagged.
"Vietnam was a complex war and they need a more inclusive view," says
Professor Doan Viet Hoat, a dissident who was released from jail in
1989. "The present situation in Vietnam demands it." Hoat and professor
Nguyen Ngoc Bich from the Washington, D.C., area were suggested by
various Vietnamese forums, but were not invited. Bui Tin, the ex-colonel
from the People's Army of North Vietnam and the chief editor of Nhan Dan
People's Army newspaper was also bypassed. Quang Xuan Pham, a Marine
helicopter pilot in the first Iraq war and author of "A Sense of Duty:
My father, My American Journey," says he contacted the JFK library to
suggest Vietnamese speakers, "but to no avail."
By purposely framing the conference around Vietnam and the presidency,
the organizers have effectively shut the Vietnamese voice out of the
historical debate and sidestepped the issue of why America went to
Vietnam in the first place. In case the pundits have forgotten, the
American promise and premise was to secure the blessing of liberty and
self-determination for the (South) Vietnamese people.
Or, as John F. Kennedy pledged in his 1960 inauguration address, "Let
every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay
any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."
These words ring hollow today, considering the lack of liberty in
Vietnam since the less-than-honorable American Congress decided to cut
all aid to South Vietnam in 1975 and effectively foreclose the dream of
democracy there. Will the conference juxtapose Kennedy's "survival of
liberty" with the Truman Doctrine's call to "support free people who are
resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside
pressures"?
Have Americans forgotten that we Vietnamese were fighting for our
independence almost a hundred years before the United States decided to
side with France in her attempt to retake Vietnam in 1946?
It was convenient in 1963, on the heels of the Buddhist unrest in South
Vietnam, for America to engineer the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem so it
could have free rein in the execution of the war. How ironic for the
United States to take over the war when, in the struggle for nationhood
at the waning of French colonialism, the Vietnamese nationalists and
communists had in common, at least, a shared struggle for their place in
the 20th century.
How disingenuous, then, for Nixon to "Vietnamize" the war, when
beginning in 1961 Kennedy had already set in motion an American-led war.
How ironic for "Vietnamization" when Robert McNamara and Gen.
Westmoreland kept pouring American troops into Vietnam, where, in April
1969, American troop levels had reached 543,400, giving a false sense of
security to the Vietnamese and convincing them that only a reliance on
U.S. military superiority would bring freedom to Vietnam. Was it "Vietnamization"
when Kissinger forced President Thieu to sign the Paris Accords in 1973
(ineffective as he was, Thieu was prescient enough to resist signing a
death warrant for South Vietnam), when Kissinger knew all along that the
North Vietnamese were not going to honor the accords?
In the end, there was neither peace nor honor for Vietnam, only a
sell-out agreement forged by the Americans.
The United States squandered 58,000 Americans and more than 3 million
Vietnamese lives in its last betrayal of Vietnam, leaving more than 1.5
million Vietnamese-Americans and 80 million Vietnamese in Vietnam to
sort out their fates in the 21st century. Now, more than 30 years later,
those who consider themselves the top thinkers and the very conscience
of America will sit at the JFK Presidential Library in judgment of
America's past action and once again leave out the most critical players
of all: we Vietnamese.
New America Media contributor Thai A. Nguyen-Khoa teaches social
studies in the San Francisco Unified School District. He was a
Vietnamese Advisory Board member for the Oakland Museum conference
"What's Going On," from February 2004 to July 2005. He writes for the
English-edition of Nguoi Viet 2 and is an editor of Dan Chim
Viet, a popular online magazine. |
