35th anniversary of the Vietnam War

[Barry Lyndon]

On this day, April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks smashed through the front of the presidential palace in Saigon as the last American forces fled the US embassy via helicopter. For all socialists, anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists this was a historic day because it showed that a revolutionary army of peasants, with the right organization and leadership and drawing on the grassroots support of the people, could defeat a superpower.
http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/Vietimages/nva-tank.jpg http://library.thinkquest.org/07aug/00841/VIETNAM%20WAR/Vietnam%20war%20pics/fall_of_saigon.jpg
I am not a fan of the RCP at all, but they wrote a article a couple years ago that I think sums up the revolutionary position on Vietnam very well:

A Victory for the People of the World

Revolutionary Worker #1051 April 23, 2000

This April marks the 25th anniversary of a profound and unforgettable event in world history--the defeat of U.S. imperialism at the hands of the people of Indochina.

The first U.S. invasion forces landed in Vietnam in 1965 with arrogance and swagger. Ten years later, on April 30, 1975, the last Marine helicopter took off from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). As the Vietnamese liberation forces closed in from all sides, the U.S. ambassador clutched the bloody flag that had flown over the embassy, while thousands of Vietnamese reactionaries--collaborators with the U.S. army of aggression--scurried in panic.

The U.S. invasion of Vietnam was an unjust war aimed at imposing foreign domination over an oppressed people. The U.S. hoped to encircle China and prevent the spread of Maoist revolution. And the U.S. wanted to claim for itself the freedom to exploit the hundreds of millions of people in this region.

These imperialist goals were pursued through extremely criminal means. By 1969, half-a-million U.S. troops were in Vietnam, a peasant country the size of the state of New Mexico. And U.S. "advisers" commanded 900,000 Vietnamese puppet troops. U.S. warplanes dropped seven million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia--three times the amount dropped in all of World War 2. Other deadly weapons were used in mass quantities: anti-personnel bombs that exploded with flesh-tearing darts, white phosphorus incendiary bombs, napalm, the infamous chemical Agent Orange. U.S. troops carried out rape and mass murder of civilians--as in the village of My Lai, where 500 people were massacred in 1968. The CIA death squad campaign known as the Phoenix program--which targeted revolutionary leaders and activists--assassinated over 40,000 "suspects."

In all, the U.S. war killed an estimated three million Vietnamese people. The U.S. rulers are truly the biggest war criminals in the world.

But there are two sides to this story. The people of Indochina fought a huge and powerful enemy with intense warfare, heroic determination, and courageous sacrifice. This was a just war--a war against imperialism and for national liberation.

Starting out with simple home-made weapons, the guerrilla fighters in southern Vietnam built a deeply rooted people's war and eventually brought the U.S. invaders to their knees. In the north, the masses endured tremendous hardships to support the liberation struggle, sending supplies and fighters down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In the words of historian Howard Zinn, "When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won."

As the U.S. became "bogged down" in its war, the flames of Vietnam spread. The just war in Indochina inspired liberation struggles and resistance in other corners of the world. Maoist China served as a powerful revolutionary base area for the Indochinese peoples--providing arms, supplies, and international political support. And in the "belly of the beast" itself, millions of people mobilized to oppose the U.S. war in Vietnam. Students faced National Guard guns at the 1970 shootings at Kent State and Jackson State. Thousands of young men defied the draft and went underground or were jailed. Large sections of society turned against the government.

And there was revolt within the war machine itself, as thousands of soldiers refused to fight, deserted, or organized open acts of resistance. A few even joined the liberation armies and turned their guns against imperialism. Many veterans came back radicalized--and plunged into the antiwar movement, the Black liberation movement and the growing revolutionary currents.

Today, the U.S. imperialists are still trying to overcome "the Vietnam syndrome"--by which they mean they want the people to willingly kill and die in U.S. military actions around the world. They call the war a "tragedy that must be overcome"--or even claim they could have won if they were not so "restrained" in the use of their military power. They point to the spread of capitalist globalization--including Nike sweatshops in Vietnam--and declare that revolutionary armed struggle is a "thing of the past."

But all around the globe, billions of people have no future under the existing system. Globalization has only brought more extremes of poverty and hunger, oppression and exploitation, needless death and suffering. At the root of all the problems facing the world is the system of imperialism and capitalism. The real future for humanity lies in making revolution to overthrow this monster and bury it in a deep grave.

The people of the world will never forget how the world's top imperialist power was defeated by peasant fighters of a small, poor country. The people will always remember how the shockwaves from this war of liberation spread far and wide--and even touched off rebellions inside the home base of U.S. imperialism. This was a great victory for the people of the whole world.

Nothing can erase the historic significance of the victory won by the masses of people on the battlefields of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The war of liberation waged by the people of Indochina seriously cracked U.S. imperialism's "invincible" armor--and it can never be put back whole again.

[InuyashaKnight]

That was a Victory for the people that day. Vietnam must be proud!

[Ismail]

Grover Furr's page on the Vietnam War is a good read (since besides Stalin and English literature, it's his other specialty): http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vietnam.html

For some reason Enver Hoxha actually had pretty good relations with Vietnam, although at this same time saying that it was state-capitalist. Unlike the Maoists, Hoxha sided with the Vietnamese when they invaded Kampuchea (though he considered the invasion the lesser of two evils), and always praised Ho Chi Minh and his efforts.

In 1975, upon the liberation of South Vietnam, Hoxha said the following:

The whole of South Vietnam has been liberated. Saigon was taken by assault and not on the basis of the Paris agreement. With the fall of Saigon one of the most protracted and barbarous wars the world has seen during the 20th century came to an end. American imperialism had taken the place and played the role of Hitlerite fascist imperialism, while the valiant Vietnamese people fought heroically and relentlessly against the French, the Japanese, against the French again and against the Americans, for 35 years on end. From its duration, the war of Vietnam is like the Hundred Years War and the Thirty Years War of by-gone centuries, but the war waged by, American imperialism in Vietnam far outstripped the Second World War in its ferocity, the barbarous atrocities committed. and the quantity and variety of means employed.

Nevertheless the fraternal heroic Vietnamese people fought arms in hand, resisted and triumphed. The greatest world power, American imperialism, suffered the most sensational, ignominious and costly defeat. The United States of America poured 150 billion dollars into the war against Vietnam to earn disgrace and the hatred of all the peoples of the world. The friends and allies of the United States of America, also, suffered the greatest disillusionment and they are terror-stricken over this victory of the people of Vietnam and Cambodia.

This war confirmed the Leninist thesis that power is won with the rifle, through fighting. Wild pigs on the rampage must be shot. American imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism and the reactionary bourgeoisie must be fought arms in hand. Only in this way can the peoples liberate themselves. There is not a single example to show that the people and the working class can take power by the parliamentary, reformist road. The revisionists loudly advertise this road, indeed they stress it as the only road, because they are against the revolution in general, and against the proletarian revolution, the liberation of the peoples, in particular. They are for the conciliation of the proletariat with the capitalist employers, for reforms which give the proletarians the crumbs from the capitalists' well-laden table... The Paris agreement was the offspring of this dirty Soviet-American compromise at the expense of the Vietnamese. The Paris agreement prolonged the existence and domination of the American and the Saigon bandits for another two years. The Vietnamese had to continue to fight to achieve their complete liberation, which, in fact, they did. We told them openly what we thought about the Paris agreement. We told them that unless they threw it in the waste-paper basket they would never secure their liberation. And so it turned out.

Even now that Vietnam has been liberated the Soviet and American intrigues will continue, the fierce struggle will continue with other means...

[blake 3:17]

It is to be celebrated.


Unlike the Maoists, Hoxha sided with the Vietnamese when they invaded Kampuchea (though he considered the invasion the lesser of two evils), and always praised Ho Chi Minh and his efforts.

A proof of the inherent justice of the Vietnamese Revolution was that they were able to stop the Khmer Rouge.