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People's Weekly World May 6, 2000 Edition. Vietnam: 25 years of socialism, independence and peace By Libero Della Piana "Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. "I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours." These prophetic words of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sum up the great tragedy and triumph of the U.S. War in Vietnam. The 10-year conflict devastated both countries, both peoples and its end came about from the heroic successes of each. April 30 marked the 25th anniversary of the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The conflict forever changed both countries and, perhaps now, both the U.S. and Vietnamese people are prepared to face the legacy of the war in peace. In a recent visit to Vietnam as a guest of the Vietnam Youth Federation, I saw with my own eyes that the Vietnamese people are ready to move into the next millennium in cooperation with the American people. But is the U.S. ready? For Vietnam, the U.S. war was the continuation of more than 100 years of national liberation struggle. The Vietnamese people fought for independence against French colonialists, Japanese invaders, the returned French (again), and finally against the greatest military power in the world, the United States. Generations of Vietnamese grew up and died during these struggles that span the century. During the decade of the U.S. aggression alone, over three million Vietnamese were killed. The illegal and inhuman war there enacted unthinkable crimes against humanity. As the Vietnamese say, "There were many My Lais," referring to the slaughter of civilians in the village of My Lai. For the U.S., Vietnam was a backwater playground for the Cold War. Most Americans had never heard of what was once French Indochina, the newly independent Vietnam. They would soon know all too well. More four million Americans served in Vietnam; 58,000 died or were missing in action. Almost 100,000 others were injured. Almost all of them young workers, and disproportionately Black and Latino. Vietnam would burn its indelible mark in the American consciousness. Furthermore, an entire generation was drawn to progressive and revolutionary politics by the struggle against the war here at home. The U.S. aggression against the Vietnamese people and the constantly emerging web of lies, deceptions and intrigue hidden by our government revealed for many the rotten core of our government's foreign policy. By the 1980s, both Right and Left in the U.S. were united by the slogan "no more Vietnams." Progressives invoked the bloody images of Vietnam in their criticism of U.S. military adventures in Latin America and Africa. Conservatives, on the other hand, vowed never to repeat the embarrassing defeat that Vietnam represented. The Vietnamese people, led by the Communist Party of Vietnam and its leader President Ho Chi Minh, gave the U.S. a fight unlike any it had encountered before. This new kind of war allowed a volunteer army of peasants and students to defeat the greatest fighting force in history. All the U.S. firepower, technological advancement and military genius could not match the unity, organization and force of will of the Vietnamese people. The other aspect of this new kind of war was the war at home. College students and radicals in the U.S. were increasingly public and militant in their opposition to the war from 1966 on. Draft resistance, mass protests and electoral pressure all seemed to revolve around the war. Boxing great and Athlete of the Century Muhammad Ali summed up the feelings of thousands of draft resisters when he declared in 1967, that he had no quarrel with Viet Cong. In fact, years later Ali would say, despite his historic sports accomplishments, that "the greatest thing I ever did was not going to Vietnam." In the summer of 1968, campuses exploded with antiwar protest and police repression. In 1970, four students were shot dead by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi. The country was shocked. The U.S. government would stop at nothing to continue its imperialist adventures in Southeast Asia. But neither would the antiwar movement give up. The war was not in the interests of the American people either. The war served the narrow interests of U.S. imperialists and their international allies. Defeating "communism" in Southeast Asia was essential for capitalism. They wanted to maintain the age-old system of repression, colonialism and exploitation that the French had in place in Southeast Asia before them. They wanted a subjugated Vietnam that would continue to provide its rich resources and abundant labor without demand or resistance. This is why the final victory of Vietnamese independence was significant to all the oppressed people the world over. Vietnam, which had already been a symbol of resistance to all the national liberation movements of the world, had actually won. The end of the war was also a victory for the American people. The end of the war meant the end of astronomical war budgets, the end to American soldiers returning home in boxes. The anti-war movement in the U.S. had helped change the government's resolve. Now, 25 years later, our country has yet to fully come to terms with what happened in Vietnam. In 1993, the U.S. finally ended the immoral and illegal boycott of Vietnam and began small steps toward reconciliation. The U.S. government has yet to fulfill its promise of war reparations to Vietnam, although millions of dollars of aid have been sent to Vietnam for war relief by the U.S. veterans themselves! While in Vietnam, I visited a "peace village" built with funds raised by vets from the U.S., Germany, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom. There, children who suffer from Agent Orange-related birth defects receive medical support. For the approximately one million Vietnamese who suffer from Agent Orange-related diseases and conditions, the legacy of the war continues. That legacy carries a certain burden for progressives in the United States. Vietnam has been out of sight and out of mind for many of us. Vietnam has prospered economically, diplomatically and socially without the kind of solidarity movement that Cuba, for instance, has in the United States. We should take the opportunity of the anniversary and the public spotlight on Vietnam to renew a progressive dialogue on the war and the construction of socialism in Vietnam . We need to renew our commitment to repay the Vietnamese people for the devastation they suffered at the hands of our government in our name. If the U.S. is going to walk together in peace with Vietnam in this new era, it will be due to the efforts of the forces that fought against the war in the first place: students, trade unionists, parents, veterans, the entire working class. Libero Della Piana represented the Young Communist League at a recent World Federation of Democratic Youth meeting in Vietnam. He is available for speaking engagements. Call the World at (212) 924-2523.
