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5.0 out of 5 stars
A 1967 book that is eerily relevant today, June 27, 2004
This review is from: Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal (Paperback)
The Vietnamese puppets of the French running the South knew that Ho Chi Minh would win any free and fair election so they would repeatedly refuse North Vietnamese requests to hold the promised elections that were supposed to reunify the country as called for in the 1954 Geneva accords. Zinn quotes Bernard Fall, the French right wing military analyst much respected by hawkish American planners, as saying that from 1957 to 1960, the U.S. installed South Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem built 425,000 square of high rent villas and Apartments but only 6500 of hospitals and 86000 of schools. Fall noted the peculiarity of Diem's law banning dancing.
Zinn notes that guerilla activity started in the late 50's, by the reactivated units of the Viet Minh, after Diem's stolen elections, torture,"manhunts" etc. He quotes experts on Vietnam that the National Liberation Front ("Viet Cong") was created early in 1960, months before Hanoi authorized its creation, solely on the initiative of Southerners resisting U.S. backed terror. . He observes the Americans already had a couple thousand military "advisors" in the South in violation of the Geneva accords long before the state dept would claim "infiltration" and "aggression" from the North i.e. what it admitted were largely South Vietnamese, crossing the illegal 17th parallel to fight in their own country the American occupiers. Zinn quotes Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfield's committee report that in January 1966 there were 14,000 North Vietnamese troops in the 230,000 NLF force in the South. At the same time there were 170,000 American troops; other foreign troops included 21,000 from South Korea. So the Americans and allied occupying forces infinitely outnumbered the North Vietnamese who were of course fighting in South Vietnam, part of their own country, Vietnam. The Mansfield report stated that from 1962 to 1965, 14,000 North Vietnamese "infiltrated" into the South but during the same time 100,000 persons in the South joined the NLF, the only force in South Vietnam addressing the needs of the peasant masses. In 1965, 100,000 deserted from the ARVN.
He notes that in 1964the NLF made one of its many peace offers at this point that entailed allowing it to participate as a political party in a South Vietnam w/o American occupation and military aid to the oligarchy (a "neutralist" state). He quotes Neil Sheehan and Charles Mohr of the New York Times as saying that the NLF represented true social change for better or worse against the reactionary South Vietnamese oligarchy. He quotes a French foreign correspondent as observing that when what would become the NLF began assassinating South Vietnamese govt. officials in 1959-60, the peasants apparently supported these actions against their oppressors. Zinn observes that the NLF committed atrocities but had a long way to go to catch the Americans in this regard.
He writes that communism has inspired activists in deeply impoverished capitalist countries, independent of any Russian or Chinese meddling, and they have adapted it to their local needs. He might have added that what the U.S. has smeared as communism in the third world is often mild socialism (as in Guatemala in 1954) that cuts slightly into the profits of multinational corporations and so is overthrown by the U.S. or forced to turn to the Russians. Economic development has been harsh at best in communist countries, though development for the masses was pretty bad in capitalist countries before welfare states, came along, unions gained power,etc. . Communist states have developed a standard of living, which allows for the development of educated dissent.
He goes over some of the reports of U.S. atrocities in the mainstream press. In November 1965, Neil Sheehan reported several dozen hamlets completely destroyed or heavily damaged by U.S. and the ARVN (South Vietnamese army) in order to root out the supposed NLF presence in them. Sheehan reported South Vietnamese government figures that 184 civilians were killed in the five hamlets of Duchai during this attack but the figure might have been as high 600. He reported that each month about 600 to 1000 civilians were being brought to the provincial hospital, injured by American weaponry. Sheehan reported in February 1966 that U.S. napalm and bombs had destroyed 1000 peasant homes in three hamlets and a hundred civilians were killed in the village of Tamquan. The Honolulu Advertiser reported a hundred civilians killed or wounded near a Mekong Delta hamlet. Charles Mohr, reporting the case of an old woman who could no longer close her eyes and lost her arms and two of her children all because of U.S. napalm, stated "Few Americans appreciate what their nation is doing to South Vietnam with airpower." Civilians were "dying everyday in South Vietnam." Zinn quotes former Green Beret Donald Duncan as saying that he and his fellows regularly used torture against Vietnamese.
He goes over the innumerable cases of the U.S., on bogus anti-communist grounds, supporting right wing dictatorships that repressed the masses. He notes how in Laos the U.S. supported a right wing military coup in 1958 as the leftist Pathet Lao were about to win an election there. The U.S. would subvert in the next few years a neutralist government that allowed the Pathet Lao to be politically active. The U.S. backed military alliance SEATO insisted that the Pathet Lao were not commie stooges.
This book was published in 1967. The U.S. after it destroyed the country, in 1975, placed an embargo on Vietnam that threw it into the arms of the Russians and maintained brutal conditions in the country.
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