31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Modern Greek Tragedy told with mastery of detail of human bravery and fragility., February 28, 2008
This review is from: Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (Hardcover)
`Vietnam's Forgotten Army" is about two ARVN soldiers and how they have lead their lives based on the concepts of Freedom - Country - Family - Duty - Honor. Their stories of loyalty, betrayal, life, death, love and hate are told so brilliantly compelling that makes it impossible to put the book down.
The South Vietnamese Army is probably the military force that is most analyzed and most harshly judged by the US. In the teachings of history in current Vietnam, ARVN doesn't even exist. The war, according to the Communist Vietnam, is the fight for Freedom by the North Vietnamese Communist to liberate the South from the colonial US.
This book is one of the very few books that introduces the readers to a fairly balanced view of the Vietnam War and its complexity.
The one problem I have with the book, right from the beginning, is the explanation of Hue and Dinh's support of the war: "In a nation where Confucian values of family and honor are of the utmost importance, Dinh and Hue were drawn to the support of South Vietnam for the most Vietnamese of reasons, following paths blazed by their fathers" (p. 11) Mr. Weist then goes on to dedicate several more subsequent pages about `Family Matters' to support this reason.
While this is undoubtedly a big reason, it is not the only one.
Before 1954, the year Vietnam was divided, most Vietnamese people had already had a good idea of what communism was.
Between 1945-1954, the North Communist initiated a systematic execution of anyone who was thought to be dangerous to the Vietnamese Communist Party. Ten of thousands of nationalists, Catholics and others were massacred in a campaign called `The Great Purge'. They also emulated China's Land Reform Campaign that lasted from 1945 to 1956 during which an estimated 15,000 landlords were killed.
During this time, my father, who had lost most of his family including his mother and sisters due to starvation and sickness, seeing the French as the lesser of the two evils, joined the French Army and later, owing to his father's advice, moved South.
My mother's grandfather, a land owner, sentenced by the Communist People Court, was staked to death in his own rice paddy. Her father was captured and then was fortunate enough to be set freed by his loyal former farm worker, ran home, gathered up his family and fled South via Hai Phong Harbor along with other millions of refugees to seek Freedom in the South.
By the early 60's, when both Dinh and Hue joined the military, South Vietnamese fear of communism was proven valid by Mao's cruelty of `The Great Leap Forward' and `The Cultural Revolution' during which, 20 million of Chinese had perished.
I believe that both North and South Vietnamese fought for the Freedom of Vietnam. For North Vietnam, Freedom meant a self ruled nation with Vietnamese leadership, regardless of how totalitarian this leadership was. For South Vietnam, the value of Freedom was not universal. For some people, it was National Freedom in a Democratic Vietnam, advanced and prospered like France or US or at least as the imperial past. For my father, it was political freedom, the idea that it could be under a common wealth, as long as this common wealth brought peace, law and order, security and prosperity to the populace. For my mother and probably the majority of Vietnamese people, the value of Freedom was an individual one. It meant having enough rice to eat, freedom to raise families, freedom to worship their gods or ancestors and own property. Sadly, these values became the great sources of conflicts within the South Vietnamese hearts.
In this book. Andrew Weist did point out this complexity:
"Certainly the South Vietnamese state and the ARVN were imperfect. Even so, South Vietnam fought for twenty-five years and the ARVN lost more than 200,000 dead. After the war, millions chose to flee South Vietnam rather than live under the suzerainty of their brothers from the North."
The book did an excellent job in highlighting the reasons for the destruction of South Vietnam: Cultural hubris of American Leadership, moral blindness of the media, corruption and incompetence of the Vietnamese Leadership and the lack of enforcement of the democracy ideology for the South, thus in the critical hours, Democracy for South Vietnam could not stand against ideology trained soldiers of the North.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I opposed the Vietnam War..., May 14, 2008
This review is from: Vietnam's Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (Hardcover)
This a great story too long left untold. In addition to telling a wonderful but tragic tale of two men sharing similar histories whose lives take radically different courses, it is also a story about the betrayal of South Vietnam by this country. Mind you,I opposed the Vietnam War at the time, but it has become abundantly clear to me that it was a war that could have been won.
This is no whitewash. Wiest makes it clear that the Army of S. Vietnam had a lot of problems, but he also makes it clear that many of these were caused by US training a lack of understanding on our part of the Vietnamese culture and society.
It is a thoughtful and thought provoking book. A must read for anyone interested in the Vienam War.
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