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• Sunday, January 22, 2006 05:14 PM

  Millions murdered?

  Apparently there's ANOTHER SB posting here, evidently from Canada; with a few things to say abot the 2nd Indochina war....

  Maybe I'm forgetting a few things here, so if anyone wishes to correct me please do so; but as I recall the United States has a long history of involvement, or lack thereof, with Vietnam and thus plenty of culpability.

  A few notable points:

  After the end of WWI, at the Paris Peace Conference, a young Ho Chi Minh (then Nguyen Ai Quoc) presented an 8 point plan for Vietnamese self determination and sought help from Woodrow Wilson in obtaining his country's freedom from French rule... Wilson refused to see him. Naturally his anti-imperialist views and rejection by the imperial powers of the day led him to join the French Socialist party...

  During WWII, Vietnam was occupied by and fiercly resisted Imperial Japan. Whether one looks at Vietnam as a French colony or a nation in its own right, Vietnam was clearly on the side of the allies. Yet at the end of the war the US handed Vietnam back to France, claims of US netrality in the matter notwithstanding. (France, her armies decimated, resorted in some instances to re-arming defeated Japanese troops to reestablish colonial rule)

  Fast forward a few years to Dien Bien Phu - the Vietnamese have defeated France fair and square with help from China. China was not necessarily a traditional ally of Vietnam, having invadaed her a number of times over the centuries, but the US had steadfastly come down on the side of the colonial oppressors rather than the freedom fighters so the Vietnamese didn't have much choice when it came to allies. In any case, having beaten the French in spite of massive help from the US, Vietnam was promised free and fair elections in two years' time. One guess as to which superpower torpedoed those elections because it didn't like the candidate who would inevitably win. (Ho was, of course, definitely a Communist by this time)

  While it is true that Americans started becoming more directly responsible for deaths in Vietnam only in the 1960's, it is disingenuous at best to deny US involvement in years of conflict in the region.

  Anyway, corections welcome, this is just My Two Cents.

  thanks.

  —SB Read SB's other letters
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