Forty years on from Tet: how the US won Vietnam

Vietnamese

The thing is Westerners didn't and still don't get it, Vietnamese have never been anti-American, for goodness sake, Ho Chi Minh's opening line of the Declaration of Independence was a quote from the American one.

Ian

I suggest when next in Ha Noi a visit to the the Ethnology Museum will be illuminating. On the ground floor is an exhibition of the subsidised economy period (Bao Cap)that was instituted after 1976 until the 'doi moi opening of the economy in 1986 This exhibition tells graphically of the privations suffered by all Vietnamese when this command economy regime ruled - a bar of soap was a luxury beyond compare for example. Now of course it is a 'market economy with socialist tendencies' and is booming. I too wondered why on earth that American war was fought.

dexey

The war was fought to stop communist expansian in SE Asia and because the sainted Pres. Kennedy could do no wrong.
Capitalism was always going to win. It improves the majority of people's lives.

Jo

Interesting you still think in terms of winning and losing. Couldn't the war simply be an obscene intrusion into other people's lives?

david bennet

If we seriously believe that our way of life is better and more attractive than anyone else's, then we should just get on with living and wait for them to notice. Of course, we have to do it properly, and that means protectionism should be out and open borders in. But, to adapt George W. Bush: 'If you're not with us ... well, you will be, eventually!'

SPENCER

It's a pity that all the smart guys in the Pentagon and the Bush Government did not draw any lessons from Vietnam.If they adopted a more subtle approach to the Middle East things might have been different. Surely the days are gone when America can be the gun-slinger, Texan or otherwise. Get away from the old mind-set and your country will win more 'cultural wars'

Paul Gourju

Forty years ago, on the night of 30–31 January 1968, the Liberation Army, as it is now known here, launched its famous Tet offensive...My official host, a woman of about 40 sitting beside me in the back of the vehicle, suddenly burst into song. The interpreter went on to tell me: ‘During the war, Mrs Nguyen was one of the leaders of the guerrillas in this area.’ I had a sudden vision of a younger, possibly slimmer, black-pyjama-clad (more probably in swaddling cloths) Mrs Nguyen breathing under water through a rice-straw…precautious non?

Sonya Porter

How sad. Even your revered magazine has got it wrong. The only thing the Americans did wrong in Vietnam was to allow themselves to be defeated, not by the Communist forces of the north but by their own untutored, unworldly university students. It was all so simple. In 1954 the French were defeated and left Vietnam. There were then talks in Paris and finally it was decided to split the country into Communist North and Democratic South. The south, when I got there in 1963, was a vibrant,becoming-wealthy, almost too-democratic country with 24 political parties in the Parliament and 16 daily papers. But the Northern Communists started to move into the south and President Ngo then did two things. He put in place some laws which eventually ended in the priests burning themselves and a curtailing of democracy, and he also invited the Americans to send experts to train the Southern troops which had been excluded from defence forces during the French colonial period. However, the Southern Vietnamese troops could not be trained quickly enough and with the Communists rapidly taking over the north of South Vietnam, the President then asked the American to send troops. Yes, the Americans made mistakes as all troops do, but while I was in Saigon in 63 and 64, they were welcomed. It was still a time when the Domino Theory was in force, the fear that if one country in the far east fell to the Communists, the rest would follow and the South Vietnamese had fought the French and the Paris talks to achieve democracy. But the Students backed the Communists and American was defeated. My Vietnamese friends had the hell of a time after the fall of Saigon and I shall never forgive those stupid, blind students who knew nothing of life.

Andy Dyer

Incredible though it may seem, Americans learnt nothing atall from their sensational defeat by a bunch of peasants fresh out of the jungle. Ask them some time and hear them splutter.

Or ask them how many people died - 9 out of 10 will say 58,000. Tell them they're out by a factor of 50 and they'll look blank and accuse you of being a commie.

B, Phillips

Can best be described as a totalitarian free market, with a wealthy aristocracy composed of party members; no free press, no free education or health care. Much as the regime in China and seems to be the ultimate fate of all communist regimes.

heavy kevvie

what malarky,the americans LOST the war against the vietnamese.this was a war of guns,ideology and liberation from colonialism.no matter how much blood,treasure and bombs the US threw into vietnam they left defeated.vietnam has changed due to more influences from all over the world than just america.