America and the Dictators - from Vietnam to Afghanistan

From Ngo Dinh Diem to Hamid Karzai

By Alfred W. McCoy

....To avoid this impending debacle, our only realistic option in Afghanistan today may well be the one we wish we had taken in Saigon back in August 1963 -- a staged withdrawal of U.S. forces.

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My response:

This is an interesting and timely article by Alfred W. McCoy.

There is just something important I would like to correct.

The article states that "....Diem won an absurd 98.2% of a rigged vote for the presidency and promptly promulgated a new constitution that ended the Vietnamese monarchy after a millennium."

Actually, the Vietnamese monarchy was ended much earlier than that, in 1945, when the last king, Bao Dai, handed over the royal sword and seal to a delegation from Ho Chi Minh. He pledged support for the new Republican government led by the Viet Minh and its President Ho, thus conferring legitimacy to Ho Chi Minh's government of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam.

As an interesting aside, rather than being decapitated or exiled, as in other revolutions, Ho Chi Minh actually invited Bao Dai, now a private citizen, to serve as an adviser to the new republican government. Bao Dai himself made a wonderful statement that he was happier to now be an ordinary citizen in a free country rather than the king of an enslaved one.

However, always the puppet, he soon chose self-exile to his preferred France. Shortly after, when France once again required him as their puppet ruler, the ex-king headed the State of Vietnam, the French-puppet government set up to rival the massively popular Ho Chi Minh.

It was this puppet State of Vietnam that later had a name-change and became the Republic of Vietnam, headed by the US-supported President Diem. It was this illegitimate government we knew as 'South Vietnam' during the years of the American War.

This was the origin of America's inevitable and humiliating defeat in Viet Nam. They backed the wrong horse.

Instead of continuing to support the overwhelmingly popular Ho Chi Minh, their loyal ally in World War 2 against the Japanese, the US government instead betrayed him and supported the return to power of the hated French colonialists, and then the equally-unwanted president Diem.

The American War against Viet Nam, just as in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere today, was an imperialist war crime to control resources.

Millions of innocent people died, and continue to suffer from Agent Orange, unexploded bombs and mines and other effects of war, just for the riches of the few.

We often overlook that horrible truth, but until we face it we will never learn the lessons of Vietnam, and we will never stop repeating the same crimes.

Bruce McPhie