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VIETNAM WAR - PAGE 2 N-Z

.
.

I remember with shame how often I failed to correct those
who said I was heroic and prophetic in leading anti-war
demonstrations and going to jail. But we were not heroes,
never mind prophets. It did not take much courage to
protest the Vietnam War.

We said that nothing could be worse than the war itself.
We were wrong. By any honest measure of injustice and
suffering, what followed — the river of blood and mounds
of corpses, the re-education camps and the killing fields
of Cambodia, the thousands of boat people at the bottom
of the China Sea or languishing in refugee hovels to this
day — was worse than what went before. Much worse.

I do not say we were wrong to oppose the war. But my
opposition was tempered by my brothers, both of whom
served in Vietnam. And it was tempered by the young
black men of Brooklyn (where I was engaged in the civil-
rights movement) who fought there, some of whom died
there, who I was not prepared to say had died in vain
or in support of an evil cause.

A large part of a generation thinks it earned its moral
credentials in the anti-war movement but we were neither
so right nor so righteous as we thought we were.

--Richard John Neuhaus (1936— )
Canadian Catholic priest and writer.

-

-

Let historians not record that, when America was the most powerful
nation in the world, we passed on the other side of the road and
allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people
to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.

So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,
I ask for your support. [...]

Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate
the United States. Only Americans can do that.

--Richard Nixon (1913—1994)
American Republican statesman, President [1969—1974].
Broadcast [3 November 1969].

& see:

If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the
United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces
of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free
institutions throughout the world.
--Richard Nixon (1913—1994)
American Republican statesman, President [1969—1974].
Television speech announcing offensive into Cambodia [30 April 1970].

-

I've gone to Canada for readings and met people who left the
country during the war. A lot of these guys are embarrassed
by it. They're asking the question today that they asked back
then — did I do this because I was opposed to the war or because
I didn't want to die? Was it cowardice or conscience? And that
plagues all of us — those who went to Vietnam and those who
went to Canada and those who just got out of it through
legal means. It plagues everyone because no one wants to
die, even in a right war.

But there were a lot of us in Vietnam who didn't want to be
there and many of us didn't have the courage to do what
the resisters did. It took a lot of courage to cross the border
and leave behind your family and your hometown and your
girlfriend. What looked like an act of cowardice to the Reagan-
Dole Republicans took a lot more courage than I had. Even
though I was opposed to the war, I still couldn't find the
courage to walk away.

When I was at Fort Lewis before going to Vietnam I planned
to go to Vancouver. I came as close as you can come without
actually doing it. I ended up going to Vietnam just to protect
my reputation and sense of self-esteem, but the guys who
went to Canada somehow were able to find the moral courage
to make a choice they knew was gonna dog them the rest
of their lives.

--Tim O' Brien
(Quoted in Christian G. Appy's _Patriots: The Vietnam War
Remembered From All Sides_ [2003], Part 6, "Taps")

-

-

If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.

Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.

Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.

And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.

--Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970, Dak To, Vietnam.
Declared MIA 24 March 1970.
Listed as KIA 7 February 1978.

-

Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give
war a chance, and I promptly chickened out. I went to my draft
physical in 1970 with a doctor's letter about my history of drug
abuse. The letter was four and a half pages long with three and
a half pages devoted to listing the drugs I'd abused. I was
shunted into the office of an Army psychiatrist who, at the
end of a forty-five-minute interview with me, was pounding
his desk and shouting, "You're f**ked up! You don't belong
in the Army!" He was certainly right on the first count and
possibly right on the second. Anyway, I didn't have to go.
But that, of course, meant someone else had to go in my
place. I would like to dedicate this book [Give War A Chance,
1992] to him. I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I
hope you were more use to your platoon mates than I
would have been. I hope you're rich and happy now. And
in 1971, when somebody punched me in the face for being
a long-haired peace creep, I hope that was you.
--P.J. O'Rourke (1947— )
American political satirist.

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social
system — and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing
and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance
of the principle of tyranny. Outside the context of a free society, who would
want to die for the right to vote? Yet that is what the American soldiers were
asked to die for — not even for their own vote, but to secure that privilege
for the South Vietnamese, who had no other rights and no knowledge of
rights or freedom.
--Ayn Rand (1905—1982)
Russian-born American writer.
In _The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought_
The Ayn Rand Library, Volume V, [1989], pt. 2, ch. 14.

We should declare war on North Vietnam...we could pave
the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still
be home for Christmas.
--Ronald Reagan (1911—2004)
American President [1981—1989] and former Hollywood actor.
Quoted in "Fresno Bee" [10 October 1965].

-

'Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in
the world,' AP photojournalist Eddie Adams once
wrote. A fitting quote for Adams, because his 1968 photograph
of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the
head at point-blank range not only earned him a
Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also went a long way
toward souring Americans' attitudes about the
Vietnam War.

For all the image's political impact, though, the
situation wasn't as black-and-white as it's
rendered. What Adams' photograph doesn't reveal
is that the man being shot was the captain of a
Vietcong "revenge squad" that had executed dozens
of unarmed civilians earlier the same day.

Regardless, it instantly became an icon of the war's
savagery and made the official pulling the trigger —
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan — its iconic villain.
Sadly, the photograph's legacy would haunt Loan
for the rest of his life.

Following the war, he was reviled wherever he went.
After an Australian VA hospital refused to treat
him, he was transferred to the United States, where
he was met with a massive (though unsuccessful)
campaign to deport him.

He eventually settled in Virginia and opened a
restaurant but was forced to close it down as soon
as his past caught up with him. Vandals scrawled
'We know who you are' on his walls, and business
dried up.

Adams felt so bad for Loan that he apologized for
having taken the photo at all, admitting, 'The
general killed the Vietcong; I killed the general
with my camera.'

--Ransom Riggs
_Mental Floss Magazine_ [Jan/Feb 2007],
"13 Photographs That Changed The World: #4: The
Photograph That Ended A War But Ruined A Life"

-

Hindsight tempts those us who live in the last decade of the
twentieth century to wonder if perhaps the United States,
the one power in 1945 which counted, could not have come
to the aid of the then more nationalist than communist Ho
Chi Minh, seized the flood, told the French to stay home,
and perhaps prevented much of the misery of the next
three decades in Vietnam.
--Dan Roberts
_A Moment in Time_, Vol. 3

-

Mornings I wake up early, way before the rest of the family.
When we are on the road, which is most of the time now,
my wife, Brenda, and I sleep in the master bedroom at the
back of our Blue Bird bus. It's a big one, the kind entertainers
travel in. About sunrise I awaken to find myself beside Brenda,
everything much as it always is, but I always feel an element
of pleasant surprise in her presence. After being severely
wounded in Vietnam, one of the hardest things for me to
accept was the depth of my lady's fidelity.

I often pull her to me in those first few moments of the new
day. The warmth of her presence, the form and features of
her being and the reality of our surviving relationship comforts
my soul. I linger beside her, grateful that the recurrent nightmare
I used to have never came true. In that dream I would come
home to find the place empty, the loneliness growing into
desolation. I would awake from that nightmare nauseated
with anxiety and pull Brenda to me, desperate for consolation,
as I do this day. I linger for another moment because the
worst of the day is about to come. Then I rise and pad
into the bathroom.

What I see in the mirror is the result of having been burned
nearly to death. It isn't pretty. The right side of my face,
my throat, and my chest down to the waistline have that
streaked and melted look of skin grafts. My right eye is
taped shut because the eyelid doesn't close naturally;
so I have to tape it down at night, and frequently wipe
it during the day, as it waters.

I do not have a right ear. I am bald — this from the burns and
simple aging. I pray for strength in everything else, but I do
not pray for any grace that would block out the knowledge that
comes from this daily confrontation with my grotesque image.
This is the one thing I require of myself. I take responsibility for
putting on the cosmetic appliances that allow me to go about in
the world without causing so much head turning; although, of
course, there will always be far more of that than I would like.

I untape my eye. I don my hair piece — a single one now which is
superior to the two complementary ones I used to wear. I put on
the plastic ear with fingers that refuse to straighten. As I do,
my thoughts often trace the borderline between the will to live
and despair. Sometimes I feel as though the real me has died;
that's how much I long to reject my image as it appears to the
world.

Yet I do not pray for strength at this moment precisely because,
in a sense, the person I used to be has died. My crewmates in
Vietnam thought I had died and divided up the spoils of what I had
left on this earth. My commanding officer wrote a letter to Brenda
and my parents telling them of my death. But I have come back from
the dead. And a man who comes back from the dead has a story to
tell.

--Dave Roever (1946— )
_Welcome Home, Davey_ [1986], Ch. 1


The auditorium was nearly full so I decided that Brenda and I would
sit in the top balcony where I could be out of sight and not endure
the stares of people not used to seeing a man with one eye, one ear,
and one nostril. We sat in the back row of the third balcony, but
the place eventually filled completely and late arrivals ended up
filling every chair around me. As they stared with curiosity, I
wanted to just scream "If you only knew!"

The speakers were spectacular. One by one they challenged,
convicted, and inspired me. They gave me what I had come there
for; wonderful reasons to live. When all the speakers had finished,
closing remarks were provided by a man who would totally
revolutionize my life.

His name was Colonel Robinson Risner and he had been the highest
ranking prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton. He shuffled out to
center stage, hardly lifting his feet from the floor, fresh out
of a rat-infested hell hole.

Colonel Risner talked about being a prisoner of war. He spoke of
his ordeals and those of other POWs — the beatings, isolation, and
mental games played on them by their captors. In vivid detail he
described how they tied ropes around his shoulders, connected them
behind his back, and inserted a stick which they twisted. I listened
as he described the unspeakable pain of being torn asunder as his
chest ripped open.

I felt a tugging on my coat. I looked and realized I was
standing. "Sit down, baby." Brenda pleaded. "I can't sit down.
There's an officer on deck and, anyway, I don't sit in the presence
of heros. I stand for them." She realized it was useless. I stood
with tears running down my cheek. I looked at him with my one
good eye and felt his pain.

I declared, "I'm going down to meet this man." "Honey, you can't
get through this crowd." "A man with one eye, one ear, and one
nostril can get through any crowd." I took off down the stairwell
to the congested crowd below.

It was obvious that my coming arrival was heralded among the throng
of people because they began to separate right down the middle. I
felt like Moses parting the Red Sea. They departed hither and
thither and I walked through. I could hear people murmuring, making
little remarks about my appearance. I didn't care, I had one thing
on my mind. I just wanted to meet Robbie and thank him.

When I arrived at the platform I realized it was ten feet tall. I
ran to both ends looking for stairs. I finally found a way up, but
there was a large purple felt rope hanging across the stairs. With
golden hooks on both ends and suspended on golden stands, this
regal barrier had a small plaque on it which read, "None Shall
Pass."

I thought about it for a moment. My mind raced back in time. It
had been a long trek from Vietnam where I was sent almost two
years earlier. I ran up and down leech-infested rivers in a high-
speed boat knowing that river boat gunners had a price tag on their
heads. I had been shot at, then actually shot, blown to pieces by
a hand grenade, and taken to an Army hospital. (For a Navy sailor,
being a patient in an army hospital can be dangerous! Chances of
survival were 50-50 if nothing had happened to me!)

I survived 14 months in a hospital, 13 major operations, drove
1,200 miles, and worked my way through 15,000 people only to
stand in front of this little barrier telling me, "None Shall Pass."
I thought to myself, "One shall pass!"

I picked up the rope, disengaged it from the stand, threw it to
the floor, and marched up the stairs. I was instantly confronted
by people wearing badges on their lapels saying "Staff." . . . I
passed between them as they stood with their mouths open. I
guess the sight was more than they could handled. I worked my
way through another crowd clustered around the colonel.

Suddenly he looked up and our eyes met. People stood back as
we faced each other. Spontaneous silence filled the auditorium.
He spoke first. "Vietnam?" he asked, pointing at my face. "Yes
sir." "Son, I'm sorry." His words sent a hot flash through my
skin. Embarrassed at his pity, I fired back, "Colonel, sir, I did
not come here to get your pity."

Then with my crippled hand, with only one finger that would extend,
I snapped him a salute and said, "Sir, I have come to thank you.
I've come to thank you for what you did for me in Vietnam and for
the pain you have known in serving this great country."

He reached over and took my hand into his. This seasoned veteran
of Korea and Vietnam, this ace of a pilot, this man among men, had
a tear in his eye. He tugged on my paralyzed fingers, looked in my
good eye, and without blinking, asked, "Young man, when you've
suffered for American, don't you love her so much more?"

Even as he spoke the words, they were burning into my soul.
And, there written on the table of my heart, they remain today.
I said, "Yes, sir, colonel, I do love her so much more."

It was then I realized why some people can burn an American flag,
even in the guise of freedom of speech. (Exercising that "liberty"
is only possible because of those who laid down their lives to
preserve what that flag stands for, including the right to burn
it.)

It's easy to destroy what you have not burned for. It's easy to
burn what you have not bled for, but when you've suffered for
something, you love it so much more!

--Dave Roever (1946- )
_Scarred_ [1995], "Preface"


An air of bitterness lingered heavily for several days after the
incident at Tu Tua. Reports of enemy movement seemed to
pick up dramatically. In July 1969, after the Tet Offensive,
the enemy made considerable advances. I've heard from
the communists themselves that they really felt as if they
had lost the war in 1968.

I remember watching a BBC documentary while I was in
England in which a North Vietnamese general said, "We
lost the war in 1968 to the Americans. The Tet Offensive
crushed us. But when we saw the antiwar demonstrations
in America and the American youth in rebellion, we took
new heart and began to fight again. The whole war
turned in our favor."

--Dave Roever (1946- )
_Welcome Home, Davey_ [1986], Ch. 11

-

What gave great encouragement to Ho Chi Minh and his people
were the traitors like [actress] Jane Fonda and [former Attorney
General] Ramsey Clark and [antiwar activist] Tom Hayden who
went over there and said, "Just hold on, hold on. We're winning
it at home. We're destroying the morale of the people at home."
And they did. The antiwar movement was an essential part of
the Communist strategy to destroy American morale.
--John Singlaub
(Quoted in Christian G. Appy's _Patriots: The Vietnam War
Remembered From All Sides_ [2003], Part 2, "Paradise Island"

-

... However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to
understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all
wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there
should be room for national, or communist, self-determination
in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular
clarity. But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound
up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in
a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million
people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans
coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility
today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia
lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come
much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of
this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam
capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause;
however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That
small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize
the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real
defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West
hope to stand firm in the future?
--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918—2008)
Russian novelist.
Speech at Harvard University [1978].

President Johnson was advised by the Joint Chiefs to strike guerrilla
sanctuaries in the North. He hesitated, in no small part because of a
bit of a cautionary word on fighting in Asia that he once received from
a surprising source. As the President tells it, when he visited the late
General Douglas MacArthur at Walter Reed Hospital for the last time,
the two got to talking about the Far East. Said MacArthur: "Son, don't
ever get yourself bogged down in a land war in Asia."
--"Foreign Relations: A Look Down That Long Road,"
_Time_ [19 February 1965]

-

We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese
dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of
American actions in the war, and that she would struggle
along with us.
--Bui Tin, Colonel,
People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN)


Our losses were staggering and a complete surprise. Giap
later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though
we had gained the planned political advantages when
Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run for re-election.

The second and third waves in May and September were,
in retrospect, mistakes. Our forces in the South were nearly
wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971
to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North
Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American
forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969,
they could have punished us severely. We suffered
badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was.

--Bui Tin, Colonel, who served on the
general staff of North Vietnam's army,
received the unconditional surrender of
South Vietnam on April 30, 1975.
Interview of Bui Tin conducted by Stephen
Young "How North Vietnam Won the War,"
Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1995.

-

-

Remembrance of Vietnam is not on the wane; it is on
the ascendancy. The number of visitors to the
Memorial keeps growing. There are many excellent
web sites on the Internet, television documentaries,
and many outstanding books, some of which we are
fortunate to quote here.

Some of the Internet sites publish letters, poems,
and essays written in tribute to Vietnam veterans.
On one — www.thewall-usa.com, Racheline Maltese
had this to say after a visit to the Memorial:

"I am only 21. I do not remember the war when it
was happening. I did not learn about it in school.
To see these men and women with their shirts and
flags shakes me. Seeing the things people have left
here shakes me. A picture of Jimi Hendrix, a bottle
of Seagrams 7, a pack of cigarettes have reduced
me to tears.

"I wonder if you [the inscribed veterans] watch us.
If you'd like to say 'thank you' for these gifts. I
wonder if we mourn for you or for ourselves."

--Lamar Underwood
_The Quotable Soldier_ [2000],
"'Nam: Words From Beyond The Wall"

-

-

It is not the policy of this GOVT to assist the French
to re-establish their control over Indochina by force
and the willingness of the USA to see French control
re-established assumed that French claim to have
the support of the population of Indochina is borne
out by future events.
--U.S. government statement [Oct. 1945];
The Pentagon Papers v. 1 [1971] p.17,
in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 879.
Cohan & Major point out:
The leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement,
Ho Chi Minh, was a communist, but at this stage anti-
colonialism prevailed over anti-communism as a
determinant of U.S. policy.

& see:

The French through their folly ... have left us with
two ghastly courses of action:
1. To wash our hands of the country [Vietnam]
and allow the communists to overrun it.
2. To continue to pour treasure (and perhaps
eventually lives) into a hopeless cause.
--Charlton Ogburn Jr (1911-1998)
to Dean Rusk [18 August 1950].
in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 879.
Cohan & Major explain:
Simultaneously with his pledge to defend South Korea in
June 1950, President Truman committed the United States
to enhance its support for the French in their war with the
communist-led nationalists in Vietnam. Option 2 was
followed from 1950 to 1973; Option I in 1975.

-

-

[Saigon, late 1964] I am standing at the reception desk when an American
businessman arrives after a long flight from New York. It has taken more
than twenty-four hours. He is tired and jet lagged, and he wants nothing
more than a room, a shower, and a long sleep.

My name is ...," he offers his name in a peremtory tone to the receptionist,
"and you have a reservation for me."

The hotel employee looks down his list in vain. "I am sorry," he says. "We
don't have a reservation for you." The American grows concerned, decent
hotel rooms in Saigon are hard to find. "Yes, you have my reservation, just
look again," he insists and spells out his name. Again, the Vietnamese
receptionist says he is sorry, but there is no reservation. The fatigue of jet
lag begins to slide into open irritation as the American insists that his office
in New York had confirmed the reservation and that is that. The receptionist
begins to dig in and takes a defensive position behind an impassive facial
facade and icy demeanor. I listen as the conversation escalates. "You have
my reservation!" "No, we do not!" "Yes, you do!" "No, we do not!" Finally,
the American gives in and asks plaintively, "Well, what am I going to do? I
need a room."

"Oh, you need a room?" the receptionist replies quickly. "We have a room
available." The American's mounting anger gives way to bafflement mixed
with irritation. "Why are we having this argument? Why didn't you give me
the room in the first place?" "But you didn't ask me for a room," the
receptionist replies with what he considers to be immaculate logic. "You
said we had your reservation. We don't have your reservation. But if you
want a room, you've got a room. Here, fill out this form."

If an epitaph is ever written for the American-Vietnamese effort to work
and prevail together, it might read, "Here lies the result of a tragic
misunderstanding!"

--Garrick Utley (b. 1939)
American TV journalist.
_You Should Have Been Here Yesterday_, ch. 14 [2000]

-

-

[We were] in one [Vietnamese] valley, called the Que Son Valley,
two miles wide and ten, twelve miles long. We cleaned out every
living thing in that valley — people and animals — and destroyed
everything else. We just rounded them all up — four to five
hundred people — and started moving them eleven klicks
[kilometers] to some type of camp. All their animals was
killed.

Then we made the valley a free-fire zone. After we cleaned it
out, anything you saw was a legitimate target. Two days later,
half the people were right back in it. They went back to nothing
because we burned and destroyed everything.

They had to be some good people to withstand all that. They
come right back to nothing and start over. Go out and get
some thatch or find some that wasn't burnt, tie it together
with a couple branches over some poles, and sit up under it
with their little beat-up aluminum pots. That's some of the
most determined people I've ever run into.

I don't hate them. They did what they had to do. It's the politicians
that put everybody in that place. Although I would like to get a hold
of the one that set the booby trap. [Laughs] . . . . I don't have much
bitterness. Well, I don't think I do. I just wish that none of it ever
happened — for everyone's sake. It was a bad political mistake.

--George Watkins
(A Vietnam vet who lost both legs and both
eyes after stepping on a land mine while in
Quang Tri Province in April 1968. Quoted in
Christian G. Appy's _Patriots: The Vietnam
War Remembered From All Sides_ [2003],
Part 1, "Paying the Price")

-

-

Press and television have created an aura not
of victory but of defeat, which, coupled with
the vocal antiwar elements, profoundly influenced
timid officials in Washington. It was like two
boxers in a ring, one having the other on the
ropes, close to a knock-out, when the apparent
winner's second inexplicably throws in the towel.
--William Westmoreland (1914—2005)
American soldier.
_A Soldier Reports_ [1976]


We met the enemy and he was us.
--William Westmoreland (1914—2005)
American soldier.
Quoted in _Rolling Stone_ [20 April 1978].


Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship.
Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the
public mind.
--William Westmoreland (1914—2005)
American soldier.
Quoted in "Washington Post" [19 March 1982].

-

-

I asked, 'What will happen to Vietnam?'

'I hope for a miracle to save us,' he said. 'Otherwise
the Viet Cong will get stronger. Will the Americans go
home? Maybe they'll let their own soldiers fight. But
how could they do better in the swamps and the
jungles than the French?'

--Peter T. White, questioning his friend "Dinh" in
the October 1961 issue of _National Geographic_,
"South Viet Nam Fights the Red Tide".

-

The corner has definitely been turned
toward victory in Vietnam.
--Defense Department announcement [May 1963].

-

Twenty-nine years after the end of the Vietnam war, communist
military mastermind General Vo Nguyen Giap remains grateful to
the Americans who opposed it. [...] "I would like to thank them,"
the 93-year-old veteran said on Friday of those Americans who
opposed the war.
--"Vietnam's Hero Still Grateful to Anti-War Americans"
[April 2004]

-

The misreporting, along with Communist and North Vietnamese agents
in the United States, led to demonstrations in the streets by
Americans in protest of the war. Gen. Giap later wrote in his book,
that the news media reporting and the demonstrations in America
surprised them. Instead of seeking a conditional surrender, they
would now hold out because America's resolve was weakening and
the possibility of victory could be theirs.
http://www.1stcavmedic.com/tet_offensive_of_1968.htm

-

A Ho Chi Minh City museum that honors Vietnam war protesters
features a photograph of Sen. John Kerry being greeted by the
general secretary of the Communist Party, Comrade Do Muoi.

[...]

Epstein said the display photograph's "unquestionable significance
lies in its placement in the American protesters' section of the
War Crimes Museum" in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

"The Vietnamese communists clearly recognize John Kerry's
contributions to their victory," he said. "This find can be
compared to the discovery of a painting of Neville Chamberlain
hanging in a place of honor in Hitler's Eagle's Nest in 1945."

--"Kerry honored at communist museum"


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