My epiphany on what was really going on in Vietnam came to me while riding along Highway 1 in a deuce and a half going from here to there or back again. Staring at the passing countryside, I noticed that running parallel to the road was an old rail line. The gauge was unusually narrow and the track extremely rusted, and for some reason I decided that the rail line probably went back to the 30's or 40's, when Vietnam was a French colony.

What caught my eye was the condition of the track. Each separate rail was bent and twisted into wild contortions resembling those corkscrewing vomit inducing rides so popular at today's amusement parks. Only whoever did this was clearly not out to have some fun.

The level of destruction was complete. There was not a single foot of track left straight. And it went on like this for miles. I began to wonder how long it would have taken to so methodically destroy iron railing. And then it occurred to me that this was no doubt done by the same army that we were fighting right then in 1969.

At that point I became aware of deep time as it pertained to the Vietnam conflict. This was something that had started long before I got there and would no doubt be going on long after I left.

I felt what Kurtz must have felt as he steamed up the Congo River into Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I remember the scene where Kurtz gazes idly at the passing jungle, impenetrable and blank and dark. He had the sense of progressing backwards in time with each bend and twist of the river.

Conrad's novel became intimately associated with the American experience in Vietnam. It conveyed not only the horror of what we found out about ourselves in the dark jungle and remote villages, but also a sense of mystery, a sense that there was a hidden current that drove events in ways that we never seemed able to really understand. In modern parlance, we call this being clueless.

And clueless we were then, and clueless we are now. This is inevitable given the fact that we Americans persist in viewing our incursion in Vietnam as an extension of the Cold War. For us, it was always about stopping the spread of Communism. Eisenhower thought so. That's why he reneged on the Geneva accords. Kennedy and Johnson heard a lot of talk about falling dominos. During the war that's all you heard about. And 25 years later many Americans are still convinced that what we were doing was stemming the Red Tide of Communism, a noble undertaking done only to make the world a better place.

The only problem is that this had nothing to do with the other side's war aims. Ho Chi Minh was fighting to rid his land of an oppressive and greedy colonial occupier -- the French. Until World War II, the French controlled Vietnam as a colony. During the War, the French abandoned their claims to Vietnam. Understandably, Ho and his fellow patriots thought this settled the matter. But as soon as the War was over, France decided it wanted Vietnam back. So the British, aided by the Japanese Army of all things, and with the acquiescence of Harry Truman, restored Vietnam to French rule.

Ultimately, the Vietnamese drove the French out and an agreement was reached to have fair and open elections. Problem was everyone knew that Ho Chi Minh would win. And why not. He was the founding father of modern Vietnam. Their George Washington and Abraham Lincoln all rolled up into one mythic figure.

I know what you are thinking. He was a Communist. True, but only because no one else would pay any attention to him. At the end of World War I, when all the leaders of the world were gathered at Versailles to come up with the New World Order, Ho Chi Minh was there. He was asking for help for his little country. He wanted independence. There is a famous photo of Uncle Ho taken with American President Woodrow Wilson.

Naturally, none of the Western powers would give him the time of day. Why irritate the French over a small colonial possession half way around the world. Hat in hand, Ho went from one delegation to the next, but nobody listened.

That's the way things stood until the Russian Revolution. When Ho went there to press his case, he finally found someone willing to listen and to help. Small wonder then that he adopted the Communist party. they were the only ones who cared.

But deep down, the only cause important to Ho Chi Minh was independence for his country. This is the point that was missed then, and it is still not fully appreciated today.

John McCain raised quite a ruckus in Vietnam when he allowed as how the wrong guys won the war. His Vietnamese hosts seemed to take umbrage at the thought that their victory was not the correct outcome. Perhaps they just aren't as used to the straight talk express as we Americans are.

Certainly no one has more of a right to his own opinions on these matters than does Mr. McCain. He has paid dearly for the right. And in his view Vietnam is still defined as a battle against Communism.

And to some degree he has a point in that life in Vietnam since 1975 has not been a bed of roses. Leaving aside the usual problems that come when the winners seek revenge against the losers, the lot of the average Vietnamese has not improved all that much in the last 25 years. The successors to Ho Chi Minh have not done a great job running their country.

But in this regard they are no better or worse off than many other third world countries struggling to overcome the twin legacies of colonialism and the Cold War. Vietnam was not the only place where the United States drew a line against Communism. Many African countries endured long civil wars financed by the rival superpowers.

What made Vietnam so dangerous was that America directly engaged its armed forces after the usual strategy of using puppet regimes kept failing. Those regimes kept failing because they never had the grass roots support of the peasantry. Yes, there was an element of coercion in that loyalty, but there was also a shrewd understanding of who had history on their side. The peasants had it right all along. It was only Uncle Sam who never understood Uncle Ho.

Twenty five years later, America still has yet to truly understand just what the hell happened in Vietnam. The story of Ho Chi Minh is a fascinating one, worthy of attention. He is one of the great figures of the 20th Century and will be remembered as such. He had a single goal -- to rid his country of foreign powers so that Vietnam would again be an independent nation. He persisted for 60 years, through a World War and numerous smaller wars, taking down two of the world's dominant powers in the process. A tiny country sustained over a million and a half deaths to get it done. Not people you want to mess with. We shouldn't have. It's as simple as that.

April 30, 2000

Copyright 2009 Windroot.Com®. All rights reserved.

http://www.windroot.com/singleminded/vietnam.htm