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North Vietnamese troops wash themselves in the palace’s fountain after their victory. (Courtesy of history.com)
Whenever you talk to someone who has lived under communism they all in one way or another express the opinion that communism as the worst political philosophy for a country to endure. That is very important for all Vietnam Veterans to know because it is the underlining of the primary reason we were there. We went there with the noble mission of stemming the tide of world communism no matter the fact we committed some bonehead errors in the execution of that mission.
It this episode the opinion of a Vietnamese person who lived in Vietnam under communism will be featured. Today he is an American living in South Dakota. He wrote an editorial piece in The Capital Journal of Pierre, South Dakota titled: Once a country is divided, it can never heal. The submitter was by Phu Nguyen Phu.nguyen@capjournal.com.
Nguyen’s title is the theme of his piece where he describes how his home country of Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel in 1954. Despite the passage of 63 years of history his home country remains divided and he is pessimistic as to whether it will ever heal from its division. He points out that “the North Vietnam Army broke the Paris Peace Accords — which were signed in 1973 — and took over the country on April 30, 1975” and that only aggravated the dissociation of the northern and southern parts of the country.
In Vietnam to this very day, a person cannot get a government job if there is a family connection to the old South Vietnamese government going back three generations. In large Vietnamese communities such as those in California, Houston or Seattle the flag of Vietnam is considered a “flag of blood” because of the bloodshed and destruction they believe it brought to their homeland.
Nguyen warns America that it must not become divided politically. He has seen the results and they aren’t very pretty.
