This... May 26, 2014

[JackRiddler]

24. Eisenhower even wrote it down:

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/vietnam/ddeho.htm

Eisenhower's Views on the Popularity of Ho Chi Minh

Source: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-56 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Compnay, Inc., 1963), p. 372

I am convinced that the French could not win the war because the internal political situation in Vietnam, weak and confused, badly weakened their military position. I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai. Indeed, the lack of leadership and drive on the part of Bao Dai was a factor in the feeling prevalent among Vietnamese that they had nothing to fight for. As one Frenchman said to me, "What Vietnam needs is another Syngman Rhee, regardless of all the difficulties the presence of such a personality would entail."

You, two questions:

Do you really think that "Uncle Ho" was interested in free and fair elections? Do you really think that South Vietnam was better off once the North Vietnamese took over?

1) Of course, since Ho knew what the certain outcome would have been! Furthermore, after World War II he sought alliance with the United States and chose July 4th, 1946 as the date for the second announcement of Vietnam's declaration of independence from France. The Vietnamese declaration directly cites the American. It is a great tragedy that the U.S. did not take this historic opportunity but instead chose to continue the bloody imperialist legacy of France.

2) Certainly, the people there were not as well-off after 1975 as they would have been if the U.S. government had not intervened 20 years earlier to create this non-existent nation in the first place. After 20 years of murder for which the U.S. government was the primary instigator, things were of course much worse for everyone.

What do you think was going on in the South, when despite all this butchery by the Americans they were unable to pacify it and their selected governments kept falling? An insurgency on that scale is not possible without popular support! Why do you think the Americans herded the rural population into concentration camps and let them out every morning to farm the rice fields? Because they were so damn beloved by the peasants?