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Well, this will be my last blog for a while as I'm soon jetting off to more relaxing climes in an attempt to escape the Tet madness here in 'Nam. But, I've been getting roped into a series of day trips of late so I might as well do a final write up before I leave. Two different beaches in the space of 5 days must be an all time record for me. Thursday is a normal teaching day which means that I can't usually get away for more than a few hours, however, my wife Quynh convinced me that if we started out early then we could get back well before I was due to start work. I wonder why I listen to her sometimes, well, it must be love......

Long Hai is around 20km east of Vung Tau and again, much like the previous beach I visited, not as crowded, polluted or frequented as often by the tourist horde as Vung Tau is. The occasion was one of celebration. Here in Vietnam, a child's first birthday is of great importance and yet another excuse for friends and family to get together, eat, make merry and get absolutely pickled. Obviously, I needed to abstain from the amber nectar otherwise my teaching professionalism would have no doubt come into question, but there was no way I was going to be let off the hook so easily, oh no....

So, at 7am we were picked up by the Bien Hoa bodybuilding massive in Long Thanh. Our friend and proud mum of the day, Judy, is married to a guy who owns a gym and he made sure that this special day was going to be spent with his fellow, iron pumping compatriots who ooze just as much testosterone as he does. I wish I could of joined them in the manly rituals of grunting, backslapping and tearing of t-shirts as I flexed my bulging biceps , however, since turning 40 and with the onset of every part of my body heading in a southerly direction I did feel a tad left out...and maybe even an iota insecure despite my towering over them by at almost a foot.

Walking along the beach Quynh and I came across some seafood hawkers and she just had to indulge. I love seafood myself, but for some reason I get a severe allergic reaction to the seafood here and unfortunately have to say a resounding no every time it is thrust forth under my chin. Another problem is, once you say yes to one of these hawkers, the others come flocking towards you like flies and as a consequence our freezer is now stocked full of every possible sea dwelling crustacean, invertebrate and mollusc that you care to mention!

I stopped to take a couple of pictures of some beautifully coloured crabs in a tank when I heard a voice behind me ask if I was American. I rarely get the chance to speak to Vietnamese people in these far flung places being as few of them speak any English and my command of Vietnamese is still pathetic to say the least but as I got talking I realised that I had encountered a South Vietnamese veteran of the Vietnam War and found myself becoming more and more engrossed as he conversed with me..... oh God, no, not again....I can feel the philosophical mists starting to encircle me.....no, don't do it....stop......ohh bugger......here I go again...........

I am no fan of war or military conflict. In my opinion, one death in any war is one death too many. While I may take an deep and passionate interest in military history, I do so because I want to gain an understanding of the causes and assess their subsequent effects accordingly. Unlike the Israeli/Palestinian troubles where this conflict is clearly fuelled and driven by nothing less than generations of hatred towards the Israelis and Judaism worldwide, passed down from father to child and spread through a policy of indoctrination and brainwashing by the Palestinian authorities, the reasons why so much death and destruction occurred here during those dark years in the 1960s and 70s needs to be scrutinized in more detail and while Vietnam effectively was turned into a major battlefield between the two superpowers of the time, there is I believe, a deeper and more complicated answer than this simply being a conflict between Eastern communism and Western democracy/capitalism.

Even after all these years, my new friend (to protect his identity I will call him 'Bob') was still bitter and I can understand why. He reiterated about how good life here was under the Americans. He had a good job with a good salary and generally wanted for nothing. He told me stories about how he used to work hard and try to build bridges between the Americans and the locals. He had few good words to say about the North Vietnamese and even less choice words to say about the administration of the time. Travelling in foreign countries means that you have to be open minded and while I did not agree with everything 'Bob' said, as a fellow human being, I felt it only right to allow his enmity and scathing remarks to be heard, unhindered by any vocal protests from myself. Indeed, after the cessation of hostilities, many North Vietnamese looted much of what the South Vietnamese had, leading to widespread resentment and animosity which is still understandably felt by many of the older generation today. While I understand and empathise with his pain and sentiments, their is also a great deal of resentment and animosity felt by those in the north who still find it hard to believe that their own countrymen and women chose to side with a foreign power and fight against them. I believe that this conflict needs to be looked at from both sides rather than just blindly accepting the demonisation and vilification of communism and Ho Chi Minh and the over simplified, Western version of events that are so frequently portrayed in films and other media.

Vietnam was, for over 100 years, torn apart by a succession of invasions, occupations and subjugations. First the French came in the middle of the 19th century, followed by a brief occupation by the Japanese who dealt out brutality on a massive scale. Then the French returned to continue the suppression and finally the Americans came to fight in the corner of the South Vietnamese. Even a brief, cross border incursion by the Chinese in 1979 was met with unflinching resistance and they were soon repelled. Through sheer tenacity, Vietnam has survived intact and is now emerging as one of the strongest economies in the world with a progressive and forward thinking government to drive it on to even greater heights, despite the global economic turn down.

One reason why I love this country so much is that the Vietnamese are proud people who are fiercely patriotic, love their country and are committed to their families and their values more than anything else. Like any other right minded individual, we would automatically stand up and fight for our own country if the threat of invasion came or we found ourselves being occupied by foreign forces. Sadly, though, we seem to have lost much of our patriotic zeal and sentiment in much of Europe today, mostly thanks to the corrupt and twisted agenda of the E.U and its policy of reducing Europeans to groups of gibbering Nimbies and sub-servant zombies. I’ve banged on enough about how Europe is being slowly but surely being assimilated by the latest form of fascism, (hardcore liberalism that seeks to suppress freedom of speech and advocate political correctness by promoting all forms of perversion and deviance in the name of 'diversity' and 'equality') so I hardly need to reiterate any further objections to this. Yet sadly, one depressing aspect of Western culture, the obsession with consumerism and the acquisition of wealth seems to be slowly working its way into Vietnamese life.

Despite the grievances of those in the south, we need to remember that Uncle Ho’s dream was to reunite the country under one flag and one government. He is quoted as having said ‘I am Vietnamese first and a politician second’ which clearly indicated that Ho Chi Minh was a patriot who put the love of his country and his people before anything else and who wanted nothing more than see an end to the killing and maiming that was tearing his beloved country apart. His passion for Vietnam was clearly apparent. While he deemed certain measures necessary while fighting against those in the south, on hearing about atrocities carried out by the Viet Minh, he immediately put a stop to them. Ho Chi Minh reminded his people that; “The object of my relationship with Vietnam has been to heal the wounds that exist, particularly among our veterans, and to move forward with a positive relationship”.

In contrast, by 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam had instigated a purge against anyone with communist or socialist sympathies which often led to their torture and death. Diem also began to repress the mostly Buddhist population in favour of his Catholic roots, which lead to protests and self immolations by Buddhist monks on the streets of Saigon. Despite this, he was still a nationalist, however, but 1963, Diem had been assassinated and replaced by an administration that was widely accepted by both the North and South Vietnamese to be a pawn of the U.S, its policies and political will.

Assimilating and absorbing the perceived threat that socialism was supposed to present and having seen the Soviet purges under Lenin and Stalin and the effects of the 'Great Leap Forward' instigated on the express wishes of Chairman Mao, it was no wonder that many were prepared to take to arms against what was misnomered as yet another misguided state who had fallen under the yoke of the hammer and sickle. However, what the American forces and their allies would be fighting was a large group of individuals driven by a nationalistic fervour that was irrepressible. The same fervour was applied by General Vo Nguyen Giap and his men who finally defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Having read Marx many years ago, I quickly came to realise that the concept and ideals behind socialism seem to have either failed or been mostly ignored under almost every leader who has supposedly advocated its ways. Most of these leaders such as Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot have instead, been power hungry dictators whose lust for power and dictatorship have taken precedence over the socialist ideal so espoused by Marx. In fact the closest I believe that I ever came to living in what many would term to be a 'socialist utopia', was to be found in one of the most unlikely of places, the kibbutzim of Israel. One person who is an exception to this rule was President Ho Chi Minh who clearly was level headed individual, a great thinker and listener and a man of the people who became a great role model for the Vietnamese population to look up to and emulate. This no doubt why even more than 40 years after his death, his legacy still lives on and his charm and example are one that the Vietnamese Government seeks to model itself on, truly bringing itself closer to the teachings of Marx than any other left wing administration has managed to do since the inception of socialism itself.

The biggest tragedy of this and any other conflict was that so many people had to lose their lives fighting a war that represented nothing less than a failure to understand a patriotic, battle hardened people and listen to them. Around 1.5 million Vietnamese and over 60,000 American servicemen and their allies died in a conflict that could have been avoided if only those in Washington had paid more attention to what Ho Chi Minh so prophetically emphasised; "The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty". "You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.

The American author David Brin wrote "Ho Chi Minh never underestimated America. His avowed hero was George Washington and he remained in awe of the U.S., all his life. He remains the only enemy leader who ever defeated us at war, and then only because our hubris (not decadence) got the better of us". Indeed, lessons could have been learned by meditating over what the great military strategist, Sun Tzu once wrote; "If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles... if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperilled in every single battle'. Ignoring this one important rule cost the Americans dearly and The Vietnam War stands today as their one and only military defeat.

In Stanley Kubrick's anti war epic, Full Metal Jacket, there is a clear emphasis on the lack of any real understanding as to why the average American soldier was fighting in Vietnam. On their return to the U.S, many Vietnam vets were frequently treated with revulsion and disgust by the brainwashed, liberal, hippy brigade who labelled them as 'murderers' and 'baby killers', simply for doing their duty and carrying out the wishes of their misguided politicians and generals. Even today, many on both sides are still suffering, damaged by a conflict that will live with them until the day they die. Many have also had to live with the knowledge that they will never see their beloved family members again and when you look at warfare from this angle, then you will quickly realise that there are no real winners in war, only losers. Talk to the family and friends of those who have lost loved ones, no matter what their nationality, creed, colour or religion is and then, maybe, you will understand.

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