After 35 years of war, victory came to the heroic Vietnamese people on
April 30 at 9:30 a.m. when the stillborn U.S. puppet government of Duong Van
Minh unconditionally surrendered to the People’s Liberation Armed
Forces.
As thousands of soldiers in the fascist army threw away their weapons, hoping
to fade into the civilian population, armed units of the Provisional
Revolutionary Government entered the state radio station and broadcast the news
that they had hoisted their red, blue and gold flag over the Presidential
Palace.
‘Cheers, smiles, and handshakes’
Early reports of the liberation of Saigon—now renamed Ho Chi Minh
City—are incomplete but the New York Daily News (April 30) reported that
“laughing, cheering Communist troops riding tanks into the city shouted,
‘Hello, comrades’ to bystanders and newsmen.” The New York
Post added, “People strolled the streets, greeting the arriving communist
soldiers with cheers, smiles, and handshakes. Vietcong flags appeared on many
buildings. A jeepload of Vietcong drove up and down the Rue Catinat, the
city’s main street, waving as they sat with their rifles pointed in the
air. Other Vietcong soldiers walked along the street, shaking hands with the
people.”
The collapse of the puppet regime came only two hours after the last U.S.
Marines escaped from the roof of the fortress-like American Embassy aboard a
Ch-46 helicopter while embittered puppet soldiers fired at them from the street
below. Peter Arnett of the Associated Press wrote that as the final squad of
Marines abandoned the embassy, “they threw tear gas grenades into the
elevator shaft” to keep their erstwhile “allies” at a safe
distance.
In fact, most of the violence on the final day of the war took place in clashes
between U.S. Marines and the hapless puppet troops enraged at their
master’s pell mell flight. The New York Times dispatch covering this
frantic evacuation stampede stated that when the first busload of Americans
arrived at TanSonNhut air base, “Vietnamese guards fired at it.”
The English news agency Reuters cabled this story: “United States Navy
fighter planes went into action over South Vietnam when two boats carrying the
American consul general from the delta city of Can Tho reported that two
helicopters with South Vietnamese markings were firing at his party. Later, the
consul general was said to be stranded somewhere in the South China
Sea.”
Suitcase stuffed with gold
Several thousand high-ranking Vietnamese quislings did manage to make their
escape in the final hours, in many cases bringing their loot with them. The New
York Daily News correspondent observed that “One three-star general
carried a suitcase loaded with gold.” Four U.S. Marines were killed in
the retreat.
The Vietnamese have been fighting for their independence from imperialism ever
since the French capitalists conquered Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in 1887, but
the liberation struggle did not take a great leap forward until Ho Chi Minh
founded the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. After the Japanese takeover of
Vietnam in 1940, Ho Chi Minh led the guerrilla war against the occupiers. When
the French colonialists returned in 1945, he carried on the fight against them
also.
The first U.S. military “advisers” were sent to Vietnam by
President Harry S. Truman in March 1950. By the time of the French defeat at
Dien Bien Phu in May of 1954, the U.S. was paying 78 percent of the cost of the
fighting to the Paris government.
After the French withdrawal, Eisenhower rigged up the Diem regime in Saigon.
Diem refused to hold elections to reunify the nation, which had been divided
into North and South, because he knew Ho Chi Minh would easily win. Instead he
instituted a Nazi-like persecution of Communists and all others who opposed his
dictatorial rule.
From guerrilla war ...
In 1960 the people of South Vietnam rose up against Diem and began to wage a
guerrilla war under the leadership of the National Liberation Front (called the
Viet Cong by the capitalist media). In 1963 Diem was assassinated and the next
year Lyndon Johnson fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin hoax to justify U.S.
intervention, which began in earnest in the spring of 1965.
By 1968 the Pentagon had over half a million men in Vietnam, but after the U.S.
defeat during the year’s Tet Offensive, the troops began to be withdrawn.
After a number of further setbacks for the U.S. militarists and their Saigon
puppets—the Laos debacle in 1971 and the huge loss of B-52s over Hanoi in
the Christmas bombing of 1972—Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon were
forced to sign the Paris ceasefire on Jan. 23, 1973.
By this time, U.S. public opinion had swung heavily against more war. But
because General Thieu, like Diem before him, continued to be nothing but a U.S.
puppet and refused to hold elections (which were called for in the Paris
accords), the fighting continued in South Vietnam.
... to final victory
On March 18 of this year, the liberation army drove the fascist forces from the
Central Highland city of Ban Me Thuot. By March 20 the freedom fighters had
captured three provinces and a week later entered Hue. On March 29 Danang was
liberated. The people’s army continued to advance, freeing the cities of
Nha Trang, Tuy Hoa, Xuan Loc, Bien Hoa and finally Saigon itself.
The war has accelerated the decline of U.S. capitalism. When Johnson sent the
first two battalions of U.S. Marines to Vietnam 10 years ago, the yearly
inflation rate in America was only 1.7 percent. This year it topped 12 percent,
even while millions were suffering mass unemployment. The New York Daily News
(April 30) concedes that “The ultimate tax dollar cost of the war,
including payments to veterans and their descendants, interest on the
war-related debt and the like, could take the final cost to $1
trillion.”
This does not count the human cost: 55,000 GIs killed and 6,000,000 Indochinese
dead and wounded.
Now that the war is over and the Vietnamese have finally won an unconditional
victory, the U.S. government and media are calling it a “great
tragedy.” But the tragedy is past. April 30, 1975, will live in history
as a glorious achievement of the masses and the beginning of the socialist
reconstruction of South Vietnam.
Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World.
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