So much is said about wars. So much is said about the victories and defeats. So much is said about premises and the consequences of the wars. So much is said about politicians who involve and the soldiers who are involved in the wars. But still so much is unsaid. Even passing through the years of justification and soothing the after-war wounds still bleed. The history of the Vietnam War is not an exception. And the post-war syndromes and consequences recall King Richard IIs mournful invitation, those king words: ”Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
The stories of thirty years of grief and sorrow full of litany and mourning are even now still to be told. The information on the strife between two big and, no doubt, great nations contain sorrowful ‘cadres’ of annihilation and death, deaths of man and women, elders and youngers and children.
But still much is hidden behind the curtain of the history of morals and ideals, in the deepest cash of governments, in the hidden places of ones reputation and conscience, behind the drugged minds of heroes and poltroons. Yet one story of death, a death of independence and peace, death of the democracy, the democracy of quiet and peaceful Vietnam is to be told. The story is called just in the manner it is: “A Vietcong Memoir”, told by a strong, though refugee from his nation, person Truong Nhu Tang.
Mr. Tang has never been a communist, but devoted nationalists had a strong desire to cooperate with the Communists in the movement to achieve Vietnam’s national independence. He is the kind of Vietnamese whom neither Americans nor French understood but whom the Communists understood very well but all in vain. The glimpse into the further story of his dream first appeared in 1945, after he had left his affluent family from Saigon for study in Paris. It was the first time Truong Nhu Tang met Ho Chi Minh. And it was the first time he was fascinated by Hos charm, his familiarity, simplicity, and “burning patriotism”. And after that, he finally left home and his family to become a part of the Communist underground.
Starting steps of the would-be leader were weak and scared. He lived a double hidden life in Saigon, running parallel official work of an ostensible bank clerk and proselytizing those who were interested in better though revolutionary future of Vietnam. After pleading to scheme against the revolutionary Saigons authority put Mr. Tang in prison where he dwelt for some months. Then he escaped in the jungle not as a soldier but as a politician to form National Liberation Front.
Later NLF was organized into Provision Revolutionary Government. PRG was supposed to govern and to make authority in South Vietnam after the American defeat and collapse of the imposed authority of the latter. Mr. Tang had no doubts as to the PRG would prevail one day even being ordered from Hanoi. It was the North that caused the Government, whatever their loyalties, to be changed, and achieve independence.
The most interesting part of the story called “A Vietcong Memoir” is laid in Mr. Tangs vision of the events that take place between the middle sixties and middle seventies, when America started war up to the moment when the Communists started governing South Vietnam. Also, interesting point about the book is that literate enough and agitation free work in contrast to the Communists books characterized so. Probably it is due to Mr. Tangs interest or thanks to his two collaborators, professors Mr. Toai and Mr. Chanoff.
Through the thorough reading of the book, it gets apparent the death of Mr. Tangs dream is due to the South Vietnamese Government and Americans refusal to take the notion of a coalition. He exemplifies China as one that would have found ways to maintain such a regime and it was clear that any Third World and the Western nation could do in the same way.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government came to govern very briefly, in 1975 and the prospect of a separate South Vietnamese republic dissolved itself. The North Communists representatives in the new government elbowed aside the majority of the Provisional Government. By a pure fluke, Mr. Tang was one of those who has not left aside, the more of it he has suggested a position of Minister of Justice in all-new government.
The disaster U.S.A. faced in the war against Vietnam was in the roots of Americas ignorance in divisive nature of blocs within Vietnam, then comes the ignorance to the understanding of the overarching goal of formerly mentioned blocs and Americas failure in quick anticipating and recognizing and stamping out the ideological enemy within Vietnam. These three factors were the main ones to predispose would-be Americas defeat in the conflict.
Early in his work, Truong Nhu Tang appears as a Communism-based Marxist-Leninist theory proponent. Ultimately Truong Nhu Tang was less than a Communism patriot, hiding doubts concerning Ho Chi Minhs vision of Communism. “Early in the memoir Truong Nhu Tang appears to be a proponent of Communism based on his predominantly Marxist-Leninist reading list” (Tang 21). They were all about applying Communism as a political solution for the growth and wealth of the country or probably the way to favor foreign investments entry.
As per Truong Nhu Tangs vision of the conflict, the Western countries attempts to manipulate the Asian ones have always been doubtless and there was no secret about Americans external policy orientations and intends, but the manipulation was always multifaceted. Ho Chi Minh was the embodiment of such kind of manipulation. He used both Soviet and Chinese aid to support his own goals without relinquishing his figure as a nationalist.
But hardly the political orientation of Truong Nhu Tang is unambiguous. “If Truong Nhu Tang is not aligned with the Communists, yet coordinates the National Liberation Front, of what ideology is he a part? Ho Chi Minh is not part of the Soviet Communist movement, yet he governs the entirety of North Vietnam and, to a lesser extent, the NLF-for whom does he fight? Ngo Dinh Diem—to what extent was he was a part of the American vision of South Vietnam” (Tang 35). He was not aligned with the Communist movement but coordinated NLF. Ho Chi Minh was not the Soviet Communist movement part, yet coordinated and governed the whole of North Vietnam and what is the more of it governed the National Liberation Front. And Ngo Dinh Diem was the U.S.A.’s vision of the authority of South Vietnam.
Mr. Tang admired Western ideas in Communism, implementing no socialism parts into the movement, yet Truong Nhu Tang shared an overwhelming desire, based on Marxist-Leninist theory, to free and clean his country from imperial visions and forces. The Truong Nhu Tang vision of the democracy based on his desire to reconcile the former pro-French oriented Vietnamese, the nationalists of different levels and especially those Vietminh-oriented sympathizers and fighters. In his opinion, Vietnam domestic policy needed moving to an inclusive and broad-based government akin to French democratic aspects. “In my opinion, domestic policies were needed that would move toward building a broad-based, inclusive government, along something like French democratic lines” (Tang 60). And Truong Nhu Tang did not consider the Vietnam government as permanent, hostile, confrontational between South and North of the country. And of course free from external imposing.
Mr. Tang’s vision of democracy was based on three historically predisposed and confirmed factors: Unitarian platform government, democratic, free of imposed imperial control, and politically diverse.
Truong Nhu Tang believes the US realized the historically predisposed goal of Vietnam people to fight for better democratic and Unitarian governance yet failed to realize the widespread belief in this goal amid the Vietnam people. “The popularity behind groups teaching these goals completely isolated from the NLF and NVA were extraordinary, such as the “Movement of Self-Determination” (Tang 92). The U.S.A. had little vision that Vietnam could be powered by figures unique and strong with the set of beliefs forged in the years of imposing external power and oppression. Tang stood for his being an NLF member though non-Communist, French-taught yet passionately against French oppression, and finally, a patriot yet exiled.
Ultimately Truong Nhu Tang made the U.S.A. government realize its ignorance of the complexity of foreign policy and since so Americans will more precisely detect future political drawbacks.