Military Leaders From Vietnam

"Likewise, you have let our soldiers die under the hail of shells. This is an inhumane act by an inhumane ally. Refusing to aid an ally and abandoning it is an inhumane act…"

"If I do not say that you were defeated by the communists in Vietnam, I must modestly say that you did not win either. But you found an honourable way out. And at present, when our army lacks weapons, ammunition, helicopters, aircraft and B-52s (bombers), you ask us to do an impossible thing, like filling up the ocean with stones…"

"The Americans have asked us to do an impossible thing… You have asked us to do something you failed to do, with half a million powerful troops and skilled commanders, and with nearly $300 billion in expenditure over six long years."

"When democracy is recovered in Vietnam, I can say that my dream has come true. I can go back to my life. I would like to go back to my own province, my native province. That’s the best place."

"You say that you blame me for the fall of South Vietnam, you criticize me, everything. I let you do that. I like to see you do better than I."

"Yes, I'm a military man, and as a military man I say that if peace fails and we want to end this war, we must bring the war to North Vietnam. In all possible ways, including landing."

"Until today we have had a half war. I say, had we attacked North Vietnam with a classical war, had we bombed North Vietnam continuously, had we landed in North Vietnam, the war would be over by now."

"When you negotiate with the Communists, you shouldn't fix a deadline. You must not tell them that you want to repatriate the prisoners as soon as possible, to bring peace as soon as possible, otherwise they exploit you. Be patient. One must be patient with the Communists, more patient than they are."

"Of course, I would like to go down in history as the man who brought peace."

"We have told the Americans, that when you talk to the Communists, if they propose this or that solution, you just receive it and take it back and show it to us. Then we would give our views and you would inform them of our views."

"In any peace solution the final decision should be ours. Nobody can sign a cease‐fire agreement or peace settlement without the signature of the Government of the Republic of Vietnam."

"I have always said we are not afraid of a ceasefire, but our stance is that if there is a cease‐fire it must go along with a political settlement."

"The Communists could only hope to win if our ally betrays us and sells us out. But our main ally will never betray us. He has invested so much blood and money."

"Don't listen to what the Communists say, but look at what they do."

"Nguyen Van Thieu and his machine of oppression and constraint, instruments of the U.S. “Vietnamization” policy, constitute the main obstacle to the settlement of the political problem in South Vietnam. Therefore, Nguyen Van Thieu must resign immediately, the Saigon administration must end its warlike policy, disband at once its machine of oppression and constraint against the people, stop its “pacification” policy, disband the concentration camps, set free those persons arrested on political grounds and guarantee to the people the democratic liberties as provided for by the 1954 Geneva agreements on Vietnam. After the above has been achieved, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam will immediately discuss with the Saigon administration the formation of a three-segment government of national concord with a view to organizing general elections in South Vietnam, to elect a constituent assembly, work out a constitution, and set up a definitive government of South Vietnam. The general elections will be held according to procedures agreed upon among the political forces in South Vietnam so as to ensure effectively their free, democratic and fair character."

"I believe that we cannot survive as a democratic country when we are supporting someone like Thieu in Saigon, who has put 300,000 political prisoners in jail because they've spoken in favor of peace. I just don't believe that when a Republican Party bugs the Democratic Party headquarters, that that smacks of democracy. These kind of things I speak out against. That doesn't mean I'm a Communist."

"The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom and it was in the same fight that the United States lost 50,000 of its young men."

"Some $300 million is not a big sum to you. Compared to the amount of money you spent here in ten years, this sum is sufficient for only ten days of fighting. And with this sum, you ask me to score a victory or to check communist aggression, a task which you failed to fulfil in six years, with all US forces, and with such an amount of money. This is absurd."

"The United States is proud of being an invincible defender of the just cause and the ideal of freedom in the world… Are US statements worthy? Are US commitments still valid?"

"There was a knock, and Kiem reached for his Smith & Wesson .22 revolver. It was his aide, Lieutenant Su. "Excuse me, sir," said the lieutenant, "but there was a call while you were out. A colonel from the Four Party Joint Military Commission, speaking with a heavy accent. 'Borck' or 'Borek'- some Polish or Hungarian name beginning with a B. He wouldn't leave his number. Said he had an important message for you and that he might call back later." "What the hell?-" said Kiem. He didn't know a soul on that worthless commission charged with monitoring the terms of the 1973 Paris "peace" agreement. That lying, two-faced German Henry Kissinger had set it up as a sham, just before selling out South Vietnam to the communists. If the Four Party Commission had a message for him, they could stick it, as far as Kiem was concerned. Fuck the bastards."

"For two thousand years Vietnam had been ruled by an emperor and a class of mandarins- scholars who had passed the difficult poetry and philosophy examinations necessary to advance through the bureaucratic hierarchy. Anyone could take the examinations, young or old, poor or rich, and become a mandarin. In a society where change was almost nonexistent, memorization of traditional knowledge was the key to success. Then, late in the nineteenth century, following decades of armed resistance by the Vietnamese, the French finally succeeded in conquering the country. They took over everything, from the government to the police, and staffed all of the good jobs with French colonials. The annual mandarin examinations continued, but the highest scorers could aspire to be only low-level civil servants under the French."

"While Kiem was imagining how he'd look in Vietnamese Navy dress whites, Viet Minh general Vo Nguyen Giap was busy massing tens of thousands of troops around the French-held valley town of Dien Bien Phu, near the Laotian border. Giap's forces choked off the French supply lines, ringing their noose tighter and tighter as the French got thinner and weaker and monsoon rains beat down on their equipment. The French appealed to U.S. president Eisenhower and British prime minister Churchill for help, but it was not forthcoming. On 12 March 1954 Giap's army of fifty thousand men attacked French general Navarre's eleven or twelve thousand with everything in its arsenal. In early May, as Kiem was preparing to take the written exam for the French Naval Academy in Hanoi, Giap's men overran the last of the weakened French forces- and the Viet Minh won the war. Kime was thrilled that his country had finally gained its independence, but he couldn't help worrying that the French defeat might ruin his future plans. Mr. Sach said not to fear: no matter what happened at the postwar negotiating conference, the French would still want to help shape a young navy just starting out. They were human, and that was human nature."

"Kiem knew he had seen the florid face somewhere before. Suddenly he remembered. As commandant of the Vietnamese Naval Academy, Kiem had once made the mistake of assigning three of his cadets to Lt. Comdr. Nguyen Van Luc, also of the River Force, for practical training. All three had come back sick and shaking, telling the same story under repeated questioning. Luc had ordered the cadets to change into their dress whites, handed them rifles, then ordered them to shoot at anything that moved- which they'd taken to be a figure of speech. But a few minutes later their patrol boat had rounded a bend in the river, exposing a small boy with a stick in his hand, tending a water buffalo. "Shoot," Luc had hissed. They had looked at one another in confusion, thinking it some sort of test. "Shoot!" Luc had screamed at them again, so loudly that even the boy at the river's edge had cocked his head and stared. Then Luc had raised his own gun and fired, killing both animal and child. Mercifully there weren't many officers like that in the navy- knowing nothing about the sea, only how to kill. Luc was more like an army than a navy man."

"But before the ships could be brought into the harbor, their guns had to be dismantled, their ammo unloaded, their names painted over, their Vietnamese flags lowered, and the American colors raised. The shame of it was almost unbearable: Kiem and his men were a bunch of losers. They had lost the long war. In all of the excitement and chaos of the past week, it was the first time the realization had fully hit them. But there was still one small thing Kiem could do to help his men save face. He could ask for a proper changing-of-colors ceremony: something to soften the blow of seeing their flag yanked down like a rag. Late that afternoon, on board every ship, an ex-VNN officer made a speech; then a U.S. Navy officer made a speech. As the ropes creaked and the gold flag with three red stripes began to descend, the refugees broke into their national anthem: "Nay cong dan oi..." (Oh citizen of the country...) Their voices soared over the turqoise waters of the Pacific Ocean. Slowly the US flags were hoisted into place. Then the ex-VNN officers walked to the ship's rail, ripped the insignia from their uniforms, and tossed the gold glitter into the sea with their caps. They were civilians, now, not military men. Stripped of their national identities, they could help bring another country's warships into the bay with no shame."

"Kiem Do, a native of Hanoi, was a captain in the South Vietnamese Navy and the deputy chief of staff for operations when Saigon fell in 1975. During his twenty-one years in the navy, he served as district commander, chief of staff of the Mobile Riverine Force, and commandant of the Vietnamese Midshipman's School. After settling in the United States he taught high school math and science, studied in the MBA program at the University of New Orleans, and worked as a cost engineer with a Louisiana utility company for more than twenty years. Since retirement in 1997, he has been active as a leader in the New Orleans Vietnamese community and has lectured frequently on the Vietnam War at local universities and before veterans groups. He and his wife of thirty-nine years, Thom Le Do, have five children and six American-born grandchildren."

"The Navy of the Republic of Vietnam never surrendered. Instead, in accordance with the best tradition of navies, the ships got under way with families aboard and turned themselves over to the United States at Subic Bay in the Philippines. The story of the heroic way in which this was accomplished is part of the life story of Kiem Do, an illustrious and patriotic veteran."

"Listen, the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, 'You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?' I tell them that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them."

"In August 1945, the capitulation of the Japanese forces before the and the Allied forces, put an end to the world war. The defeat of the German and Nippon fascists was the beginning of a great weakening of the capitalist system. After the great victory of the Soviet Union, many people's democracies saw the light of day. The socialist system was no longer confined within the frontiers of a single country. A new historic era was beginning in the world. In view of these changes, in Viet Nam, the Indo-chinese Communist Party and the Viet Minh called the whole Vietnamese nation to general insurrection. Everywhere, the people rose in a body. Demonstrations and displays of force followed each other uninterruptedly. In August, the Revolution broke out, neutralising the bewildered Nippon troops, overthrowing the pro-Japanese feudal authorities, and installing people's power in Hanoi and throughout the country, in the towns as well as in the countryside, in Bac Bo as well as in Nam Bo. In Hanoi, the capital, in September 2nd, the provisional gouvernment was formed around President Ho Chi Minh ; it presented itself to the nation, proclaimed the independence of Viet Nam, and called on the nation to unite, to hold itself in readiness to defend the country and to oppose all attempts at imperialist aggression. The Democratic Republic of Viet Nam was born, the first people's democracy in South-east Asia. But the imperialists intended to nip the republican regime in the bud and once again transform Viet Nam into a colony. Three weeks had hardly gone by when, on September 23rd, 1945, the French Expeditionary Corps opened fire in Saigon. The whole was to be carried on for nine years at the cost of unprecedented heroism and amidst unimaginable difficulties, to end by the shining victory of our people and the crushing defeat of the aggressive imperialists at Dien Bien Phu. ... Never before had there been so many foreign troops on the soil of Viet Nam. But never before either, had the Vietnamese people been so determined to rise up in combat to defend their country."

"The boat people, the boat people, in getting out what got in, getting out of South Vietnam, that so called communist paradise and that’s to show enough to the whole world that the communist regime doesn't work in South Vietnam. And maybe if we are in fight now inside in...in...South Vietnam, we will have certainly the support of the general, of the majority, of the population. We never had that thing before. But now, if there is some, something, you know, moving over there, I am almost sure that we have I am sure that we have, the support, the majority of the population."

"I put Huong, I put Duong Van Minh like uh...chief of state. I put Huong, I put Quat, Quat on the prime minister role. Anytime we feel that they do not answer, I mean, deal with the situation we change them. They are not a coup. Either Quat, either Huong, or Minh does not come in office with election with the power, with the population, you know. The people give him the mandate to be prime minister, or to be, to be uh chief state. The mandate it coming from the armed forces at that time before we have any constitution, you know, uh set up later on. So, when we change a government it's not a coup. We just change somebody what we just want to put in. That's all."

"I was supporting the Buddhists. But the, the Buddhists in a a general uh strategy. You know, we have uh...India, Burma, Cambodia...uh Vietnam, Taiwan, and Japan. What we call that...it's a Yellow Bear. Yellow Bear to stop the red invasion. That's a kind of, of uh, uh...religion side of the fight again the Communists. So I was for the organization of kind of international Buddhists. And if you remember, we had a headquarters, international Buddhists at that time, in Saigon to all, to buil—build its forces, to face Communists red, "vague" of red, you know, invasion from the China, Indochina or Russian."

"I feel very, very badly and uh I left Saigon...with some of my...soil of the you know Vietnam you know in my hand...I left uh seeing the soldier that I always command, you know, for two decades. Uh...behind. I feel that I missed to bring peace to my people. And I feel that uh maybe the only time that we can have that peace, you know, and have dignity of South Vietnam, the sovereignty, respected by every people and I feel very badly, of course."

"The council uh, forced me to leave the, the country. That was officially, but, in fact, you know, it's 'n...uh...there are many books writing of that, that, that uh incident and the American official in Saigon are very pleased at that time to see me uh out of the country."

"I was against the idea to commit the ground American troops in South Vietnam for the simple reason that we do not need that. We need the support, the technical support, the technology of the of the uh...American armed forces but we do not need the combat troops at that time...You know, uh...how can we justify with the population if the American come to fight for us? We just can't. So, this error...is main, one of the main error that we made...in the year '65, to bring in the combat troops, American combat troop in South Vietnam. And, then the South Vietnamese armed forces become a kind of uh subletive, you know, the the second reign on the, and the, the national mission of these forces cannot be uh in the Vietnamese hand. Then it, 't...are under the American hand. And later, later on when we see the American withdrawal we changing government back in Washington 'n 'n policy, and then when the element of the American troops is getting out of the country, the disaster we saw later on in '75 is a result of the decision to send the...the troops, the American troop to fight for the Vietnamese troops."

"Ambassador Taylor and, and, and, and me, and I, we had a very bad moment together at that day in the general staff. Ambassador want to see me uh because he uh made what we called a young turk at that time, a young general officer, namely Nguyen Cao Ky, and Nguyen Van Thieu, and other general. And uh... to kind of to insult them uh for, you know, being changing what we call the civilian government at that time."

"Yeah, we, we uh, we had a march North, movement at that time, in July '64. I prepare at that time the psychology of the South Vietnamese people that maybe we need to go north to answer to the aggression from North Vietnam. You, you cannot defend yourself always to have a defensive plan, you know. Uh...what the...the...one of the uh military principle is you better defend yourself by having an offensive plan."

"Now I had the power, I want to realize the goals of the Vietnamese revolution back in 1945. The goals were and still be right now is, they uh, independence, that means national sovereignty, the uh, freedom, and the happiness of the whole population. It was the national aim, strategically, but when I had the power the country was divided in two parts on the 17th parallel, we had insurgency in South Vietnam and I want to uh, how to said it, integrate the Front of Liberation, the non-communist people and the Front of Liberation with me and then uh...to fight the North Vietnamese if at that time, the North Vietnamese do not uh, did not want to have a peaceful solution in North Vietnam, in South Vietnam."

"I staged the coup because uh...the leaders in Saigon at that time did not keep their word. Uh, you know, by example, not killing Diem. Uh, they killed Diem. Uh... secondly, by example... to try to do something better in the fight, in fighting the Communists. But, you remember, I mean uh, at that time, everybody remember that they are a good time in Saigon, you know uh...uh, just enjoy the victory over Diem. And also, the main thing is leader at that time, we feel, was for the French solution of Indochina, for DeGaulle at that time, you know, he want to neutralize South Vietnam and to impose a French solution for the whole Indochina. And leaders at that time were in Saigon, we feel, it was true later on, like by example, Duong Van Minh, you know, who surrender to the Communists at '75 and we know that now we tory we know that Minh was one of the men of the policemen in Saigon who took, took over. So, I think we were ah, ah right, we were right at that time to change the leadership in Saigon."

"The French Colonial, you know...did not export too much their ideal of d—of democracy outside of the French frontier. Now, with the American people, you export too much your democracy and your...freedom, you know, all that, your way of life and you want to impose that uh in the country like Vietnam, it doesn — it doesn’t, it cannot work. But, in some way, we better adapt and not adopt what you have."

"We, we respect very much what the American want to do uh...but, you know sometime the American way of life and the...uh American democracy maybe uh cannot work in a country like mine, you know, in South Vietnam. Uh...so, we, we can have the principle and adapt that in the country but we cannot adapt what you have here, you know, eh two houses, all that stuff, you know, and changing the president every four year. You have many people here who can be leader of the country. We have a few in Vietnam, a few who can uh you know uh lead the country because education, because the training, because all that uh, background that we must have, you know."

"I think uh...we lost everyday Vietnamese life in fighting the Communists, you know, and and no progress, we have to do something else, you can, we cannot have a more of the same, you know, every, every day, so we, we must change, yes."

"I remember that day clearly when I left Saigon. I left my country in honor that day, not like Thieu who fled later. My cabinet, my troops, the whole diplomatic corps were there at the airport to bid me farewell."

"I an a political asylum situation here. Legally, I cannot tell that I am making any politics action here. But I always want to be with my people over there. I want to go back to Vietnam, of course, if possible."

"Very much! China presents Vietnam with a very big problem. China is taking over Vietnam, from Cholon, where there are rich Chinese, to Haiphong. They are everywhere now with their product. My wife is from the North, people there resent China more than the South feared the Viet Cong. The Chinese are invaders — like any other foreigners — to fight. We must stop the Chinese. You know the dikes built on the Red River? If they break, what happens? A flood!"

"I took with me in my hand on the departing plane a bag of sand, a bag of earth from the soil of a free South Vietnam. My western hero had always been General Douglas MacArthur who made the famous promise "I shall return", after he lost a battle in the Philippines."

"Look. What happened, that was just business. Personal betrayal I can understand. But never betrayal of one’s people you serve, or your country."

"China believes it is the center of the universe. Look at its flag: one big star surrounded by satellite stars. Arrogant!"

"I have a promise to keep; to return to a free and democratic Vietnam."

"It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected Premier."

"One thing is clear, the president of North Vietnam is not a fanatic. He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position."