Winston 1

Christopher Winston

Vietnam: A War of American Imperialism

The Vietnam War, known to the Vietnamese as the American War, lasted from the fall of
Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese liberators in 1975. The war
killed roughly 1.3 million people, many of whom were simple peasants and civilians trying to
make sense of and survive the madness that had enveloped their small nation since the turn of the
20th century. Thousands of hectares of land were ruined, stripped of their sustenance and value
by napalm strikes and rainbow defoliants with names like Agent Purple, Green, Red, and most
infamously, Orange. Entire cities were ruined, entire communities were uprooted in the early
1960s under President Ngo Dinh Diems strategic hamlet program, which turned simple,
idyllic villages into virtual fortresses (or prisons, depending on who is asked). For all this loss
and expenditure of American blood, labor, and treasure, the United States and the South
Vietnamese government that the US propped up (despite well documented torture and violations
of human rights by that government), were sent out with their proverbial tail between their
legs. Vietnam was united, but it was under the banner of Ho Chi Minh, not Western style
democracy and capitalism. The official American rationale for fighting, and eventually
losing, this war was to stop the spread of totalitarian communism, and spread American
capitalism, democracy, and freedom to the rest of the world as it had been doing for nearly a
century (not so coincidentally, beginning with the rise of American international business
interests like Dole Fruit and Standard Oil in the late 19th century). However, this rationale was

Winston 2
flawed and is defined by deception at the very root. The War in Vietnam was not fought to
preserve or spread democracy, rather, it was fought to first protect French imperial
designs in Indochina and later to uphold Americas own imperialist and undemocratic
prerogatives in the region, and maintain the existence of the oppressive South Vietnamese
puppet state. Through firsthand accounts of the war, from those who fought and lived it, we see
how the native Vietnamese people are victims of colonialism and oppression from both French
and American imperialists. Americans routinely severed parts of human bodies, wearing
necklaces of human tongues and sending ears from killed soldiers and civilians back home to
their brothers and wives. In essence, the U.S. was determined finish what the French started, to
swallow Vietnam and the lives, souls, and minds of its citizens.
Before we can review the imperialism behind the Vietnam conflict in the 20th Century,
we must realize that Vietnam is no stranger to imperialism, nor is it a stranger to fighting against
it. The most revered freedom fighters by Vietnamese of all classes and political orientations are
Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, two wealthy sisters who began a massive revolt in 40 C.E against the
Chinese who had been occupying and stripping the wealth and pride of Vietnam since 111 B.C.
Their revolt ended in their execution, but as the centuries progressed, they increasingly were
seen as the embodiment of the countrys determination to resist outside domination. They also
were enshrined among the nations national spirits, and thus their assistance was sought in times
of need, such as during floods or drought (Rielly).1 There were no Trung Sisters to save
Vietnam from

Rielly, Edward J. "Trung Sisters." Salem Press Encyclopedia (2014): EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Dec.
2014.

Winston 3
the designs of the French, beginning in the middle of the 19th century, however. The incursion
and eventual occupation began with the attack of Da Nang by Admiral Charles Rigault,
ostensibly with the goal of protecting Catholic missionaries. Eventual cession of treaty ports in
Annam and Tonkin, along with all of the Southern portion of Vietnam by Emperor Tu Duc in
1862, laid the framework for the eventual occupation and establishment of French Indochina,
which swallowed up not just Vietnam, but also the entirety of Laos, Cambodia, and parts of Siam
(now Thailand). What began as a ruse sold by Napoleon III as being for the protection of
missionaries eventually became another jewel in the French colonial crown. Many apologists and
nostalgics for imperialism/colonialism defend it as essential to human development. While it did
indeed provide essential resources to advance the Western Industrial Revolution, those resources
and the wealth derived from them went solely to the European capitalists and monarchs who
bankrolled the invasions and political chicanery that defined the age of Imperialism. Poor
European workers, American slaves and natives, women, and, not to forget, the native
inhabitants of the colonies received no real benefits from being members of colonies
dexploitation, which is what the French themselves termed Indochina. The imperialists built
roads, but they were for the benefit of themselves, not the indigenous people. Colonized peoples
have nothing to thank their oppressors for. They most certainly shouldnt thank their occupiers
for turning them into a strange and foreign amalgam of different nations and countries for the
benefit of easier exploitation through maintenance of easy and convenient infighting. In the
words of Jean Lacouture,
in concocting this amalgam of nations and civilizations, the French colonizers were,
like their British rivals in Nigeria, attempting to set up the most economical

Winston 4
kind of operation, one by which some of the colonized people are made to exploit the
others. In Vietnam, they managed to maintain a class of Mandarins, which enabled them
to develop an artful indirect kind of colonization.the three peoples to be dominated
were, in appearance, lined up against one another 2 (618).
Division, war, conquest and liberation would play a key role in the history of
Vietnam in the next century, beginning in World War II. The Japanese occupied French
Indochina during the war (after Hitlers blitzkrieg and stormtroopers devastated the
mother country), and the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Viet Minh) was
founded in February, 1941. In 1943, the Viet Minh began to launch guerrilla operations
against the Japanese invaders, led by General Vo Nguyen Giap, and eventually retook
Northern Vietnam and Hanoi in 1945 after the Japanese surrender to the Allies,
proclaiming the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, a free and sovereign state. For the
French, this would never do.
The French at first promised to recognize the new government as a free state but
failed to do so. On Nov. 23, 1946, at least 6,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed in a
French naval bombardment of the port city of Haiphong, and the first Indochina War
began3(Britannica).

Lacouture, Jean. "From The Vietnam War To An Indochina War." Foreign Affairs 48.4 (1970):
617. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 17 Nov 2014.
3
"Viet Minh". Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia Britannica Online.
Encyclopdia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 1 Dec. 2014.

Winston 5
Once again, we see the duplicity of empire. In the heat of war at home, the French
appeared to be ready to let Vietnam go, but a year after V-E Day, it returned with a
vengeance. A major part of this eventual several year raining down of vengeance on
6,000 unarmed Vietnamese civilians at Haiphong, and the Vietnamese people in general
for the high crime of daring to attempt to break free from beneath the European bootheal
was ammunition and armaments supplied by none other than the Arsenal of Democracy,
the United States. This knowledge, that the United States was involved in the slaughter
of the Vietnamese people officially since 1950, was released (illegally) by Daniel
Ellsberg to the press in 1971, in what were termed the Pentagon Papers. These papers,
representing several decades of CIA and US military dealings in countries around the
world, disclosed how
The French are irrevocably committed in Indochina and are supporting the three
states as a move aimed at achieving non-Communist political stabilityA
recommendation for early implementation of military aid programs for Indochina and
the other states of Southeast Asia, with funds already allocated to the states of Southeast
Asia, to be delivered at the earliest practicable date and to be augmented as a matter of
urgency with funds from the unallocated portion of the President's emergency fund. For
the next fiscal year, an estimated $100 mllion will be required for the military
portion of this program4 (Pentagon).

The Pentagon Papers, Chapter 4, "US and France in Indochina, 1950-56" Beacon Press, 1 Jan.
1971. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.

Winston 6
$100 million American taxpayer dollars were spent to sabotage the independence of
Vietnam by 1951, solely because of the fact that fighting the leftists who established the
movement for Vietnamese independence in the first place took precedence to supporting
the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. By January, 1953, the United States
was, according to the Pentagon Papers, sending aid and money to the French which
totaled almost 2,500 artillery pieces, 24,000 automatic weapons, 75,000 small arms,
and nearly 9,000 radios. In addition, French air units had received 160 F-6F and F-8F
fighter aircraft, 41 B-26 light bombers, and 28 C-47 transports plus 155 aircraft engines
and 93,000 bombs(Pentagon). By the fall of Dien Bien Phu, which marked the end of
the First Indochina War with the defeat of the French, U.S. aid was running at over $1
billion a year (about $5.8 billion in 2004 dollars) and paying some 78% of the French
war costs.(Pentagon). While those who supported American and French interventions in
Vietnam often invoke the banality of communism and call it totalitarian, the French
colonial masters werent known for their support of democracy and the ultimate
totalitarianism is the theft of a nations resources and the turning of one class of citizens
against another to maintain control and enable more effecient looting of the country. 41
B-26 light bombers, 24,000 automatic weapons, 2,500 artillery pieces, and 93,000
bombs do not make freedom or democracy unless theyre in the hands of those
struggling for liberation.
Ostensibly, Vietnamese independence came at the fall of Dien Bien Phu and the
signing of the Geneva Accords on July 21, 1954, which, among other things, mandated a
free and fair election in 1956. The US, in public, supported it. President Eisenhower said

Winston 7
shortly after the agreement that We share the hope that the agreements will permit
Cambodia, Laos and Viet-Nam to play their part, in full independence and sovereignty,
in the peaceful community of nations, and will enable the peoples of that area to
determine their own future(Pentagon). An election would mean the landslide victory of
the left-wing Viet Minh leader, Ho Chi Minh, and, in American eyes, another link on the
chain lost. So, instead of recognizing the right of the Vietnamese people to elect
whomever they wished to lead them, the US proceeded to begin CIA directed internal
sabotage operations against the Vietnamese, while setting up puppet Ngo Dinh Diem
(brought over to Vietnam from the US) as our political leader5 (Jones). If the US
supported democracy and freedom in Vietnam as the supporters of that conflict claim,
why was it willing to deny it simply because the Vietnamese may have chosen a leader
that the US didnt support? Could it have been because the US wasnt intent on securing
democracy and a soverign Vietnam, but on replacing the French as the masters of
Indochina?
Ngo Dinh Diem was, in the words of Phil Ochs, a leader that you cant elect,
for the people of Vietnam. Even as far as imported, unelected leaders go, Diem was an
extremely ruthless and brutal leader. His brother ran the secret police, which had a nasty
habit of snatching people accused of being communists in the middle of the night. The
military often fired upon peaceful protesters, attacked Buddhist pagodas (the Diems were

Jones, Adam. Genocide, War Crimes, And The West : History And Complicity. London: Zed
Books, 2004. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 23 Nov 2014.

Winston 8
staunchly Roman Catholic), and, in 1961, began implementation of the Strategic
Hamlet Program, in close conjunction with US advisors. The Strategic Hamlet Program
was one in which entire communities were uprooted and placed in specially constructed
fortress hamlets, replete with barbed wire, punji sticks coated in animal dung, and high
concrete walls. Virtual prisons, designed to limit contact between Viet Cong fighters and
South Vietnamese civilians. Participation was mandatory, and many had their homes
burned before their eyes, with possessions and cherished memories within. According to
scholar Milton Osborne,
in September 1962, 4.3 million people were housed in 3,225 completed hamlets
with more than two thousand still under construction. By July 1963, over eight and a half
million people had been settled in 7,205 hamlets6 (Osborne 33).
Democracy doesnt entail removal of millions of supposedly free people from their
established homes. Yet, the United States never ceased to aid and abet Diems regime in
inflicting its arbitrary will on the Vietnamese people. He was invited to the United States
on several occasions, and his regime continued to receive military and financial aid
(most of which ended up in the hands of Madame Nhu, Diems sister in law) from
America. The eventual occupation (after Diem was assasinated with an American
blessing) was supposedly to protect democracy, yet South Vietnam bore more
resemblance to a banana republic than a free and prosporous democratic state. If the US

Osborne, Milton. Strategic Hamlets in South Viet-Nam: A Survey and Comparison. SEAP
Publications, 1965. Print. 30 November 2014.
6

Winston 9
was concerned with democracy, Diem wouldnt have been president, and South Vietnam
wouldnt have existed. An election would have taken place in 1956, and Ho Chi Minh
would have been elected leader of a soverign and united Vietnam. Instead, Vietnam got
the pleasure of experiencing a nearly decade long US occupation, during which its land
and people were irrevocably sullied. A major part of the US occupation was the use of
rainbow herbicides, so called because they were color coded. The most infamous was
Agent Orange, which destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of Vietnamese farmland
and seeped deep into its soil. According to a paper written by R. Scott Frey in Ecology
Review, Operation Ranch Hand, a US Air Force defoliation campaign which effectively
made war on Vietnams lush jungle,
distributed over 20 million gallons of herbicide over five million acres of jungle
and cropland, or approximately 20% of the land area of Vietnamthe herbicides,
which contained lethal doses of dioxins, were sprayed on thousands of villages in
concentrations of up to 25 times the normal range of agricultural use in the US.7(Frey)
Not only did the Vietnamese civilian population receive democracy in the form of
wanton massacres by infantry units like at My Lai in 1968, but they had the added
benefit of being poisoned to death, either directly from the air or indirectly from the
ground, by their liberators. Although supporters of the war and its methods often say
that the defoliation was necessary to root out Viet Cong, poisoning villages and crops
with herbicides often did nothing but create new members for Viet Cong cadres, if the

Frey, R. Scott. "Agent Orange And America At War In Vietnam And Southeast Asia." Human
Ecology Review 20.1 (2013): 1-10. Environment Complete. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.

Winston 10
village wasnt entirely wiped out from the poison sprayed on their heads and homes.
Whats free about that?
In my research on this topic, which spans a period before the writing of this paper,
as it is one in which Ive always had a great interest in studying and writing about, I have
learned several things. First and foremost is that anyone who claims that the United
States fights wars in countries like Iraq, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua to
spread democracy and defend freedom often has a hidden agenda. Often, people who
make these claims are high ranking officers of the military, government officials, and
business executives, all of whom gain notoriety and immense profits from these
conflicts. The businessman sells the Agent Orange, bombs, guns, and artillery to the
government, who uses them to prosecute their often nefarious agenda, led by the
generals, who gain notoriety and fame from their actions and orders in war. Everything
is connected. This is the lesson that I had reinforced during my research and writing on
this topic. Everything happens for a reason and nothing happens in a vacuum. Ive made
sense of this by connecting my research and incorporating a vast array of diverse sources
into this paper, which I believe has strongly supported my thesis and made this paper a
relatively decent review of the rhyme and reason behind US actions overseas by
reviewing the history of one of them in depth.
Vietnam today is a country that is wracked with poverty and the lingering effects
of the American War. Amerasians, sons and daughters of Vietnamese women and
American men, roam the streets, finding themselves ostracized and cast out as children
of rape. Land mines and abandoned industrial chemicals continue to destroy lives,
almost 40 years after the last American soldiers abandoned the US Embassy in Saigon in

Winston 10
1975. The gashes and scars on the land left after massive defoliation, courtesy of Dow
Industrial provided herbicides, continue to make farming hard in what was once a rich
and fertile country. Punji traps and sticks still work, and often catch children and
domestic livestock in their grips meant for long gone American invaders. For all this,
Vietnam was still united under the banner of the North and communism in 1975. Uncle
Hos soldiers seized the palace and the embassy in Saigon, and raised the yellow star
where Diem once plotted and General Westmoreland once plotted to drive Vietnam to
ruin. For all the talk of democracy, unity, and freedom, courtesy of the US, Vietnam
never saw it until the US left and took its poisons and explosives down the same path
carved by the French in their 1954 retreat. On April 30th, 1975, when the Stars and
Stripes came down, when the helicopter carrying the last Marines and Ambassador took
off, hastily, from the embassy roof, Vietnam was free to decide its own fate, a century
delayed.

Winston 11