Vietnam war was unnecessary: Ho Chi Minh letters to America kept hidden until 1972

More than half a century ago, if America had spent USD 500 million to help build the infrastructure of Vietnam (then an American ally) after the World War II devastation, and addressed the economic crisis the Vietnamese were facing, as was suggested by an expert and American official posted then in Vietnam (reference: “The Brothers” by Stephen Kinzer, p. 180) and as Ho Chi Minh himself was eager to work with America at that time (see below the letters), the entire Vietnam war could have been avoided . Instead, the American leadership abandoned the path of helping others who needed it most and embarked on a path of prejudice, cynicism, and military confrontation. President Truman had been advised by the neoconservatives to “scare the hell out of the nation” to prepare the nation for a very costly and confrontational agenda of proxy wars, puppet regimes and violent confrontations to pursue the ‘containment’ policy.  Truman abandoned the visionary path of Franklin D Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to help establish democracy and freedom in the world. Their commitments were to stay in solidarity with those that were dispossessed and disenfranchised in their struggle for their freedom and dignity. This was the way to help build a peaceful and progressive world. True visionary leadership then as always advocates for dialogue and constructive engagements with the enemies to help resolve a conflict. These ideas fell on deaf ears as the vigorous persuasion of the vested interests, the military industrial complex, and the neoconservatives for military confrontation. The Vietnam war was in the making. Ho Chi Minh was rejected as a communist leader and not worthy of dialogue. It is an irony that two decades later wisdom prevailed on the American leadership and the old advise was taken up. The visionary diplomatic engagement detente with the top communist/socialist leaders helped end the Cold War and brought about America’s victory.

The consequence: a futile war that took about 60,000 American lives, killed 3 million people in the region, and cost American taxpayers 2,000 times (USD 1 trillion in 2011 valuation) that of the meager USD 500 million that was to be given to help Vietnam. The trust and political capital that this sum of money could have earned at that time would have brought about a new height of America’s position in the world and a paradigm shift in our time. A golden opportunity was squandered in the early 1950s, which, if used, could have brought the Cold War to an end much sooner. Moreover, it could have achieved many of the foreign policy goals at the fraction of the price the US paid later.

This is the price for deviating from principles, for ignoring the sufferings of other people, and for having the arrogance to think that military power can fix everything. America and other powers today have a lot to learn from America’s blunder in Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh Letters to America:

Letter to President Harry Truman, February 16, 1945. The letter was never answered and was not declassified until 1972

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Our VIETNAM people, as early as 1941, stood by the Allies’ side and fought against the Japanese and their associates, the French colonialists.

From 1941 to 1945 we fought bitterly, sustained by the patriotism, of our fellow-countrymen and by the promises made by the Allies at YALTA, SAN FRANCISCO and POTSDAM.

When the Japanese were defeated in August 1945, the whole Vietnam territory was united under a Provisional Republican Government, which immediately set out to work. In five months, peace and order were restored, a democratic republic was established on legal bases, and adequate help was given to the Allies in the carrying out of their disarmament mission.

But the French Colonialists, who betrayed in wartime both the Allies and the Vietnamese, have come back, and are waging on us a murderous and pitiless war in order reestablish their domination. Their invasion has extended to South Vietnam and is menacing us in North Vietnam. It would take volumes to give even an abbreviated report of the crisis and assassinations they are committing everyday in this fighting area.

This aggression is contrary to all principles of international law and the pledge made by the Allies during World War II. It is a challenge to the noble attitude shown before, during, and after the war by the United States Government and People. It violently contrasts with the firm stand you have taken in your twelve point declaration, and with the idealistic loftiness and generosity expressed by your delegates to the United Nations Assembly, MM. BYRNES, STETTINIUS, AND J.F. DULLES.

The French aggression on a peace-loving people is a direct menace to world security. It implies the complicity, or at least the connivance of the Great Democracies. The United Nations ought to keep their words. They ought to interfere to stop this unjust war, and to show that they mean to carry out in peacetime the principles for which they fought in wartime.

Our Vietnamese people, after so many years of spoliation and devastation, is just beginning its building-up work. It needs security and freedom, first to achieve internal prosperity and welfare, and later to bring its small contribution to world-reconstruction.

These security and freedom can only be guaranteed by our independence from any colonial power, and our free cooperation with all other powers. It is with this firm conviction that we request of the United Sates as guardians and champions of World Justice to take a decisive step in support of our independence.

What we ask has been graciously granted to the Philippines. Like the Philippines our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the UNITED STATES. We will do our best to make this independence and cooperation profitable to the whole world.

I am Dear Mr. PRESIDENT,

Respectfully Yours,

(Signed) Ho Chi Minh

[Could I Send] to the United States of America a delegation of about 50 Vietnam youths with a view to establish friendly cultural relations with American youth on the one hand, and carrying on further studies in Engineering, Agriculture, as well as other lines of specialization on the other. They have been all these years keenly interested in things American and earnestly desirous to get in touch with American people whose fine stand for the noble ideals of international Justice and Humanity, and whose modern technical achievements have so strongly appealed to them.

“All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.

The Declaration of The French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: “All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.”

Those are undeniable truths.

Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. The have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.

In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.

They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center, and the South of Viet-Nam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united.

They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood.

They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.

To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.

In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land.

They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank notes and the export trade.

They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty.

They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie, they have mercilessly exploited our workers.

In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese fascists violated Indochina’s territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them.

Thus, from that date, our people were subjected to the double yoke of the French and the Japanese. Their sufferings and miseries increased. The result was that, from the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from Quang Tri Province to the North of Viet-Nam, more than two million of our fellow citizens died from starvation. 9 March 1945, the French troops were disarmed by the Japanese. The French colonialists either fled or surrendered, showing that not only were they incapable of “protecting” us, but that, in the span five years, they had twice sold our country to the Japanese.

On several occasions before 9 March, the Viet Minh League urged the French to ally themselves with it against the Japanese. Instead of agreeing to this proposal, the French colonialists so intensified their terrorist activities against the Viet Minh members that before fleeing they massacred a great number of our political prisoners detained at Yen Bay and Cao Bang.

Notwithstanding all this, our fellow citizens have always manifested toward the French a tolerant and humane attitude. Even after the Japanese Putsch of March, 1945, the Viet Minh League helped many Frenchmen to cross the frontier, rescued some of them from Japanese jails, and protected French lives and property.

From the autumn of 1940, our country had in fact ceased to be a French colony and had become a Japanese possession.

After the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies, our whole people rose to regain our national sovereignty and to found the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam.

The truth is that we have wrested our independence from the Japanese and not from the French.

The French have fled, the Japanese have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has abdicated. Our people have broken the chains which for nearly a century have fettered them and have won independence for the Fatherland. Our people at the same time have overthrown the monarchic regime that has reigned supreme for dozens of centuries. In its place has been established the present Democratic Republic.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government, representing the whole Vietnamese people, declare that from now on we break off all relations of a colonial character with France; we repeal all the international obligation that France has so far subscribed to on behalf of Viet-Nam, and we abolish all the special rights the French have unlawfully acquired in our Fatherland.

The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country.

We are convinced that the Allied nations, which at Teheran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Viet-Nam.

A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent.

For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, solemnly declare to the world that Viet-Nam has the right to be a free and independent country and in fact it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilize all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty

I have always been impressed with your country’s treatment of the Philippines. You kicked the Spanish out and let the Filipinos develop their own country. You were not looking for real estate, and I admire you for that. I have a government that is organized and ready to go. Your statesmen make eloquent speeches about helping those with self-determination. We are self-determined. Why not help us? Am I any different from Nehru, Quezon- even your own George Washington? I, too, want to set my people free.