KCAR: Vietnam is still not a democracy, and it will not be any time soon.  It is, and will remain, an impoverished backwater for many years to come, until the time when their dictatorship is replaced by democratic government and their citizenry is liberated.  I blame Ho and the communists for the Vietnamese dead in the war.  South Vietnam could easily be like South Korea today.  I like South Korea, as do the South Koreans - very much so indeed.  North Korea is similar to Vietnam.  If given the chance, virtually all North Koreans would leave their prison and come to the US.  Most Vietnamese would too (though it is not as bad there).  That’s all the proof I need to know our cause was just.

  I did not deny Cambodia was bombed, and was in secret.  Well, what exactly is the implication, Fred? That has been quite elusive with you.  Why do you come here and spew hateful rants against the US?   The American people supported the war.  Why?  If it was not for the stated purposes of stopping Stalinism then what was it for?  Kick and giggles?  
    

  

Ho Chi Minh had been educated in Paris and in the Soviet Union. He was an avowed communist, but also a believer in western style democracy and the American virtues of free speech. At heart he was a nationalist land reformer, primarily concerned with restoring Vietnam to the Vietnamese. Under colonial rule, land typically belongs to foreigners--to the colonizers. The profits from farming go disproportionally into the hands of foreign rulers, and native people are generally reduced to working as laborers for the colonial government. To nationalists--that is, people with a strong sense of their "nation" or culture--colonialism is inherently unfair and exploitative. Communist revolutionaries like Ho Chi Mihn typically focused on land reform--on getting control of land away from foreign corporations and investors and back into the hands of the local people. 

In Cuba, for example, the bulk of the nation's real estate had been in the hands of foreign investors since the Spanish Amerian war. Fidel Castro focused his revolutionary campaign on this issue of land. Castro had been educated at Columbia University in New York, where he had pitched on the baseball team. He initially looked to the US as an ally, but soon came to suspect that the US government was likely to favor the interests of the old colonial regime he had helped to overthrow.

During W.W.II, the French were expelled from Vietnam by Japan, which occupied Vietnam for most of the war, until the US victory. Ho Chi Mihn and his allies assisted US army intelligence in the war against the Japanese. Ho Chi Mihn was regarded very highly by US military personnel for his commitment to freedom and liberty and for his pro-American attitudes. Ho saw, or claimed to see, the US as an anti-colonial power which would be willing to help his people gain permanent independence. At end of W.W.II, Ho Chi Mihn was strongest in the Northern part of Vietnam, which was poorer but also less "colonized." After the Japanese were defeated, speaking from the northern city of Hanoi, Ho Chi Mihn declared Vietnamese independent of French rule. At a ceremony declaring this independence, Ho quoted Thomas Jefferson while the Star Spangled Banner played and American planes flew overhead. The new Vietnamese constitution drafted by Ho was based on and strongly resembled the US Constitution. Ho declared he looked forward to intimate and friendly relations with the US. He offered the US naval bases and promised that Vietnam "will be a fertile field for American capital and enterprise". 

Ho Chi Mihn was a communist, but he was also a practical politician, interested in what was best for Vietnam. He was friendly to the US, admired much of American politics, and preferred the US to the Soviets as an ally.

Received the live Blue-Ray/DVD disc set — Anesthetize yesterday.

Amazing. 

Sweet.  Never got organized to attend. :-(   

Please report back!  And enjoy!!!