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by T. Shadbolt, 1971. a young radical student of the 1960s.
New Zealand fought in the Boer War, in World War One, in World War Two, in
Korea, in Malaysia, and finally in Vietnam.
In fact, New Zealand has managed to get its grubby little fingers into
just about every scrap that's been offering in the last 100 years.
But a lot of people are unhappy about our involvement in the last scrap.
There are a lot of reasons why people aren't happy about Vietnam. One of
the reasons is that we're losing. Our war-comic culture and TV minds know
that only the baddies lost wars. When we fought the Germans it was OK
because they started bombing civilians first and we could retaliate.
Korea wasn't hard to swallow either, because it had the backing of the
good old UN and Chinese volunteers poured onto the battlefield.
But Vietnam is different. Trigger-happy Yanks, napalm, defoliants,
international opposition, corrupt governments, credibility gaps, no masses
of Chinese troops, no UN support and, beside all that, we're losing.
A lot of people are sick of the Vietnam war. Worse still, a lot of people
are sick of hearing about it: that's because they know they might have to
do something about it and commit themselves one way or the other.
They would rather just wish it was over, US Secretary of State Rogers once
summed it up in one of his more brilliant moments "It is
possible the war will just fade away".
I'm going to try and write about this whole complex situation in a
real simple way. First, I'll clear up the bullshit story of Vietnam
that many of you have stored up in your news media brainwashed minds. The
bullshit story is as follows: there are two
completely separate, sovereign states in Southeast Asia. One of
them has the title of North Vietnam and the other has the title of South
Vietnam. Since 1954 North Vietnam has been ruled under the iron tyranny
of a vicious villain called Ho Chi Minh (and latterly by his cronies) all
of whom are yellow, commie peril dominos. Whereas in the nation
of South Vietnam we have a group of heroic, liberal democrats striving
to bring freedom to their oppressed people, and to protect this last great
bastion of liberty. But the commies are everywhere so we have
been invited in by the thankful people of Southeast Asia to rescue
this damsel in distress. The great freedom crusaders of
Washington charged in like knights in shining armour
to fight the commies and anyone who doesn't support the crusade must
be a commie as well.
In fact, Vietnam had considerable architectural
prowess, a written language, canals, bridges, and university education
some 2,000 years before Columbus discovered America. Vietnam was
subjugated by China from 330 BC until 962 AD. This was a period
of continual rebellion until the Vietnamese finally booted out the Chinese.
They ruled themselves, their capital being
Hanoi, for about 800 years until the
French entered Indochina and screwed Vietnam for the next 40 years
at the rate of 100 million francs a year, crushing ruthlessly the frequent
peasant revolts.
Ho Chi Minh set out to liberate Vietnam, spending most of his time in exile.
He was jailed in Singapore and later in South China. Ironically,
it was the Americans who secured Ho's release and they
gave him 144 second-hand rifles and sent him into Vietnam to fight the Japs.
It didn't really matter about Ho being a commie because during
this war the commies were our allies. War is full of funny tricks
like that. Ho built up his army, the Viet Minh, and with American aid
fought the Japs, regained control of Vietnam and declared it independent.
He sent cables to Britain, France and the United Nations asked for
recognition but received no replies. The allies claimed they fought Japan
because they wanted freedom but freedom didn't mean that anyone could be
free. It meant that France wanted Indochina back. World War Two was a
case of Jap bandits taking the loot from the Allied bandits and when the
Allied bandits won, they wanted their loot back. But the French
didn't quite have enough troops at the time to get Vietnam back (even with
British help) so they signed two treaties, the Paris Accords and the
Fontainbleau Agreement. These agreements recognised Ho Chi Minh
as President of all Vietnam under what amounted to French dominion
status and in 1946 Vietnam held its first national elections.
Ho's party won 220 out of 330 seats. Ho's party of 220 had only 5
communists. Ho's party was nationalist first and communist second.
But France did the dirty on Ho and gradually sent her troops back into
Vietnam. The French navy shelled the port city of
Haiphong for several hours, slaughtering thousands of civilians. They
then sent an armoured column to seize Hanoi, declaring to the world that
Vietnamese aggression must be crushed. After a six week battle the French
captured Hanoi and claimed they had won, but Giap mobilised the peasants
to fight back and the war began.
The Viet Minh had no help from China, still in the hands of Chiang Kai Shek.
The war dragged on for eight years. France
realised she could never win a guerrilla war so she worked out a
really sneaky plan, the Navarre Plan. This plan was an attempt
to force the Vietnamese into a pitched battle by concentrating all their
forces in one spot. France planted 16,000 men in Dien Bien Phu and sure
enough Giap and his army turned up to fight. The plan succeeded
in its objective but only one little thing went wrong. The entire
French army and general staff were smashed to pieces in a 55 day
battle and France sued for peace.
The peace terms resulted in the well known Geneva Agreement, which was
basically the establishment of a breathing spell to give France time to
pack up her bags and piss off. A temporary line was drawn across the 17th
parallel and a temporary government was set up in the south. The Geneva
Agreement specified that in two years elections were to be
held and Vietnam would be united under one government. Even President
Eisenhower stated that if elections had been held at that time, 80% of the
people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh.
Well, let's see why the Americans got involved in this
little mess. President Eisenhower said "Lets suppose we lost
Indochina, the tin and the tungsten would stop coming. So when the
US votes $400 million to help France we are voting for the cheapest way
that we can to prevent that which is of great significance to the United
States of America, our security, our power and our ability
to get certain things from South East Asia.
You can be sure the Yanks don't fight for freedom,
they fight for dough and things they want.
How did innocent little New Zealand get involved in this war? When
really threatened New Zealand can mobilise a force
of about 100,000 but instead we have committed a token force
of sweet buggerall. A mere handful. It is apparent that the yellow peril
is not taken seriously at Government level.
In June 1969 Holyoake wrote a letter to Nixon 'If the USA restricts entry
of New Zealand lamb.... New Zealand can not take part in the
regional security arrangements to which the US attaches importance'.
Good old Keith, hocking off our lamb for a bit of cannon fodder.
When a few men break into a shop and one of them stands lookout,
that lookout is guilty of breaking and entering. Our part in
this war makes us guilty of any and every war crime committed in Vietnam.
This material has been produced by UNITEC Institute of Technology
under contract to the Ministry of Education.
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