As a result of this upheaval Vietnam has indeed freed itself from its former colonial masters. But the national liberation that the revolution achieved was not the only liberation for which it was fought. “We must fight a war not just against colonialism, but against hunger and ignorance” was how Ho Chi Minh had put it. Many of us also believed we were fighting for the human dignity of our people, not just a national revolution, but a national and democratic revolution (the terms are those of the NLF and PRG) that would have insured free political and cultural expression among the variety of ethnic groups, religions, and regions—and among the commonwealth of individuals—that make up the nation.
But the national democratic revolution itself became a casualty, choked by the arrogance of power among those who were responsible for the nation’s fate. Instead of national reconciliation and independence. Ho Chi Minh’s successors have given us a country devouring its own and beholden once again to foreigners, though now it is the Soviets rather than the Americans. In the process, the lives that so many gave to create a new nation are now no more than ashes cast aside. That betrayal of faith will burden the souls of Vietnam’s revolutionary leaders—even as surely as their rigid ideology and bellicose foreign policies have mortgaged the country’s future.
–Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath with David Chanoff and Doan Van Toai, 309-310
