Reddit reviews A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath

It's an 'investigation non-fiction' title meaning the author uses real information to backup their hypothesis. The book is a decent read though and maybe it's not for me to say since this is /r/rant but my dad did that with me too once, looking back I remember being insulted, angry, and just in general really mad at my dad, now I think "that was a good book and I'm glad he called me out in his own way".

You won't find a better book than this: a memoir written by a top official in both the south Vietnamese govt and later communist government. This is a great book for novice and expert readers alike. One of my favorite memoirs on any subject! You're in for a treat!

http://www.amazon.com/Vietcong-Memoir-Account-Vietnam-Aftermath/dp/0394743091

http://www.amazon.com/Vietcong-Memoir-Account-Vietnam-Aftermath/dp/0394743091

I assume you are talking about this book. It is an interesting read and he covers multiple viewpoints. I highly recommend it.

You:

>Your assertion that a majority of the South was for communism is absurd.

Me:

>the hearts and minds of the majority of the people were with the north (not because of communism, but because of independence).

I'm sorry, I stopped reading there. Perhaps the rest of your argument isn't a strawman and is cohesive and historically informed, but I am doubting it.

Edit: Fuck it, I'll reply.

> Added to the fact that after Tet, the Viet Cong basically ceased to exist.

The fact that you confuse the Viet Cong with the People's Army of Vietnam is the first red flag in your argument. The Viet Cong most definitely did not cease to exist or even come close to ceasing to exist. PAVN took a hell of a beating, but as I said the war in Viet Nam was not being decided by conventional military anyway, it was one of guerilla warfare and hearts and minds.

>but areas under allied control remained quite loyal.

Not at all true, even back in 1961 the U.S. and Diem knew that they had no control of the countryside, and attempted to defeat guerrilla insurgency in the south with the Strategic Hamlet Program. Using this program, they created one barricaded and fortified village per an area and made all the surrounding villages' villagers have to live in this village and sleep there at night, far from their farms and ancestral homelands. Oh, and by "they created" I mean they forced those villagers to build their own prison. Is this the type of desperate program you have if your citizens are loyal and controlled? They tried to justify this program under the guise of "protecting the villagers from the guerrillas", but this backfired as the villagers were the guerrillas or friends of the guerrillas and did not fear them nearly as much as the US military and ARVN's pillaging. And disloyalty only became worse since then.

Also, this shows how little the South had under control even in their own regime, as the idea came to fruition under encouragement by top level NLF spies in Diem's government who wanted to sabotage the south's reputation.

>Further, most of the Southern civilians fighting 'for' the North were forcibly recruited with terror tactics

Not at all, the NLF practically started in the South. And the NLF for a very long time was completely separate from the Ho Chi Minh government, so I don't see how you could argue that it was Northern threats that created the southern resistance. I very much recommend you read source materials actually from Vietnam rather than American military history, such as Vietcong Memoir. In this, you will see that the south was barely held together by Ngô Đình Diệm's power consolidation. All of Viet Nam, the so called "North" and "South", wanted a unified country and independence. They both claimed sovereignty over the whole land, neither side ever claimed it was anything other than a civil war. This want for independence and escape from outside influence is why so many in Cochinchina resented the puppet state and heavy-handed political control of the U.S. and French, whether they cared for Communism or not.

Ho Chi Minh himself saw unification as his primary goal and communism as his secondary goal. Ngô Đình Diệm, who was held up by fraudulent elections and the U.S., was the antithesis of the idea of an independent Viet Nam, which is why so much of the south resented him. When he was overthrown (with the explicit backing of the U.S.) and a new leader was put in place, that was the end for the U.S.'s chance of winning the war. Few saw the south as having legitimate claim to a truly independent Viet Nam before, and with the new U.S. condoned power grab and the U.S.'s refusal for statewide elections all shreds of legitimacy were destroyed. No amount of military force could have changed that.

>something repeated on a large scale in Cambodia and Khmer Rouge.

The fact that you compare the wartime Viet Cong to the Khmer Rouge is absurd. The Viet Cong could be heavy handed (nowhere near as heavy as Diem's south though), but what the Khmer Rouge did was absolutely insane and not even close to the same level. In fact, the Viet Cong barely had an alliance with them because of this and as soon the U.S. war ended Viet Nam went straight to war with Cambodia to remove those crazies. What you are doing is like comparing McCarthy America to the Holocaust; both are bad, but there is just no comparison.

I have studied Vietnamese history for a while in Viet Nam, so I am not at all surprised by the attitude that Americans just needed a little more time and military force to win the war. And also the idea that there was a unified south and a unified north fighting each other and thinking in terms of separate states. You can take a lot of U.S. based classes and read a lot of books and come away thinking that, but the truth is the U.S. dropped more heavy weapons and military might on that little country for the duration of it's longest war in our history (not counting our current wars) and was still no where close to winning it's goal of having a U.S. friendly state in Vietnam.