Senator Dick Black to Khuong Huu Dieu.
Kissinger's
betrayal: He sold
out South Vietnam in the 1973 Paris Accords
By Dieu Khuong Huu
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 04/29/2015 12:31:58
PM PDT18 Comments |
This year will mark on April 30 the 40th
anniversary of the fall of Saigon to the north Vietnamese communist troops who
arrived in their sophisticated soviet T-54 tanks crashing into the gates of
south Vietnam's Independence Palace. Since then the 300-year old beautiful city
of Saigon has been renamed Ho Chi Minh City, a good mimic to outdo Leningrad or
Stalingrad and, worse still, the entire country from north to south has come
under communist rule with a new label, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
It is now clearly recognized that the
collapse of South Vietnam IN 1975 resulted from the Jan. 27, 1973 Paris
Accords, which was acclaimed a "masterpiece" in diplomacy by Dr.
Henry Kissinger, then National Security Adviser to President Richard Nixon.
In fact, well before these Paris
Accords, Henry Kissinger had made the decision to jettison South Vietnam, aka
Outpost of the Free World since the mid-1950s.
Declassified documents have revealed
that while meeting Chu and Mao in February 1972, Henry Kissinger informed the
top communist Chinese leaders that if the U. S. was able to live with a great
communist country like China, the U. S. could also live with a small communist
country like Vietnam.
Henry Kissinger did not have to wait
long to carry out his prophecy. Less than a year later, with the Paris Accords,
1973, he was able to pave the way for South Vietnam to come under communist
rule.
According to the terms of these Paris
Accords, the most basic, concrete and decisive matter was for the U. S. to put
an end to its intervention in the Vietnam conflict and the complete cessation
of military aid to South Vietnam for its vital national defense.
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van
Thieu was surely not a geopolitical expert of Dr. Kissinger's caliber, but he
was able to see immediately the catastrophic consequences of these Paris
Accords for South Vietnam and vigorously refused to have his government sign
them.
President Thieu's stubbornness in
demanding many major changes in the draft dragged on and on during three months
without much result.
By mid-January 1973 Henry Kissinger had
President Nixon send a series of letters to President Thieu saying that the U.
S. government would sign the Paris Accords with or without the Saigon
government. To read between the lines, the U. S. was dumping the Saigon
government and getting out of Vietnam period.
President Thieu did not have much choice
and had to accept the Paris Accords but with a "written guarantee" by
President Nixon to carry out strong U. S. military action in case of violation
of the accords by Hanoi. That letter of guarantee was, of course, just
"for the birds" as history has shown .
Thanks to the Paris Accords, the
communist regime in Hanoi was able to understand that the U.S. would not
intervene again in the Vietnam conflict or grant further military aid to South
Vietnam. Further, during that period Hanoi received from the Soviet Union
military supplies at a rate four time that compared to the levels it received
at the highest peak of the American military intervention.
After two years of intensive
preparations, Hanoi began to unleash its "Ho Chi Minh Campaign" in
March 1975 with the quasi-totality of its army (15 divisions) across the DMZ -a
Demilitarized Zone - at the 17th Parallel against the south Vietnamese troops,
who were by then down to their last bullets and gallons of gasoline in the
defense of their country and of the Free World. This final military general
offensive by North Vietnam against South Vietnam lasted only 55 days and, of
course, without much opposition by the destitute Saigon troops.
History has also recorded what happened
after the fall of Saigon . More than one million soldiers and civil servants of
the South Vietnamese government were sent to prison and kept there without any
trial, some for 5 years, some for 10 years and some for over 20 years. Of
course, tens of thousands of them died in these hard labor camps. Their
families were deprived of their possessions and chased out of their homes to
so-called "new economic zones" to face sheer destitution. Their
children were not allowed to attend schools. The right to private property no
longer existed and the sole employer was the State.
The fall of Saigon in 1975 was not only
a problem of political strategy or military tactics but very much a matter of
morality and ethics in world affairs. The past four decades of communist rule
in Viet Nam have allowed the people in Viet Nam as well as the United States to
understand the true purpose and nature of the Vietnam war. South Vietnam and
its great American ally were fighting for the defense of Freedom and Democracy
against Hanoi and its powerful communist allies' intent to subjugate South Vietnam
by the force of arms.
The truth is now clear for everybody to
see all the lies and deceits which were put out by Hanoi during the Vietnam
war.
In the past 40 years, the Vietnamese
people have been compelled to live under communist rule. Vietnam is now the
world's 14th ranking population with over 90 million people, but it has also
become one of the poorest countries and one of the most repressive states in
the world for blatant violations of human rights, widespread corruption and
outrageous abuses of power always inherent in a totalitarian regime.
There is a question which has been
haunting many Vietnamese people in the past 40 years: Was it at all possible
for Dr. Henry Kissinger and the powerful United States of America to find a way
to prevent North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam by the force of arms?
In this year of 2015, we remember the
fall of Saigon 40 years ago and cannot forget Kissinger's major role in that
historical and tragic event for the Vietnamese people. Now at the age of 92,
Kissinger continues to be very active in politics and international relations,
still with special reference and emphasis on China.
Again, last month, he made a grandiose
visit to Beijing where he was given a red carpet reception by the highest
Chinese leader Xi Jin-ping to remind people that Henry Kissinger has always
been a great friend of China since his meeting with Chu En-lai and Mao Tse-tung
in February 1972.
One obvious thing the world can be sure
of is that, as long as the communist leaders in Beijing continue to heap
praises on Henry Kissinger, the kind of "World Order" he has
professed in his recently published book must be quite profitable to China.
With China now considered to be a
leading superpower both economically and militarily, Henry Kissinger strongly
claims that China and America should become BFF - Best Friends Forever.
Henry Kissinger may score here a
"first" in getting a second Nobel Prize for bringing
"peace" this time to the whole world, not only for Vietnam with his
1973 Nobel Peace Prize!
It must be remembered that Kissinger's
co-laureate for this Nobel Peace Prize, Le Duc Tho, refused to accept it
because the Paris Accords were, in fact, a victory for Hanoi and the communist
side.
The way Henry Kissinger succeeded in ending
the Vietnam war was a tragedy to the Vietnamese people and a deplorable stigma
in the 200-year history of the American nation. It was an unprecedented time in
which the United States of America failed to honor its promise and did not
fulfill its commitment to defend its ally in the face of the enemy.
In short, when you do not know how to
secure victory for your side and stop the advance of your enemy, you do not
have to be a genius in geopolitics to tell people "if you can't fight
them, join them" -- which simply means "just throw in the towel"
.
Điểu Khương Hửu, 84, has a master's degree from MIT., He was a cabinet member of the South Vietnam government and has lived in San Francisco the past 40 years..
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