The truth is inconvertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. This has been proven when those who deliver the truth are aware of “intellectual honesty” and “right understanding”.
“When studying physics, I place intellectual honesty on top,” said Dr. Tran Chung Ngoc, who has recently undertaken to seek a number of facts about the late President Ho Chi Minh, although he had published several researches and stories against socialist mechanisms in Vietnam .
Graduating from the French colonialist-run Nam Dinh Reserve Officer School in 1952, Hanoi-born Ngoc then left the military forces in 1956. He moved to Saigon and graduated from Saigon University in 1962.
In 1967, Ngoc went to the US to study physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and returned to Saigon in 1972 to teach the subject at Saigon University . Three years later in 1975, he flew to the US again to conduct doctoral research and has lived there since. After retiring in 1996, Ngoc focused on studying Buddhism, Catholicism, and history.
In his article, “Something about Ho Chi Minh”, Dr. Ngoc admitted that it was not easy to write about a figure of international stature like President Ho Chi Minh.
“It is extremely difficult to write about President Ho Chi Minh, to be true to himself as well as his personality, capability, and ideology as it requires the author to embrace a stream of intellectual honesty and a right understanding of Ho’s life, especially of what he did for Vietnam ,” Dr. Ngoc said.
According to Ngoc, anti-communist extremists or those who are dictated by hatred feelings can find it easy to write about President Ho Chi Minh by using tiny details or twisting and distorting the truth about him with the aim of assassinating his character.
Ngoc revealed that he found it harder to note down things about President Ho Chi Minh due to the educational background he had received and by what he had absorbed during the time he studied in the US and served in the troops of the US-backed Saigon administration.
Being the one who underlined the importance of intellectual honesty, Ngoc said he has pursued a very careful methodology in the absence of feelings for any issue he met, to avoid prejudice.
However, he admitted to forming partial opinions when writing about history due to the lack of a God complex, quoting a saying, “Those who write about history without bias must have a God complex”.
To minimize any prejudice, Ngoc said he read many books of the same topic by various authors, of whom there were researchers, politicians, and even former military generals, and used the opinions shared by many of the authors.
He said he undertook to write about President Ho Chi Minh after reading a series of criticisms of the book, “Ho Chi Minh, A life” by William J. Duiker and research by historian Nguyen Manh Quang posted on http://www.giaodiemonline.com/ in November 2006.
“This writing is not aimed at covering everything about President Ho Chi Minh because I am not capable of doing so,” Ngoc said, noting that he just focused on President Ho Chi Minh’s position and prestige in the international arena and in the hearts of the Vietnamese people and explored the fact of whether he was a communist extremist and a henchman for Russia and China as claimed by some overseas Vietnamese reactionary extremists.
Regarding those who criticized and twisted the facts about President Ho Chi Minh, Ngoc said “Nothing is more stupid than comparing Mr. Ho to Hitler. Those people hardly heard what the world public, especially progressive countries in Europe and even in the US , talked about President Ho Chi Minh. Logging in the Internet and typing words ‘Ho Chi Minh’, they will find out what the world valued him. Or, reading books featuring the Vietnam war by American scholars and generals, even in “In retrospect” and “Argument without end” by former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, they will overwhelmingly see positive comments on Ho Chi Minh .”
Ngoc suggested those who attempted to defame President Ho Chi Minh should read the book, “Tyrants, History’s 100 Most Evil Despots and Dictators” by Nigel Cawthorne, Barnes & Noble, NY, 2004, which named Ngo Dinh Diem, former President of the US-backed Saigon administration, not President Ho, among despots and dictators.
He referred to the book “Ho Chi Minh, a Life” published by William J. Duiker in 2000. The book has received high evaluations from European and American academics and professionals for profound studies on President Ho Chi Minh’s life and career.
“Reading what Duiker wrote about Ho Chi Minh and cross-checking with what other Western authors had written about him, we can see things that are not far from the truth,” Dr. Ngoc said.
He mentioned what the international public said about President Ho by citing excerpts from William J. Duiker’s book as follows:
“The news of Ho Chi Minh’s death was greeted with an outpouring of comment from around the globe. Eulogies flowed in from major world capitals, and Hanoi received more than twenty-two thousand messages from 121 countries offering the Vietnamese people condolences for the death of their leader. A number of socialist states held memorial services of their own and editorial comments were predictably favorable. An official statement from Moscow lauded Ho as a ‘great son of the heroic Vietnamese people, the outstanding leader of the international Communist and national liberation movement, and a great friend of the Soviet Union ’. From the third world countries came praise for his role as a defender of the oppressed. An article published in India described him as the essence of ‘the people, the embodiment of the ardent aspiration for freedom, of their endurance and struggle’. Others referred to his simplicity of manner and high moral standing. Remarked an editorial in Uruguayan newspaper: ‘He had a heart as immense as the universe and a boundless love for children. He is a model of simplicity in all fields’.
Reaction from Western capitals was more muted. The White House refrained from comment, and senior Nixon administration officials followed suit. But attention to Ho’s death in the Western news media was intense. Newspapers that supported the antiwar case tended to describe him in favorable terms as a worthy adversary and a defender of the weak and oppressed. Even those who had adamantly opposed the Hanoi regime accorded him a measure of respect as one who had dedicated himself first and foremost to the independence and unification of his country, as well as “a prominent spokesperson for the exploited peoples of the world”. (First paragraph of the last chapter: “Epilogue: from man to myth”, p 562, references.)
Ngoc said, “Duiker re-wrote about an event, which, more than anything, turned down feelings-ruled, negative attitudes shown up by a number of overseas Vietnamese and those inside the country. So, any comment targeted at defaming Mr. Ho, especially from those who cannot see things in their true nature, cannot be persuasive, particularly to those persons equipped with a higher level of education. It can only be applauded by the few in the Vietnamese community abroad.”
He also cited an article: “Ho Chi Minh: An appreciation” (pipeline.com), penned by Wilfred Burchett, the famous Australian reporter who was asked by Secretary of State Henri Kissinger to act as an intermediary between the US and Hanoi . Burchett wrote, “ Vietnam will win” in 1968 and published “Grasshoppers and Elephants: Why Vietnam fell” in 1977.
According to Ngoc, Burchett wrote about what shaped President Ho Chi Minh like this: not just purely Marx or Lenin or Mao Zedong, but Vietnam ’s 2000-year history of resistance wars against invaders created Ho Chi Minh. With that, it can be said that Burchett understood Vietnam more than many ones who claimed themselves intellectuals.
He quoted some excerpts from Burchett’s article, “Ho Chi Minh: An appreciation” as follows:
“ Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity. For public consumption they are "gooks," "slopes" and "dinks;" a My Lai becomes a "Pinkville", its massacred inhabitants "oriental human beings" in official reports.
Reality is that the humblest Vietnamese peasant, even illiterate, is usually culturally and morally superior to his American adversary. He knows more about his country's traditions and history -- not only because there are a few thousand more years to know about -- but because he quite literally absorbs it with his mother's milk. He is saturated with his historical heritage by environment from his earliest years. Whether it is lullabies learned at his mother's breast, legends from a wandering bard or storyteller, or from an itinerant theatre group portraying heroic episodes of two thousand years’ resistance to foreign aggression; whether it is curiosity about the origins of the village "genie" (a rough approximation to a patron saint), very often a legendary hero, or family tales handed down for generations of the brave deeds of ancestors in defense of the Motherland, or of iniquitous sufferings at the hands of foreign oppressions crying out for revenge. The knowledge of two thousand years' struggle against invaders is in the bloodstream of the humblest, mud-stained peasant. This alone is an inexhaustible source of courage and stoicism; of confidence in the future and contempt for those who try to wreck the present - qualities incomprehensible to the "think tank" specialists.
Ho Chi Minh epitomizes all this. And just as there was something of every Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh, so there is something of Ho Chi Minh in almost every present-day Vietnamese, so strong is his imprint on the Vietnamese nation.
One matter which President Nixon and his predecessors may have overlooked but which the Vietnamese people certainly have not, is that Ho Chi Minh belongs to the whole Vietnamese nation. No line arbitrarily drawn along the 17th parallel could divorce the people of the South from Ho Chi Minh because his capital happened to be on the northern side of the line. Ho Chi Minh was the accepted leader and source of inspiration for all Vietnamese -- except the handful who served Japanese, French and American masters in turn.”
Of course, Ngoc discussed that a number of overseas Vietnamese who used to serve the US-backed Saigon administration could not agree with Burchett’s viewpoints quoted above, and it was not difficult to understand why.
For those who wondered about the truth in Burchett’s views, Ngoc said: “That question, perhaps, should not be asked once we well know about the Vietnamese history and the traditions remaining in villages across the country and study thoroughly Vietnam ’s resistance wars against French colonialists and American aggressors”.
Discussing whether Ho Chi Minh was a communist or not, Dr. Ngoc said: “As far as we have known, Ho Chi Minh never denied that he was a communist and once confirmed that he got a source of inspiration from Lenin for the cause of gaining independence for Vietnam”.
To understand the communist Ho Chi Minh, Ngoc cited opinions of a number of foreign professionals, who paid the top respect to intellectual honesty and could not write anything that is dictated emotionally because of their prestige.
He named Stanley I. Kutler, who is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and the chief editor of “The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War”, among those foreign professionals.
In his review of the book “Ho Chi Minh, A life” by William J. Duiker, Kutler discussed that in Duiker’s words, Ho Chi Minh was a patriot closer to Thomas Jefferson than to V.I. Lenin.
Though saying Ho Chi Minh’s role belonged to the past and Vietnam today is part of the global economy, Kutler commented, “Nevertheless, the world is a different place because of Ho, and others like him, who agitated, fought and died to liberate their lands from the stigma and yoke of foreign tyranny”.
Kutler wrote, “Duiker has moved beyond the simplistic Cold War debate of whether Ho was a dedicated Communist, beholden to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, or whether he was a patriot and a nationalist, dedicated to freeing and uniting his country. Duiker rightly notes that Ho had deep roots in the international Communist movement; but he was a constant nationalist who provided leadership, vision and a firm commitment to the principle of self-determination”.
The other professional whom Tran Chung Ngoc named in his writing, “Something about Ho Chi Minh”, was Professor Pierre Brocheux, who is honorary lecturer at Denis-Diderot University , Paris-VII.
In his “L’Homme Qui Devint Ho Chi Minh” (The man who became Ho Chi Minh), the French professor recalled Ho Chi Minh’s words as saying, “We gain independence by organisation and disciplines. We also need trust, evangelism and practical analysis, which can be referred to as a bible. Leninism-Marxism has provided me with guidelines for this action”.
According to Ngoc, Ho Chi Minh, perhaps, would like to refer to Lenin’s “Theses on the national and the colonial questions”, which was presented to the second congress of the Communist International in 1920, and he learnt that that document helped him figure out the most proper way of liberating the Vietnamese nation from colonial domination. President Ho proved he succeeded.
Dr. Ngoc also quoted page 493 of, “The Vietnam War Almanac”, edited by John S. Bowman, as saying: “Ho was less concerned with niceties of doctrine than Mao and Lenin; his genius was for political action, and his ideology was capable of considerable stretching as long as it tended toward the purpose that obsessed him: the independence and unification of Vietnam".
Ngoc made clear Ho Chi Minh’s ties with Russia and China by quoting the book, “Cracks in the Empire” by sociological professor Paul Joseph of Tufts University .
In page 83, Professor Joseph wrote: “Despite a lack of evidence, Washington continued to perceive the anti-French struggle (in Vietnam ), as something inspired and directed from the Soviet Union . For example, in the cable to Premier Ramadier cited above, the American Ambassador falsely maintained that the Vietminh was a movement whose ‘philosophy and political organisation emanated from and was controlled by the Kremlin’. Yet, American intelligence had tried, and failed, to substantiate the existence of controlling ties between Moscow and Ho Chi Minh. A State Department cable to the US Ambassador in China read: ‘The Department has no evidence of a direct link between Ho and Moscow but assumes it exists”.
Dr. Ngoc cited a piece in page 109 of Jules Archer’s book called “Ho Chi Minh” as following: “Visiting Peking in 1959 for the 10 th anniversary of the Chinese revolution, Ho was careful to stand between Mao Tse-Tung and Chief Soviet Delegate Mikhail Suslov. In private negotiations, he managed to win pledges of additional arms and aid from both Peking and Moscow , but adroitly declined their offers to send “volunteer” troops or military advisers. Ho knew that if either the Russian bear or the Chinese dragon were allowed to thrust a foot inside Hanoi’s door, that door would gradually be forced open until North Vietnam lost its independence and became a captive nation”.
Those quotes told all that Ho Chi Minh was not a henchman of Russia and China as voiced by a number of overseas Vietnamese extremists, said Dr. Ngoc.
To position President Ho Chi Minh’s place in the hearts of the Vietnamese people, Ngoc referred to stories that Hoang Xuan Ba posted on Dan Chim Viet (DCVOnline).
Ba recalled that at noon on Vietnam ’s national day (September 2) in 2006, while on Yahoo Messenger, he got a message from a young Vietnamese that said: “President Ho Chi Minh lives forever in our cause” together with a call for changing the YM avatar with an image of Vietnam ’s national flag. Ba later found the image of the Vietnamese national flag shining on many of his YM contacts.
On the occasion, Ba also talked about his visit to President Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. He said he was surprised to see many individuals, including foreigners, queuing up for their turn to go inside the mausoleum to pay tribute to President Ho Chi Minh.
“I realise the solemnity of the mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh and the cult the ordinary people have given to the late president,” Dr. Ngoc quoted Ba’s words.
Ba said he believed in the figure of 25,000 visitors of the mausoleum in a single day of September 2 as he witnessed with his own eyes long lines of people waiting in person to pay tribute to President Ho Chi Minh at his mausoleum.
Why do the Vietnamese people remain respecting and admiring President Ho Chi Minh while there is a communication campaign by anticommunist overseas Vietnamese to pull down the “Ho Chi Minh icon”?
The answer is very simple, as most of the things anticommunist overseas Vietnamese wrote about President Ho Chi Minh were wrong and groundless as these were dictated by hatred, not by truth and historical events, Dr. Ngoc said./.
“When studying physics, I place intellectual honesty on top,” said Dr. Tran Chung Ngoc, who has recently undertaken to seek a number of facts about the late President Ho Chi Minh, although he had published several researches and stories against socialist mechanisms in Vietnam .
Graduating from the French colonialist-run Nam Dinh Reserve Officer School in 1952, Hanoi-born Ngoc then left the military forces in 1956. He moved to Saigon and graduated from Saigon University in 1962.
In 1967, Ngoc went to the US to study physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and returned to Saigon in 1972 to teach the subject at Saigon University . Three years later in 1975, he flew to the US again to conduct doctoral research and has lived there since. After retiring in 1996, Ngoc focused on studying Buddhism, Catholicism, and history.
In his article, “Something about Ho Chi Minh”, Dr. Ngoc admitted that it was not easy to write about a figure of international stature like President Ho Chi Minh.
“It is extremely difficult to write about President Ho Chi Minh, to be true to himself as well as his personality, capability, and ideology as it requires the author to embrace a stream of intellectual honesty and a right understanding of Ho’s life, especially of what he did for Vietnam ,” Dr. Ngoc said.
According to Ngoc, anti-communist extremists or those who are dictated by hatred feelings can find it easy to write about President Ho Chi Minh by using tiny details or twisting and distorting the truth about him with the aim of assassinating his character.
Ngoc revealed that he found it harder to note down things about President Ho Chi Minh due to the educational background he had received and by what he had absorbed during the time he studied in the US and served in the troops of the US-backed Saigon administration.
Being the one who underlined the importance of intellectual honesty, Ngoc said he has pursued a very careful methodology in the absence of feelings for any issue he met, to avoid prejudice.
However, he admitted to forming partial opinions when writing about history due to the lack of a God complex, quoting a saying, “Those who write about history without bias must have a God complex”.
To minimize any prejudice, Ngoc said he read many books of the same topic by various authors, of whom there were researchers, politicians, and even former military generals, and used the opinions shared by many of the authors.
He said he undertook to write about President Ho Chi Minh after reading a series of criticisms of the book, “Ho Chi Minh, A life” by William J. Duiker and research by historian Nguyen Manh Quang posted on http://www.giaodiemonline.com/ in November 2006.
“This writing is not aimed at covering everything about President Ho Chi Minh because I am not capable of doing so,” Ngoc said, noting that he just focused on President Ho Chi Minh’s position and prestige in the international arena and in the hearts of the Vietnamese people and explored the fact of whether he was a communist extremist and a henchman for Russia and China as claimed by some overseas Vietnamese reactionary extremists.
Regarding those who criticized and twisted the facts about President Ho Chi Minh, Ngoc said “Nothing is more stupid than comparing Mr. Ho to Hitler. Those people hardly heard what the world public, especially progressive countries in Europe and even in the US , talked about President Ho Chi Minh. Logging in the Internet and typing words ‘Ho Chi Minh’, they will find out what the world valued him. Or, reading books featuring the Vietnam war by American scholars and generals, even in “In retrospect” and “Argument without end” by former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, they will overwhelmingly see positive comments on Ho Chi Minh .”
Ngoc suggested those who attempted to defame President Ho Chi Minh should read the book, “Tyrants, History’s 100 Most Evil Despots and Dictators” by Nigel Cawthorne, Barnes & Noble, NY, 2004, which named Ngo Dinh Diem, former President of the US-backed Saigon administration, not President Ho, among despots and dictators.
He referred to the book “Ho Chi Minh, a Life” published by William J. Duiker in 2000. The book has received high evaluations from European and American academics and professionals for profound studies on President Ho Chi Minh’s life and career.
“Reading what Duiker wrote about Ho Chi Minh and cross-checking with what other Western authors had written about him, we can see things that are not far from the truth,” Dr. Ngoc said.
He mentioned what the international public said about President Ho by citing excerpts from William J. Duiker’s book as follows:
“The news of Ho Chi Minh’s death was greeted with an outpouring of comment from around the globe. Eulogies flowed in from major world capitals, and Hanoi received more than twenty-two thousand messages from 121 countries offering the Vietnamese people condolences for the death of their leader. A number of socialist states held memorial services of their own and editorial comments were predictably favorable. An official statement from Moscow lauded Ho as a ‘great son of the heroic Vietnamese people, the outstanding leader of the international Communist and national liberation movement, and a great friend of the Soviet Union ’. From the third world countries came praise for his role as a defender of the oppressed. An article published in India described him as the essence of ‘the people, the embodiment of the ardent aspiration for freedom, of their endurance and struggle’. Others referred to his simplicity of manner and high moral standing. Remarked an editorial in Uruguayan newspaper: ‘He had a heart as immense as the universe and a boundless love for children. He is a model of simplicity in all fields’.
Reaction from Western capitals was more muted. The White House refrained from comment, and senior Nixon administration officials followed suit. But attention to Ho’s death in the Western news media was intense. Newspapers that supported the antiwar case tended to describe him in favorable terms as a worthy adversary and a defender of the weak and oppressed. Even those who had adamantly opposed the Hanoi regime accorded him a measure of respect as one who had dedicated himself first and foremost to the independence and unification of his country, as well as “a prominent spokesperson for the exploited peoples of the world”. (First paragraph of the last chapter: “Epilogue: from man to myth”, p 562, references.)
Ngoc said, “Duiker re-wrote about an event, which, more than anything, turned down feelings-ruled, negative attitudes shown up by a number of overseas Vietnamese and those inside the country. So, any comment targeted at defaming Mr. Ho, especially from those who cannot see things in their true nature, cannot be persuasive, particularly to those persons equipped with a higher level of education. It can only be applauded by the few in the Vietnamese community abroad.”
He also cited an article: “Ho Chi Minh: An appreciation” (pipeline.com), penned by Wilfred Burchett, the famous Australian reporter who was asked by Secretary of State Henri Kissinger to act as an intermediary between the US and Hanoi . Burchett wrote, “ Vietnam will win” in 1968 and published “Grasshoppers and Elephants: Why Vietnam fell” in 1977.
According to Ngoc, Burchett wrote about what shaped President Ho Chi Minh like this: not just purely Marx or Lenin or Mao Zedong, but Vietnam ’s 2000-year history of resistance wars against invaders created Ho Chi Minh. With that, it can be said that Burchett understood Vietnam more than many ones who claimed themselves intellectuals.
He quoted some excerpts from Burchett’s article, “Ho Chi Minh: An appreciation” as follows:
“ Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity. For public consumption they are "gooks," "slopes" and "dinks;" a My Lai becomes a "Pinkville", its massacred inhabitants "oriental human beings" in official reports.
Reality is that the humblest Vietnamese peasant, even illiterate, is usually culturally and morally superior to his American adversary. He knows more about his country's traditions and history -- not only because there are a few thousand more years to know about -- but because he quite literally absorbs it with his mother's milk. He is saturated with his historical heritage by environment from his earliest years. Whether it is lullabies learned at his mother's breast, legends from a wandering bard or storyteller, or from an itinerant theatre group portraying heroic episodes of two thousand years’ resistance to foreign aggression; whether it is curiosity about the origins of the village "genie" (a rough approximation to a patron saint), very often a legendary hero, or family tales handed down for generations of the brave deeds of ancestors in defense of the Motherland, or of iniquitous sufferings at the hands of foreign oppressions crying out for revenge. The knowledge of two thousand years' struggle against invaders is in the bloodstream of the humblest, mud-stained peasant. This alone is an inexhaustible source of courage and stoicism; of confidence in the future and contempt for those who try to wreck the present - qualities incomprehensible to the "think tank" specialists.
Ho Chi Minh epitomizes all this. And just as there was something of every Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh, so there is something of Ho Chi Minh in almost every present-day Vietnamese, so strong is his imprint on the Vietnamese nation.
One matter which President Nixon and his predecessors may have overlooked but which the Vietnamese people certainly have not, is that Ho Chi Minh belongs to the whole Vietnamese nation. No line arbitrarily drawn along the 17th parallel could divorce the people of the South from Ho Chi Minh because his capital happened to be on the northern side of the line. Ho Chi Minh was the accepted leader and source of inspiration for all Vietnamese -- except the handful who served Japanese, French and American masters in turn.”
Of course, Ngoc discussed that a number of overseas Vietnamese who used to serve the US-backed Saigon administration could not agree with Burchett’s viewpoints quoted above, and it was not difficult to understand why.
For those who wondered about the truth in Burchett’s views, Ngoc said: “That question, perhaps, should not be asked once we well know about the Vietnamese history and the traditions remaining in villages across the country and study thoroughly Vietnam ’s resistance wars against French colonialists and American aggressors”.
Discussing whether Ho Chi Minh was a communist or not, Dr. Ngoc said: “As far as we have known, Ho Chi Minh never denied that he was a communist and once confirmed that he got a source of inspiration from Lenin for the cause of gaining independence for Vietnam”.
To understand the communist Ho Chi Minh, Ngoc cited opinions of a number of foreign professionals, who paid the top respect to intellectual honesty and could not write anything that is dictated emotionally because of their prestige.
He named Stanley I. Kutler, who is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and the chief editor of “The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War”, among those foreign professionals.
In his review of the book “Ho Chi Minh, A life” by William J. Duiker, Kutler discussed that in Duiker’s words, Ho Chi Minh was a patriot closer to Thomas Jefferson than to V.I. Lenin.
Though saying Ho Chi Minh’s role belonged to the past and Vietnam today is part of the global economy, Kutler commented, “Nevertheless, the world is a different place because of Ho, and others like him, who agitated, fought and died to liberate their lands from the stigma and yoke of foreign tyranny”.
Kutler wrote, “Duiker has moved beyond the simplistic Cold War debate of whether Ho was a dedicated Communist, beholden to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, or whether he was a patriot and a nationalist, dedicated to freeing and uniting his country. Duiker rightly notes that Ho had deep roots in the international Communist movement; but he was a constant nationalist who provided leadership, vision and a firm commitment to the principle of self-determination”.
The other professional whom Tran Chung Ngoc named in his writing, “Something about Ho Chi Minh”, was Professor Pierre Brocheux, who is honorary lecturer at Denis-Diderot University , Paris-VII.
In his “L’Homme Qui Devint Ho Chi Minh” (The man who became Ho Chi Minh), the French professor recalled Ho Chi Minh’s words as saying, “We gain independence by organisation and disciplines. We also need trust, evangelism and practical analysis, which can be referred to as a bible. Leninism-Marxism has provided me with guidelines for this action”.
According to Ngoc, Ho Chi Minh, perhaps, would like to refer to Lenin’s “Theses on the national and the colonial questions”, which was presented to the second congress of the Communist International in 1920, and he learnt that that document helped him figure out the most proper way of liberating the Vietnamese nation from colonial domination. President Ho proved he succeeded.
Dr. Ngoc also quoted page 493 of, “The Vietnam War Almanac”, edited by John S. Bowman, as saying: “Ho was less concerned with niceties of doctrine than Mao and Lenin; his genius was for political action, and his ideology was capable of considerable stretching as long as it tended toward the purpose that obsessed him: the independence and unification of Vietnam".
Ngoc made clear Ho Chi Minh’s ties with Russia and China by quoting the book, “Cracks in the Empire” by sociological professor Paul Joseph of Tufts University .
In page 83, Professor Joseph wrote: “Despite a lack of evidence, Washington continued to perceive the anti-French struggle (in Vietnam ), as something inspired and directed from the Soviet Union . For example, in the cable to Premier Ramadier cited above, the American Ambassador falsely maintained that the Vietminh was a movement whose ‘philosophy and political organisation emanated from and was controlled by the Kremlin’. Yet, American intelligence had tried, and failed, to substantiate the existence of controlling ties between Moscow and Ho Chi Minh. A State Department cable to the US Ambassador in China read: ‘The Department has no evidence of a direct link between Ho and Moscow but assumes it exists”.
Dr. Ngoc cited a piece in page 109 of Jules Archer’s book called “Ho Chi Minh” as following: “Visiting Peking in 1959 for the 10 th anniversary of the Chinese revolution, Ho was careful to stand between Mao Tse-Tung and Chief Soviet Delegate Mikhail Suslov. In private negotiations, he managed to win pledges of additional arms and aid from both Peking and Moscow , but adroitly declined their offers to send “volunteer” troops or military advisers. Ho knew that if either the Russian bear or the Chinese dragon were allowed to thrust a foot inside Hanoi’s door, that door would gradually be forced open until North Vietnam lost its independence and became a captive nation”.
Those quotes told all that Ho Chi Minh was not a henchman of Russia and China as voiced by a number of overseas Vietnamese extremists, said Dr. Ngoc.
To position President Ho Chi Minh’s place in the hearts of the Vietnamese people, Ngoc referred to stories that Hoang Xuan Ba posted on Dan Chim Viet (DCVOnline).
Ba recalled that at noon on Vietnam ’s national day (September 2) in 2006, while on Yahoo Messenger, he got a message from a young Vietnamese that said: “President Ho Chi Minh lives forever in our cause” together with a call for changing the YM avatar with an image of Vietnam ’s national flag. Ba later found the image of the Vietnamese national flag shining on many of his YM contacts.
On the occasion, Ba also talked about his visit to President Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum. He said he was surprised to see many individuals, including foreigners, queuing up for their turn to go inside the mausoleum to pay tribute to President Ho Chi Minh.
“I realise the solemnity of the mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh and the cult the ordinary people have given to the late president,” Dr. Ngoc quoted Ba’s words.
Ba said he believed in the figure of 25,000 visitors of the mausoleum in a single day of September 2 as he witnessed with his own eyes long lines of people waiting in person to pay tribute to President Ho Chi Minh at his mausoleum.
Why do the Vietnamese people remain respecting and admiring President Ho Chi Minh while there is a communication campaign by anticommunist overseas Vietnamese to pull down the “Ho Chi Minh icon”?
The answer is very simple, as most of the things anticommunist overseas Vietnamese wrote about President Ho Chi Minh were wrong and groundless as these were dictated by hatred, not by truth and historical events, Dr. Ngoc said./.
