This may surprise some of my detractors but, I still have considerable regard for the Vietnamese communists. Hard to shake off the impressions formed in one's youth, isn't it? If someone could extrapolate the 2.8 million killed by the U.S. and ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) from early 60's to '75, to the U.S. population in '75, it would make an effective update of a famous anti-war poster of the massacred in the ditch in My Lai with the Lt. Calley court martial testimony, "Q:And Women? A:Yes. Q:And children? A:Yes."
That said, a caveat from the historical record, mostly from a neo-Trotskyist journal in the UK, Revolutionary History and the US left communist, Loren Goldner, in the pages of the US journal New Politics. It will be easier just to give y'all the keywords I typed into google to get these two cites. "Trotskyism in Vietnam." The Goldner article is about hit #5, "The Anti-Colonial Movement In Vietnam, " and the Revolutionary History website, which has an article on the Trots in Vietnam is the tenth hit. Access the piece on Tibet, then scroll to the end to get the URL for the journal. The US SWP also had a long piece in the International Socialist Review in 1974 or '75 on Stalinist excesses like the bloody land reform of the 50's and repression after the liberation of '45. Also see, the article by Frence Trot, Pierre Rousset, in the Tariq Ali edited, "The Stalinist Legacy, " from Penguin, re-issued by Lynne Rienner in Boulder.
Two other comments in close> That Bio of Ho Chi Minh by William J. Duiker is still checked out so the fave cigarette inquiry of Dennis Perrin about Ho will have to wait some more.
And, the Hitch has another brief piece in the new Atlantic Monthly. Riffs some more on bell hooks and Oliver Stone. Michael Pugliese