> Further outside the imperial gaze, even today, is the
> heroism of the Vietnamese, not only those who Kerrey and
> many other US officers caught up in the genocidal invasion
> sought to exterminate, but those who defeated the empire,
> politically, militarily, and morally, causing imperial
> troops to run away in their helicopters, pushing their
> allies off the struts as they ran. Despite every effort to
> reconstruct that piece of history, whether through
> relentless Hollywood endeavors to recapture the good old
> days of World War II, or the repositioning of responsibility
> to suggest that all US troops in Southeast Asia were war
> criminals, and hence none of them were, nothing ever will be
> the same. The US has never been able to field a reliable
> army ready to fight extended conflicts since the people won
> in Vietnam US citizens have never again trusted the tyrants.
>
> There are no Vietnamese victors on the Vietnam Wall, yet
> millions of them died -- and changed the world.
While I agree with the class analysis earlier in the piece, I'm not so sure about the above. I lean to the Chomskian view of the war, that the US did indeed win, that its scorched-earth savagery ran out of political/economic fuel, and left Southeast Asia in ruins. It also showed "Third World upstarts" the cost of resistance. Today Vietnam is being incorporated into the neolib world order, and is home to sweatshops overseen by South Korean contractors. Is this what we would call a "people's victory"?
DP