The NLF were the good guys. Like the FDR-FMLN and FSLN and FLN they deserved their victories, just as much as we did in against the Brits. However, as books like, "Cruel April, " by Oliver Todd or the autobio of Doan Tai, an official of the NLF, illustrate, or, "Vietnam Under Communism, "Hoover Inst. Press by a Vietnamese exile or, "Vietnam Now, " by a journalist last name of Lamb, I saw the other day, and Buddhists immolating themselves again as of 2001 in Vietnam, the "Humane Socialism, " that Tom Hayden (see his Beacon Press book from '65 or '66 on his journey to North Vietnam co- authored w/Staughton Lynd and Herbert Aptheker) and all the rest of the US Left hoped for, has been less than hoped for. (I know given the 2.8 million killed by the French and theb USG and the millions of tons of napalm and mines, cluster bombs, etc. reconstruction was bound to be extremely difficult.) The reaction from such as Leonard Kunstler to Joan Baez, "Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, " in '1977, about the re-education camps, was reminiscent of a letter published in The Nation just before the Molotov Pact in '39, signed by Lillian Hellman and other luminaries that had blinkers about the USSR during the height of the Purges. There has always been this unacknowldged tension between wars of national liberation
and anti-war activism on the US left. I'll grant that WWP are honest about supporting armed struggles against the Empire. However it's disingenuous for them to pretend to be anti-war, as pacifists are.
-- Michael Pugliese