
Paul Mus, Ho Chi Minh, and Me - wormold
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/09/ho-chi-minth-by-richard-sale.html
======
awl130
Ho Chi Minh is very much recognized across Asia for precisely the strengths
outlined in this essay: his brilliant intelligence, chess-play like
negotiations and fierce dedication to the Vietnamese people. That was quite a
lesson for me to learn coming from the American education system.

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Synaesthesia
Ho Chi Minh admired the US and actually modeled his nationalist revolution on
the US revolution, even using the preamble to the US Declaration of
Independence in his own Declaration of Independence.

[http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/vietnam/independence.pdf](http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/vietnam/independence.pdf)

The US initially supported his independence movement, during and just after
the war, but then sided with the French suppression of it and started it’s
long involvement in the conflict.

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indescions_2017
Excellent writing. And if you haven't been watching Ken Burns' Vietnam War
doc, it's an absolute masterpiece:

[http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-
war/watch/](http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/watch/)

~~~
knz
+1 for the recommendation. The first episode should be required viewing for
anyone wanting to understand the post WW2 geopolitical world order and how the
US became involved in such a mess. The rest of the series (especially once
Nixon comes onto the scene) is like watching a slow descent into madness (the
public polls and reaction after Kent State and Mai Lie astounded me).

~~~
Synaesthesia
I don’t know I’ve read a lot of legitimate criticism of the show, basically
that it’s continuing the same old whitewashing of the war.

Having read for example, how Noam Chomsky describes the Vietnam war, I have a
very different perspective on it that what is promulgated in the mass media.

According to the show “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful
misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings”. It
also inaccurately says the Gulf of Tonkin attacks occurred when there’s plenty
of evidence to the contrary (Pentagon papers!)

I haven’t watched the show but I bet it doesn’t characterize the war as the
invasion of South Vietnam by the US, which it plainly was, a old style
colonial war to prevent a nationalist revolution and to teach the region a
lesson in what happens to those who pursue and independent course.

~~~
jameshart
You really should watch before judging. On the Gulf of Tonkin, this is how
Burns describes the first incident involving the Maddox:

"The commander of a North Vietnamese torpedo-boat squadron moved to attack the
Maddox. The Americans opened fire and missed. North Vietnamese torpedoes also
missed. But carrier-based U.S. planes damaged two of the North Vietnamese
boats and left a third dead in the water."

That pretty clearly states that the Maddox fired first - it doesn't even
describe it as a 'warning shot', but rather a 'miss'. He also says that
"Johnson knew the attack had been provoked by the South Vietnamese raids on
North Vietnam's islands".

Then on the second attack, he says

"No second attack ever happened, but at the time, anxious American sonar
operators aboard the Maddox and Turner Joy convinced themselves one had. The
attack was probable but not certain, Johnson was told, and since it had
probably occurred, the president decided it should not go unanswered."

This is interspersed with tape of Johnson and McNamara discussing how to react
to a second attack, and discussion about how the North Vietnamese command had
never authorized any attack on the Maddox.

What story of the Gulf of Tonkin were you hoping he would tell?

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Synaesthesia
Well I read that it had gotten the Gulf of Tonkin incident wrong in an article
here. I stand corrected that sounds like a pretty good description of the
incident.

I would like to watch it, I’ll get hold of it sometime.

[https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/getting-the-gulf-
of-...](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/19/getting-the-gulf-of-tonkin-
wrong-are-ken-burns-and-lynn-novick-telling-stories-about-the-central-events-
used-to-legitimize-the-us-attack-against-vietnam/)

~~~
lobster_johnson
The author of that article can't possible have seen the episode in question,
or has possibly seen only fragments of it — or he misinterpreted it — because
his criticisms are completely false.

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Synaesthesia
Yeah that’s why I say I stand corrected on that issue and I’ll watch it first,
then criticize it.

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wormold
I changed the title to make it clearer that this is a personal story. Not
trying to start a political argument. It's just a fascinating story.

~~~
Torwald
There is nothing wrong with a political argument. (It would be a very narrow
minded view on business building and IT, if you'd think of them as
apolitical.)

~~~
dang
HN's guidelines ask people to avoid, not political arguments as such, but
flamewars, which is what they lead to on the internet:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

This isn't naively denying the political for the supposedly non-political—of
course there are politics in everything. It's about the limitations of the
internet forum as a medium. We can't have both flamewars and stay interesting,
and the mandate of the site is to try to stay interesting. Flames are lame.

Re "business building and IT", I suppose I should add that HN is absolutely
not just about business and technology—never has been and never will be, as
long as I have a say.

~~~
Synaesthesia
I don’t know if I like this rule, I’ve had some great political discussions on
HN and I don’t see why we shouldn’t discuss it.

Many times I’ve seen posts removed for what I can only think are ideological
reasons.

~~~
dang
> _for what I can only think are ideological reasons_

That perception tends to be in the eye of the beholder, in the sense that
people of all ideological commitments see HN as being censored in favor of the
opposite side, in proportion to the strength of their own feeling. I've
written about this a bunch:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias&sor...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20cognitive%20bias&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&pa...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=13110004&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

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alexdong
More, please.

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jdale27
Looks like there are quite a few posts by the same author on the blog:
[http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/richard_s...](http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/richard_sale/)

