ORIGINAL: desicat
I fully expect that the US will have someone attend this funeral as it is in the national interest to continue working with Vietnam and the rest of the Indo-Chinese nations to counter balance Chinese expansion into the South China Sea and the Spratley Islands. I intended no ill will to the President with my comment, but I did find it ironic that Sec State Kerry could end up attending.
The photo included in my paper's story on his death was of Robert McNamara and Giap sitting in rattan chairs drinking tea and discussing the war when both were very elderly. Both were smiling. Time, and the world, moves on.
Giap was a lawyer. He had no formal military training. He was fundamentally a politician and revolutionary, not a soldier. I join with crsutton in arguing that Vietnam can only be understood if one looks deep into its history. That history did not begin in 1964 as many Americans seem to believe. No more than Afghanistan's began in 2001. The events post-1975 were largely a result of forces unleashed by Western behaviors in the 1945-1975 period, primarily US and French behaviors, but also the UN's. If the West had fulfilled promises made to Ho Chi Minh in the immediate post-war era the history of Vietnam would have been far different, and far more peaceful. But those promises violated a worldview held by the Western powers in light of Soviet and Chinese immediate post-war actions as well as France's desire to return to the status quo ante.
