I was all set to be drafted when the war ended. The win streak for the US was over because of the media.
The Tet Offensive had just happened, and the insiders on the ground knew it was successful. We could have marched into Hanoi and won the war very shortly afterward, but the liberal media interfered.
Walter Cronkite reported that it was a failure, causing LBJ not to run for re-election. He said that if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost America. He didn’t know that Walter lied, and we could have been months away from stopping communism and saving millions of lives. After America pulled out, those we were protecting were murdered. It is the same story every time Communism takes over.
When my friends came home, they were treated horribly by the anti-war crowd who believed the same lies that LBJ did. I didn’t get drafted and moved on in life.
UNTIL NOW – We may have turned that Loss into a Win
Half a century after America’s withdrawal, Vietnam has quietly vindicated U.S. sacrifice—abandoning Marxism for nationalism and embracing the very ideals America once defended.
Over 50 years since America’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War, history has legitimized and vindicated its sacrifice in the Vietnam War.
While few Americans have noticed, Vietnam’s new General Secretary of the Communist Party, To Lam, has replaced Marxist-Leninism as the Party’s governing ideology with something more authentically Vietnamese: Truong Ton Dan Toc, or “Vietnamese nationalism.”
That is a bombshell. Hanoi has just abandoned its Communist ideology, which governed it since 1954 and sustained it in its wars against the United States and its ally South Vietnam, and with its Communist neighbors, Cambodia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Marxist-Leninism came to the Vietnamese from France. Thus, Communist Vietnam was actually a neocolonial state, its ideology imported from Europe to rule the Vietnamese, first in the North and, after 1975, the entire country. Now freed from the yoke of Communism, the Vietnamese have returned to the nationalism that was theirs all along.
In his speech on April 27, 2025, To Lam presented his party as one dedicated to Vietnamese nationalism, not Marxist-Leninism, saying that honor will always be given to those who sacrificed for the Vietnamese people’s “happiness and prosperity” and “their truong ton and development.” He added that, today, all Vietnamese—no matter where they live—have the same ancestral mother, Au Co, and are equally “children of dragons and grandchildren of angels,” and affirmed that all Vietnamese—no matter where they live—should contribute to the future of “their” people, not to the imposition of an ideology.
To Lam called for a new Vietnam, for a new era in Vietnamese history, one possessing “peace, wealth, civilized education, development, and pure Vietnameseness.”
A few days later, on May 4, 2025, the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party adopted Resolution 68, putting private enterprise at the center of economic development. The resolution gave responsibility for national wealth creation to self-management, self-effort, and self-empowerment. The rights of private property will be guaranteed and protected. The Vietnamese state will henceforth “serve and support” private enterprise and not contradict the “principles of the market.”
Finally, on October 6, 2025, in remarks opening the 14th session of the Central Committee, General Secretary To Lam made no mention of Marxist-Leninism and only one passing reference to “markets oriented towards socialism.” Rather, again, he emphasized “strategic self-mastery, self-effort, and self-empowerment” as the Party’s chosen path to a prosperous Vietnam.
In his remarks closing the session, To Lam doubled down on his new vision for a non-Communist, truly Vietnamese Vietnam. Democracy must be guaranteed with discipline and transparency, with elections as broad-based politics to earn the trust of the people. Private enterprise must be pushed forward for national development. The benefit of the people must become the objective of the government’s new economic policy. Finally, dogma, meaning turgid Communist dogma, must be eliminated.
In short, To Lam’s vision for Vietnam has no substantial difference from that vision of our South Vietnamese allies half a century ago.
More importantly for Americans today, Lam’s vision is not dissimilar from the moral orientation of American policy towards South Vietnam. It was not by coincidence that in October 1954, President Eisenhower identified just such Vietnamese nationalism as providing principled justification for his decision to defend South Vietnam against Communist aggression. Eisenhower wrote to South Vietnam’s then-prime minister that the Saigon government “would, I hope, be so responsive to the nationalist aspirations of its people, so enlightened in purpose and effective in performance, that it will be respected both at home and abroad and discourage any who might wish to impose a foreign ideology on your free people.”
Thus, the Communists in Hanoi today have adopted the values that the Americans defended, the ancestral values of the Vietnamese people.
In the end, Vietnamese nationalism won the war against Communism. Hanoi’s war against South Vietnam, which took the lives of over 1.5 million Vietnamese, was never necessary but was driven by the hyper-aggressive ideology of Communism. Despite the long ideological chokehold Communism held over the Vietnamese, it was a far weaker force than Vietnamese nationalism.
Beyond Vietnam, there are two important implications of Vietnam’s evolution.
First, Vietnam’s path may serve as a model for the PRC. Perhaps one day soon, China may undergo a similar path, shedding the evils of a Communist government for one reflective of the wishes and the political culture and history of the Chinese people.
Second, we Americans can now hold our heads high about the Vietnam War: we were on the right side of history after all. We knew who was right and who was wrong from the start. The American experience in Vietnam was completely in accord with the broader American experience in history: we are a very good people, brave, loyal, and selfless. While the Vietnam War contains countless tragedies, perhaps none was greater for Americans than the mistaken belief that it was a senseless war or one fought in opposition to Vietnamese nationalism. It was fought for the Vietnamese people against an evil ideology, and ultimately, victory was won.
Those who like to trash America will. The Vietnam Vets didn’t get any respect for their sacrifice. Not that this makes it worth it, but it’s good to know they were vindicated.
Those in NYC should take note that once again, Communism failed. They are zero for life every time they’ve tried. It transfers wealth and power to the dictators and death to the people.
Delusions of Adequacy 