Gen. Giap Thanks Kerry & Co. for Anti-war Protests
Celebrating the 29th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the North
Vietnamese general who led his forces to victory said Friday he was
grateful to leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement, one of whom was
presidential candidate John Kerry.
"I would like to thank them," said Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, now 93,
without mentioning Kerry by name. "Any forces that wish to impose
their will on other nations will surely fail," he added.
Reuters, which first reported Giap's comments, suggested that the
former enemy general was mindful of Kerry's role in leading some of
the highest-profile anti-war protests of the entire Vietnam War.
Before the British wire service quoted Gen. Giap, it noted:
"The Vietnam War, known in Vietnam as the American War, has become a
hot issue in the U.S. presidential race with Democrat John Kerry
drawing attention to his service and President Bush's Republicans
disparaging Kerry's later anti-war stand."
North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin, who served under Gen. Giap on the
general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's
unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement,
Col. Tin explicitly credited leaders of the U.S. anti-war movement,
saying they were "essential to our strategy."
"Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at
9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement," Col. Tin told the
Journal.
Visits to Hanoi by Kerry anti-war allies Jane Fonda and former
Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others, he said, "gave us confidence
that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
"We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said
at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the
war," the North Vietnamese military man explained.
Kerry did much the same thing in widely covered speeches such as the
one he delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April
1971.
"Through dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilize a
will to win," Col. Tin concluded.
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