Uncle Ho's Through My Teachers example essay topic

Ho Chi Minh was born on May 19, 1890 in Kim Lien, Central Vietnam. Ho's family always maintaining patriotic pride in their country and heritage. At an early age Ho found himself following in his father's footsteps; running messages for the anti-French underground and being expelled from school for not conforming to French rule. During Ho's travels overseas, he encountered and studied the Marxist ideals of Socialism and Communism. Ho came to believe that the only way to gain independence in Vietnam was with Communism. Settling in Paris, Ho set about preparing for the independence of Vietnam.

Ho founded the French Communist party, and from 1927 to 1930, he helped promote communist revolution throughout the world. During the occupation of Vietnam by Japan at the start of WWII, Ho was forced to return home for the first time in 30 years. What he brought was a spirit of rebellion; against the Japanese, French and later the Americans. This was when he founded the Vietnamese Communist Independence movement, known as the Viet Minh, who fought the occupying Japanese forces and changed his name to Ho Chi Minh (Broch eux 127-28). When it was after the Geneva Convention in July 1954, the United States government started to support South Vietnam toward independence.

For almost 21 years, South Vietnam had established a tight relationship with the U.S. Many U.S. politicians and South Vietnam politicians began to argue the ethics of withdrawing from the war. Ultimately, with unethical action, in 1975 the U.S. found itself "abandoning [south] Vietnam" (Willbanks 1) to its loss of war. On April 30, 1975 as Uncle Ho's led the Viet Cong to defeating Vietnam, U.S. troops evacuated the American embassy, leaving the South Vietnamese exposed to harsh injustice of postwar life. Therefore, the U. S acted unethically by withdrawing from South Vietnam and leaving the South Vietnamese exposed to the defeat by Uncle Ho's Viet Cong organization. U.S. had promised to support southern Vietnam to gain independence, and back up the south from the North Vietnam against Soviet Union and China. Based on Eisenhower's letter to President Ngo Dinh Diem, as he stated, "I am glad that the United States is able to assist in this humanitarian effort", which gave the hope to the South Vietnamese that they got the support from the great country (Willbanks 1). However, they would never imagine that U. S would withdraw treacherously at the last minute of the war.

As a result of the war, South Vietnam was under control of Communists. Therefore, many southern Vietnamese especially the veterans who lost their country, their independence, and were tortured prisoners of the re-education camps blamed U.S. for lying to them and breaking the promise that they had made. I believed it was always the easiest to blame someone rather than yourself before I learned about the life of prewar and post war. Nevertheless, I think there are some truths and some faults about this situation after I think of what my parents told me. The life of South Vietnam during the prewar and wartime was prosperous similar to life in South Korea now a day, but the post war life was impoverished. The rich became poor, and the poor became poorer; only the Communists were rich!

Many Vietnamese commanders and lieutenants lost all their properties and were put into prisons that the Viet Cong called, "Re-education camp", where the prisoners were in penal servitude. Who can the Vietnamese blame for what they had endured? They can only blame the U.S. or rather President Nixon himself for unfairly departing from the war to produce the "peace with honor" (Willbanks 1) promised by him to the world. If I had lived during that time like my parents, I would have thought the same way, because there was no peace at all! How can a country have peace when their own citizens discriminated against each other?

Children were discriminated against in schools, because their parents had served for the southern government, and this is actually happened to my brother. On the contrary, Americans viewed this action in different ways. As Willbanks focuses the conflict ion of Vietnam War and finds fault with President Nixon for "Vietnamization". According to Willbanks, Vietnamization was the name for the plan to allow South Vietnam to stand on its own and ended in leaving a country totally on its own, unable to stand and fight. Willbanks also concludes that Nguyen Van Thieu (last President of SV) lacked of leadership by accepting Richard Nixon's plan. Thieu should protest against the Vietnamization because the plan policy implied that the war was to transfer full responsibility to the South Vietnamese that would buy U.S. to get out without showing U.S. was running away.

I know this Vietnamization is a matter of pride for a country, but Thieu's action should be over look. If I were to be in his position, I think he had no choice at all, but to accept what U. S offered. He was on the verge of a cliff. What he really needed during that time was the support from U.S. If U. S declined to support him, SV would have been unable to defend itself, because SV could not possibly challenge itself against the Soviet Union and the Republic of China.

Consequently, SV failed right after U.S. withdrew from the war. SV soldiers accused U. S government was responsible for their loss, because U. S failed to keep the promise by having a secret negotiation with North Vietnam and by agreeing to withdraw from SV within 60 days. The unethical double cross was unpleasant surprise to Vietnam. In addition, SV politicians also charged U. S was responsible for Diem's assassination.

According to Cation, the author revealed that President Diem (first President of SV) was unwilling to follow U. S best advice to defeat communism, therefore U. S had agreed to replace him. As American point of view, U.S. was not responsible for that accusation. It was Diem's fault for his assassination. He failed to gain trust in his soldiers and his people that had led him to the end of his life.

I think there are some truths that lie on both sides. I did believe that U.S. was behind the assassination of Diem, because he refused to become a U.S. puppet and wanted to make his own decisions about his country. Diem knew too well that U. S was using the SV unethically for controlling the spread of communism and using SV for threatening the Soviet Union and China as they had used North Vietnam as their puppet. He wanted SV to be itself and not someone's puppet.

However, in my opinion, I think it was also true that he had lost the trust of his people. Since Communists had disguised themselves as common citizens, Diem passed a series of acts known as "Law 10/59" that made it legal to hold someone in jail without the need of bringing formal charges if they were suspected as a Communist. Many citizens, the uneducated ones, were very upset with his injustice acts, which caused many of them join communism. Furthermore, because Diem was a Christian, most of the citizens who were Buddhists had antipathy toward him. They felt that he was a traitor who brought foreigners into the country to control the government. If I were the citizen, I would have felt betrayed as well when foreigners treated me with no respect and destroyed my properties.

On the other hand, U. S politicians argued that SV had corruption in their government. No matter if U.S. supported South Vietnam or not, they could not possibly win the war when the government had not changed. The truth was that some high rank lieutenants and commanders used their power unethically to take bribes and sold out the aid that U.S. had given to the black-market (Samuel B. 9). I cannot argue for the Vietnamese, because it was the truth and the truth hurts. Although this may be true, the Vietnamese still blamed the U.S. for withdrawing from the war and replacing their presidents because it was an unethical action for U. S to do with Vietnam when they had more 21 years of close relations. However, I think both Americans and Southern Vietnamese held some responsibility for the loss of South Vietnam.

The Southern Vietnam government was failing to do their jobs to run the laws and banning the bribes within the government. The American should not have promised to South Vietnam for support them when they decided to withdraw. The Americas gave the Southern Vietnamese great hope of independence but failed to accomplish it. In my opinion, I think that both sides had faults and rights, but we the citizens would never know the "real truth" of the war. Since it was more than three decades that the war had burdened us, I think the best way for both sides is to forget the past and leave the past behind. Although it is easier to say rather than doing it, but at least both sides have to think for their own country and their peoples, which mean they must try, one must take the action to step backward so that both sides can become a companion again.

When mention about "The Massacre at My Lai", which is in March 16, 1968, nobody cannot forget an incident that was once happened in South Vietnam at My Lai. In the weeks before the massacre, several members of the U.S. company had been killed in ambushes, booby traps by the Viet Cong and they were very upset about this incident. In Lies My Teacher Told Me: "Down the Memory Hole" Loewen has stated how the American troops "had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam" (Loewen 245). Vietnamese who had bowed to greet the Americans were now in returned to be treated like that? It does surprise me a lots to know all about these fact, and I feel very disturbing and pretty quite upsetting that I have to wait till this long period of time to learn about this through Loewen works. However none of my teachers in High School has taught me about this matter, so it was not my fault nor any students fault for not learn and know about this.

The persons that should be blamed on were those reporters and writers. They do not provide accurate information that is needed to be provided for the peoples to learn and to educate themselves. I feel like I'm lack of knowledge, such a big events like that but history has forgotten to included as a bold subject for the next generation to learn. I guess they meant to burden it, instead of letting peoples like us students from the next generation to discover the real true that lies behind those liability, or probably because it was not that important to be noticed about? I guess that is the case. Probably the American had lost to the Vietnamese during the war that is why it is not that important.

American does not want to lose their face, especially to a small country like Vietnam, it would bring down their status and pride, and the writers need to help them to cover up those actuality. To me, I believe it is very important. As long as it is history, everything seems important and need to be recognized about. Learning everything would be better than not knowing something, especially artificial information. When reflect back to what had happened I realized that it is a terrible action for the American troop to kill all these innocent Vietnamese at the My Lai village.

As the matter effect, all of the American student should learn and know about this incident that the American troops had caused, the more we learn is the more we lesson something, especially lesson about our mistake and not to repeat it again. Loewen has stated "If textbook omit all the important photographs of the Vietnam War, what images do they include?" (Loewen 246). Well they are indeed has to replaced with something that represent they are a hero, instead of showing the factual pictures such as a monk set himself on fire to protest the polices of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime that the United States supported in South Vietnam, a little girl stripped off her burning clothing as she ran and screaming down Highway, fleeing from an accidental napalm attack on her village by South Vietnamese airplanes and My Lai massacre American combat troops murdered women, old man and children (Loewen 242-45). It is very humorous to notice that American show the photograph of less extensive damage very well apparent but for the cause of their bombardment the photograph that was taken turned out to be not very dramatic.

Why is that? They should show it to illustrate their sympathy and sorrow for those peoples who is accidently dead or sacrifice their life during the war. As for us, we can experience it as well. Writer should be truthful when they want to write something down for other to comprehend with, as in our eyes, we are smart enough to know that not every countries is being perfect, have no mistake in history before, no less or more, there must be.

I noticed that when I tried to search about "The Massacre at My Lai" there were so many different sources that have different information and I do not know what to be trusted, but Loewen works does provided a lot of photograph and brief discussion on the subject which is very well develop and understandable. The unforgettable Vietnam War had lasted for 19 years, from 1956-1975, and my dad who was in it for 15 years. My parent's has experienced the rough life during those times, and they had repeated their words for me to acknowledge. As when Uncle Ho's won the war, he took over South Vietnam, until then the Vietnamese peoples start to suffer from hunger, nightmares and death.

Uncle Ho's lead the Viet Cong peoples to search all the houses in the South, they have taken away the peoples properties, if those peoples hiding something they will be putting in jail for against the law. "We had no freedom for tomorrow, the life was being treated unequally, and we have to live as a person who's dumb without any knowledge", Uncle Ho's set a strict rule for his peoples, they can only get a certain amount of rice in a cup to cooked and ate for 1 week, if you ate too much, you have to suffer from hunger, he also passed out two pants for each peoples to wear, it sound like a uniform clothes to me (Mom). The fallen of moneys were a horror case that Uncle Ho's have done, a lot of the Vietnamese in the South were very rich and civilize, because they work together with the American and owned business, adapted the American culture. For example, 10 dollars changed into 1 dollar, but you can only change two times, no more than two. When peoples work hard and earned some amount of moneys, Uncle Ho's tarted to set a law to fallen the moneys again. Lots of the rich peoples in the South has committed suicide, they jump off the bridge, used gun to shot on their head, and tied their neck on the ceiling.

Because all their hard work that they have done and earned for the passing years were now flow in the drain, which leave them nothing behind, their moneys does not have any value, peoples were crying and screaming. This kind of action that Uncle Ho's has done was an immoral type as a person would do; a moral person would not do such way to treat their own peoples. I just don't understand why the Vietnamese in the North trusted and listened to him so much, although they were unable to gain any benefit from what they been doing, they do whatever he said and willing to sacrifice their life for him, but it does not worth it. To me, being a leader of a country, you have to think about your peoples first, they " re just like your sons / daughters.

It's not for your own benefit to won the victory, has the reputation in the society and treated your peoples like slave or immoral character. However, all these things that Uncle Ho's has done were never mention in the Vietnam history, not even one book mention about his immoral character, whoever lived their life back then can viewed his hereofication status very clearly, just like my parents does. Grail Marcus article "The Dustbin of History", the author once believed that "history is a kind of legend, and we do understand or sense, without quite knowing how or why" (Marcus 24). I do feel the same way about his quote, something that we have no specific thought or any idea about the history can be recall as a legend. Because we don't know the truth that lie behind it, history then become mystery to everyone and we all live in the world of wonder, whether if there's anyone going to resolve the problem nor we have to keep on imagine of what history is really was like. However, we understand only a vivid of what the signifies of it is about, but still when discuss about the word "history" we always identify it as past, and so the past always remain as a question to each one of us, we then imagine it as a beautiful legend.

Just like Ho Chi Minh cases, some peoples for example, like me; I never know the truth or anything about Uncle Ho's real character was like, all I learned about him were from TIME magazine written by American author, nor books that was written by the Vietnamese communist and the non communist, and of course they have to mention about his positive behavior, if something was exposed to the public that saying negative thing about Uncle Ho, those writer will be in danger, seeking for execution. And because of all these fault information about Uncle Ho's, it will lead the younger generation, like me to be an uneducated person for not knowing about my own culture history. I used to think, well it is the past, who care what is happened during the past, all those legends about hereofication were sound the same to one another, just live for today and think for tomorrow. But I was wrong, it does matter, the more we learn is the more we experiences about life, and history does shaped the character of who we are today. Although Uncle Ho's history has become mysterious, but mysterious will once be noticed and reveal to the society, it not going to be burden forever, it will be resolve if we have the will to go and search for the answer that lies behind those fiction. The things that speculate me the most is when I was in school at Vietnam from kindergarten through south grade, everything that I learned from my teacher about Uncle Ho's were all positive, everybody were praise about him, is it because they were scared of him or is it because they willing to do it?

All of my teachers told me that, Ho Chi Minh was not only a great leader, but also a father figure in the eyes of the Vietnamese. He was a man who was born a peasant, but died an icon and hero. Ho Chi Minh's perseverance helped make him a key figure in the history of Vietnam and he still remains as a fascinating figure in history. He was respected because he was humble and smart.

For years he dressed as a peasant, wearing a Canadian windcheater and a pair of sandals made from a discarded tire. His whole appearance was an assurance that he had devoted his life to the service of the people. Throughout his life Ho's remained a Vietnamese, a peasant, a "man like one's ancestors", pure, uncorrupted in a corrupting world, a man of the land and its simplest virtues. He sacrifices his life for the peoples freedom for not being controlled by the American, gave up his life for marriage to serve for the country and for the peoples. Nowadays when I looked back all the information that I had learned about Uncle Ho's, it make me think that I have waste the youth of my education. I was just a little kid back then, not knowing what a fact is and which a fault is, I believed whatever the teacher said would be a main source for us to learn from and relies on.

But nobody can really know that, teacher were the one who was being trick just like us, learn fault information as well. Marcus's discussed that when we "thanks to a teacher, a book, or disruptions of an unpredicted historical even-that what one has always been told is incomplete, backward, false, a lie" (Marcus 28). What Marcus meant by this is that everything we learned would consider as base on sources, such as teacher, book, etc. We gain our knowledge from them, and they are the one who gain their understanding from higher sources. But one of the sources that shouldn't be relying on is historical event, because there is no way we can prove whether it's a fact or it's a lie. The historical event would be passing down from one person to another person and to the next.

All we learn from it would be untrustworthiness information that the teller want to attract the listener, which is us who are the victim. I'd learned about Uncle Ho's through my teachers, until now I still can repeat their word very accurately. But no one can understand that teacher are just like one of us, who believe in inaccurate source that was written by an authors or they probably learn it from their upper level teacher. If teachers and books is an unreliable source to learn from, then we all in the process of behind ing, not recognizing the real things that is happening worldwide. If Uncle Ho's is an actual person like my teachers have said, then all the Vietnamese in the South would not sacrifice their life, seeking to America for a better future. Even though there is a little hope for them to success, but they were not giving up.

Thousandths of peoples sat on a small boat, squeezing one another to traveled through the Pacific Ocean nights and days, they were hungers because there is no food left, some old peoples and little kids cannot stand the hunger situation, they was dead. Their body was throwing down into the ocean. The rest had to face other situation, which is pirate attack, those pirate took away all their belonging, some women was even being forced to be raped and got beaten up badly, one of them is my aunt. Although my aunt is still alive now, but her behavior sometime does not work probably, it is because she was being beaten on the head. Until now, many Vietnamese who has succeed traveled to America and settled in California (Orange County), they were brave enough to speak up their mind, wrote books about Uncle Ho's, reveal the truth that had been hidden for years, they are live in America, and America is a freedom country, those communist cannot come here to kill / murder them, even if they do, there is a law at here. The hidden truth about Uncle Ho's was enormous, he has lots of wife and concubine, any countries where he is traveled to, he married the woman at there and even had kids with them.

The total of his kids can be estimate as 18 of them. He lied to his own people (North side) by telling them that the South being controlled under American, but it is not true, we learn from the American culture to be more civilized, and they help us to earned moneys. Radio was not allowed back then, because he does not want the Northern Vietnamese to know anything about all these facts that he tried to hide, everything is being told from him. He wants all the Vietnamese people to be uneducated, so that they will listen to whatever he said; we had to learn French instead of English in school. However when the Northern peoples came to the South side, they saw our life were not like Uncle Ho's has said, we are way richer compare to them, they were poor. When noticed the truth about Uncle Ho's I realized his character were not worth for the peoples to praised about, we used to trust what we read from writers about him.

But till now, the true is reveal; his action and his character is immoral, he cannot be consider as one of the hero, he's not that great like we suppose he is. I remember one of Loewen stories which are Lies My Teacher Told Me: "Handicapped by History" the author tried to explain how he observed and viewed different sources gave different information about heroification, he using an example of Woodrow Wilson who has caused peoples to face segregation and criticism. Most of Wilson works were not recognized by many peoples, because "few Americans who were not alive at the time know anything about our "unknown war with Russia". Russian history textbooks, on the other hand, give the episode considerable coverage" (Loewen 24). Not only the Russian face destruction, people's dead bodies everywhere and so is Wilson side as well, just because of his intervention that costing thousands of additional lives and wreaking enormous destruction, but however the writers willing to hide Wilson flaws because of his high status and replace it with all the outstanding works he does for society, but still his action has became more unforgiving.

Just like the incidents that had happened to those Vietnamese at My Lai, they were raped and being beaten up badly by those American soldiers just because the American want to revenge over the Viet Cong so they decided to killed the peoples in the village, there is no reason that they supposed to be killed. Being treat that way, I wonder if those soldiers who were alive back then can still face their peoples when they returned back to their country. None of the background about these incidents was being recognized by any American during that time, because the reporter would not want to reveal the fact, it will bring shame and insult other American in states. Many history books however hide so many unrecognized backgrounds about some facts, and we all is the one that being treat unequally by not realized or not even know about it. Of-course some of the peoples out there know lots about the American history involvement with other countries, their good side, but what about their other side? Why the writers aren't included all the little details, especially the shocking part, but only imposed to the public their good value?

Nevertheless, when discuss about Christopher Columbus, we all thought that he is the first person who discover American, but it is not true, the Native Indian does. In Lies My Teacher Told Me: "The True Importance of Christopher Columbus" Loewen stated "The soldiers mowed down dozens of with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and with God's aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed" (Loewen 61-2). If this is the case of how they steal other peoples land then it is too cruel. Spaniard prostituted small girls of the ages, as Columbus said. ".. those from nine to ten are now in demand" (Loewen 65). Well this was not exactly the case, they did not prostitute the children, but they flat out raped them. Apparently as soon as the expedition in 1493 got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape, this is such an inhuman way to treat the Natives of their own land.

Columbus was a hero, he discovered the New World. I do not think so, the man may have had ideals before he set sail, but from the looks of it he was just another greedy, sick little man who found his pleasures in the suffering of the others. Man of courage or man of cruelty, the choice is yours to decide, but I have already made my choice. Any places where we travel to, history always tells highly about their heroes, it painted perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth. Because they don't want other peoples outside of their country to know something that is not bringing any good, but only shameful and humiliation to the country.

It wasn't that great for other to be notice about, but only judge their country and their peoples. The only peoples that being hurt were us, we was being controlled and learned at things that was presented to us, and we always believe that history is the main source that we can relies on to learn about "heroes" and built our knowledge, but we was so wrong. Majority of the writers, like 12 out of 15 books would write the achievement of each historical figure, but they haven't included the process that the men had been through to achieve that goal. It's like we all lived in the world of being tested our intelligent on the writes works.