Reflections: On a Nation that Endures
Dinh, Tran Van
REFLECTIONS On a Nation that Endures TRAN VAN DINH When a final history of the Vietnam war is written, it will be judged the most barbaric of all wars. It was barbaric not only because Vietnam...
...He who brags will not endure...
...Yet, though millions of Vietnamese on both sides died—the committed and the apathetic, the innocent and the guilty—Vietnam survived...
...It was barbaric not only because Vietnam was chosen as the testing ground for the most destructive weapons (short of nuclear bombs) ever devised by man, but also because it was essentially a large-scale "pacification" campaign—a huge political-military-psychological-ecological operation designed to make the Vietnamese docile inhabitants of a devastated land...
...Both tradition and change are essential components...
...Fortified by their traditions, confident in the durability of their civilization, the Vietnamese have successfully resisted all attempts at domination...
...Twenty-six centuries ago, the sage Lao Tsu wrote in his Tao Te Ching: "He who remains where he is endures...
...The Vietnamese word for nation is nuoc, which also means water or rivers, or nuoc-non, rivers and mountains...
...To them, history, nation, and land are inseparable...
...They have abiding faith in their chinh nghia—the justness of their cause—and they have never lost sight of their precisely defined national objectives: doc lap (independence...
...After millenia devoted to the pursuit of Dung Nuoc and Cuu Nuoc, the Vietnamese have accumulated and systematized a vast treasure of knowledge about the relationships among human beings and between human beings and their environment...
...Those revolutions that endure preserve a measure of connection to the past, giving their people a sense of identity and purpose...
...to defend it is to continue building it...
...After three decades of bloody struggle, the Vietnamese are on the way toward attaining "certain unalienable rights...
...To know one's ignorance is strength...
...The history of those 4,000 years is one of an endless dialectical mission—Dung Nuoc, to build the nation, and Cuu Nuoc, to defend it...
...He who boasts achieves nothing...
...tu do (freedom...
...The intelligent adaptation of tradition, combined with a strong sense of national identity, made it possible for "underdeveloped" Vietnam to endure a massive onslaught by the world's most technologically advanced state...
...Vietnam did not perish because most Vietnamese have remained faithful to their history and their land...
...To build a nation is to defend it...
...The strategies and tactics employed by General Giap were modern adaptations of the tested military principles applied by Tran Hung Dao against the Mongol invaders of the Thirteenth Century...
...It may take years, but time is not important to those who are confident about their cause...
...With their knowledge of history and their respect for tradition, the revolutionaries can be expected to wait for the thoi co —the opportune moment—when conditions are propitious for the attainment of their aspirations and objectives...
...Tran Van Dinh, a former Vietnamese diplomat, teaches politics in the department of Pan-African studies at Temple University in Philadelphia...
...He who is self-righteous is not respected...
...Vietnamese wars were "people's wars" long before the term was popularized by activists and academics...
...People make history in a dynamic process shaped by their shared experiences, their culture, their mode of production, their ideals...
...Now that the Americans are gone from Vietnam, the revolutionary leadership is moving cautiously to unify the nation and establish social justice...
...Tradition provides the substance and cohesiveness for revolution, while revolution purifies and actualizes tradition...
...Each year, on the tenth day of the third month of the lunar calendar, the Vietnamese commemorate the work of the men and women who founded the Hung Dynasty —and the Vietnamese nation—4,000 years ago in the Red River Delta...
...After he negotiated and signed the 1973 Paris agreement, Le Due Tho proudly proclaimed, "The just cause has triumphed...
...Every foreign invader has found the land and its people, their history and culture united against him...
...Perhaps this Bicentennial year is an appropriate time for Americans and their leaders to assess their own nation's course in the light of this advice from Lao Tsu: He who makes a show is not enlightened...
...To die but not to perish is to be eternally present...
...Despite enormous losses, they have preserved their freedom and their independence...
...To ignore what one has learned is weakness...
...thong nhat (unity), and cong binh xa hoi (social justice...
Vol. 40 • September 1976 • No. 9
