Vietnam, Christianity & General Giap’s Wasted Life

on October 5, 2013

General Vo Nguyen Giap, Communist Vietnam’s long-time military commander, recently died at age 102. A dedicated Marxist-Leninist, he formed a small U.S.-armed resistance force during Indochina’s brutal Japanese occupation, later assembling a much larger army against the French colonialists. Under the political rule of Ho Chi Minh, Giap triumphed against the French at Diem Bien Phu. He exerted the next two decades in a war of conquest against non-Communist South Vietnam and its American allies.

In the 1940s Giap is estimated to have brutally liquidated tens of thousands of Vietnamese who resisted Communist control in the struggle against the French. He commanded millions of North Vietnamese troops across the decades, about 1 million of whom reportedly were killed. He was finally relieved of command in 1972 when a final offensive against the South Vietnamese and Americans was defeated, forcing North Vietnam into a negotiated settlement.

The North Vietnamese Communists naturally violated the peace agreement after U.S. troops were gone, and the South Vietnamese initially resisted successfully. President Nixon had pledged U.S. air support for the South Vietnamese but was weakened and forced to resign by Watergate in 1974. In 1975 the Soviet-armed North Vietnamese finally overran South Vietnam, while the U.S. Congress, controlled by anti-war Democrats, refused President Ford’s appeals for military assistance. Over one million South Vietnamese fled the Communist conquest, hundreds of thousands of them as boat people, often drowning or killed by pirates. Many of them had already fled North Vietnam when it was declared Communist 20 years before. The new Communist overlords of South Vietnam interned tens of thousands in reeducation camps and even squashed their Vietcong guerrilla allies.

“Every minute hundreds of thousands of people die all over the world,” Giap once callously explained. “The life or death of a hundred, a thousand or tens of thousands of human beings, even if they are our own compatriots, represents really very little.” He’s comparable to Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who during World War II infamously overran German minefields with his own troops, not bothering to remove or go around the mines. But at least Zhukov’s brutality purchased his country’s liberation from the Nazis. What did Giap accomplish?

Giap, by waging a wasteful, needless war that killed maybe 2 million, imposed a tyrannical Marxist police state that terrorized and impoverished its own people. While much of the rest of Asia economically boomed and transitioned to democracy, Vietnam languished in avoidable poverty and oppression. The “Asian Tigers” like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore moved from Third World to First World in living standards. Their fantastic growth and progress were later followed by Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Millions of people who over millennia had lived in chronic poverty moved into the middle class. Thanks to Giap’s “victories,” Vietnam was squalidly left behind.

Communist Vietnam also hitched its star strategically to the wrong horse, aligning with the ultimately collapsed Soviet Union, which maintained a large naval base at Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay. After the Soviet implosion, Vietnam began to liberalize economically but not politically. Its dictatorship continues to repress dissent, including Christianity. Thankfully, much of the church in Vietnam is growing, Catholic and evangelical, despite restrictions. Even the small United Methodist church is growing there. Much of the anti-Communist resistance in Vietnam over the decades of war came from Catholics.

Christianity will thrive in Vietnam long after Giap is forgotten. His obituaries hailed his military exploits. But he rarely won battles despite terrible casualties. He fought enemies like the French and America that eventually tired of the fight. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese heroically gave their lives in the resistance, as did nearly 60,000 American servicemen. They lost when their American friends deserted them while the Soviets fully armed North Vietnam.

Sadly, many U.S. church elites aligned with General Giap’s war of conquest, believing it represented liberation. Groups like the National Council of Churches even channeled aid to communist reeducation camps in conquered South Vietnam, a scandal that helped lead to the creation of IRD. Decades later, these church groups are still largely silent about human rights in Vietnam.

We can pray for the church triumphant in Vietnam and for eventual freedom for all Vietnamese. And we can hope that the failed, murderous legacy of General Giap will be instructive to future would be tyrants and conquerors, and their potential apologists, especially in the churches.

  1. Comment by Doc Lap on December 20, 2013 at 8:32 pm

    The imperialists will always hate our legendary general.

    He will forever live in the hearts of all Vietnamese. A humble man who inspired millions internationally, not just in Vietnam alone, to stand up for true liberty, equality, and fraternity.

    On the other hand, the Church will never have a future on Vietnamese soil. It is the Church of a false God; how can any so called deity justify the genocide of man by man. We will never forget that the Church sought to enslave our people.

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