President Obama hailed hard-core communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh today as a pretty open guy who was actually inspired by the Founders.
Obama took a break from his jobs-pivot speeches to meet Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang at the White House. The pair held joint remarks in the Oval Office afterward.
Obama said their first bilateral meeting “represents the steady progression and strengthening of the relationship between our two countries.”
“Obviously, we all recognize the extraordinarily complex history between the United States and Vietnam. Step by step, what we have been able to establish is a degree of mutual respect and trust that has allowed us now to announce a comprehensive partnership between our two countries that will allow even greater cooperation on a whole range of issues from trade and commerce to military-to-military cooperation, to multilateral work on issues like disaster relief, to scientific and educational exchanges,” he added.
After meeting with the leader of a country that persecutes and imprisons bloggers and priests, suppresses media and any form of political dissent and uses forced labor, Obama said they “discussed the challenges that all of us face when it comes to issues of human rights.”
“We emphasized how the United States continues to believe that all of us have to respect issues like freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly,” the president continued. “And we had a very candid conversation about both the progress that Vietnam is making and the challenges that remain.”
The visit by Sang, he said, “signifies the maturing and the next stage of the development between the United States and Vietnam.”
Obama said Sang concluded the meeting by sharing “a copy of a letter sent by Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman.”
“And we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson. Ho Chi Minh talks about his interest in cooperation with the United States. And President Sang indicated that even if it’s 67 years later, it’s good that we’re still making progress.”
Sang said the pair “had a very candid, open, useful and constructive discussion.”
“In a candid, open and constructive spirit, we have come to agree on many issues. We will strengthen high-level exchanges between the two countries. We will consider in order to continue our — to upgrade the mechanism of cooperation at the high level, as well as take the best use of the existing mechanism of cooperation. Particularly, we will continue regular dialogue at the highest level as possible,” the Vietnamese leader continued. “I believe that this is the way in order to build a political trust for further development of our cooperation in all areas.”
Sang invited Obama to come pay a visit. “And President Obama has accepted our invitation and will try his best to pay a visit to Vietnam during his term,” he said.
From a 1968 Reader’s Digest piece on the rule of Ho Chi Minh:
The terror had its real beginning when Red dictator Ho Chi Minh consolidated his power in the North. More than a year before his 1954 victory over the French, he launched a savage campaign against his own people. In virtually every North Vietnamese village, strong-arm squads assembled the populace to witness the “confessions” of landowners. As time went on, businessmen, intellectuals, school teachers, civic leaders — all who represented a potential source of future opposition — were also rounded up and forced to “confess” to “errors of thought.” There followed public “trials,” conviction and, in many cases, execution. People were shot, beheaded, beaten to death; some were tied up, thrown into open graves and covered with stones until they were crushed to death, Ho has renewed his terror in North Vietnam periodically. Between 50,000 and 100,000 are believed to have died in these blood-baths — in a coldly calculated effort to discipline the party and the masses. To be sure, few who escape Ho’s terror now seem likely to tempt his wrath. During the 1950s, however, he had to quell some sizeable uprisings in North Vietnam — most notably one that occurred in early November 1956, in the An province, which included Ho’s birthplace village of Nam Dan. So heavily had he taxed the region that the inhabitants finally banded together and refused to meet his price. Ho sent troops to collect, and then sent in an army division, shooting. About 6,000 unarmed villagers were killed. The survivors scattered, some escaping to the South. The slaughter went largely unnoticed by a world then preoccupied with the Soviet Union’s rape of Hungary.










1. Life. Under the Soviet Constitution all people were endowed by the State with a so-called right to "inviolability of the person," but not a right to self-defense - no second amendment. The Soviet government murdered 20 million of their own helpless people.
2. Liberty. Liberty is obstructed action according to the state's will, within limits drawn around you by the law which secures the superior rights of people comprising the state. “It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be carefully rationed.” Vladimir Lenin
3. Pursuit of Happiness. Under communism "the state" (a small group of other people after all) owns the fruit of your labor, and thus the state owns you. “The proletariat [lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled, government-dependents] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [self-serving Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property." Karl Marx - Communist Manifesto
Under Americanism the term human rights refers to those attributes of human individuality which define human nature its self - unalienable rights endowed equally to each individual by his/her Creator. “Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Thomas Jefferson
1. Life. Our Declaration of Independence states that the individual's right to life is unalienable since it is endowed to us by our Creator. Amendment XIV states that our right to life cannot be revoked except by due process of equal law - such as capital punishment laws protecting us against murderers. Our second amendment secures the American individual's right to self-defense, and thus their right to life.
2. Liberty. “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” Thomas Jefferson
3. Pursuit of Happiness. Under our Declaration of Independence your right to the fruit of your own labor - a major part of your pursuit of happiness - is endowed to you by your Creator. Our 14th amendment secures your natural right to property - the fruit of your own labor. "In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour. And, inasmuch as most good things are produced by labour, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labour has produced them. But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government." Abraham Lincoln
Hey, did you hear that HUD is working on plans to "deal" with improperly racially balanced neighborhoods?
How many of you knew that he spent most of the Second World War executing actual Vietnamese nationalists, via his right hand henchman Giap?
How many of you know that the reason the elections were never held in the 1950's was because the North was not a democracy, and that the will of the "people" could never have prevailed?
How many of you are aware that the crimes of Lt. Calley at My Lai were perpetrated nearly daily by the NVA before, during and after the war, as a result of high level orders?
I have been saying for some time that the only time this nation will heal from the brain damage that war enabled--by making left wing propaganda seem plausible--will be when we can tell the truth about that war, why we were there, how thoroughly evil our enemies were, and how CATASTROPHIC our chosen failure was.
I have a short list of Communist atrocities in a piece Gerald Ford circulated with no effect through Congress before we chose to cut funding to the South AFTER we had won the war http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page21.html
Kick the traitor TO THE CURB!
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2010/08/american-socialists-release-names-of-70-congressional-democrats-in-their-caucus/
That is where the Ho Chi Minh and Constitution parted ways. Perhaps if Roosevelt or Truman hadn't been so buddy-buddy with the French, Vietnam could have become a Democracy. Guess you get what you pay for holds true in this case.
Before Truman became President, the US (Roosevelt), Russia (Stalin), and China (Chiang Kai-shek) agreed that after the war, Indochina (Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia) would be under a UN trusteeship with the goal towards full independence. The conversation between Roosevelt and Cordell Hull (SecState) is in the Pentagon Papers.
Then how did France returned to Viet Nam if the US, Russia, and China were adamant not to let France have Indochina? The answer lies in the Ho-Sainteny Agreement of Mar 1946. Remember that WW II ended in Aug-Sept 1945. The deal between Ho and Sainteny was to have Viet Nam be a member in the French Union, like how Puerto Rico is to the US. Once French troops successfully returned, which was a stab to the back to the US (Truman), the Viet Minh and France proceeded to slaughter and oppress the other Viet Nationalists, especially those who opposed the introduction of communism into Viet Nam.
Then once the Viet Minh secured their rule over North Viet Nam, Ho turned against France and shrewdly used the immorality of colonialism to hide his partnership that brought France back to Viet Nam. Just in case you did not know, Ho supposedly said: It is better to smell French sh1t for 100 yrs than to eat Chinese sh1t for 1000.
Keyword search for you: 'indochina un trusteeship' and 'ho-sainteny agreement'.
Ho's self promotion to Truman should not be taken seriously, as so many Americans, of both 'Left' and 'Right' political persuasions have done. Although I see more of the Left than from the Right. Up to the end of WW II, Truman have no reasons to abandon what Roosevelt wanted for Indochina. But once China entered the conflict between the Viet Minh and France, the American fear of communism overrode any hard feelings and the US, in hindsight not a good thing, publicly supported France's return to Indochina. Damages to US image were done, even though the truth said something much different.
The UN trusteeship and the Ho-Sainteny Agreement are not well known historical facts. But they are damning indictments against the charge that somehow the US sort of 'betrayed' Ho, as if the US owed him anything in the first place. Ho was not the only OSS collaborator in Viet Nam. It was only successful propaganda and willingly gullible people, mostly from the Left, who made Ho out to be the only one.
Had Ho been an actual nationalist, he would not have summarily executed dozens of what otherwise would have been his allies. He wanted power, period.
That is where the Ho Chi Minh and Constitution parted ways. Perhaps if Roosevelt or Truman hadn't been so buddy-buddy with the French, Vietnam could have become a Democracy. Guess you get what you pay for holds true in this case.
51%--Ye suckers!