It’s easy to understand : at the time smoking marijuana was fashionable at university. So many soldiers had had the opportunity of tasting soft drugs before arriving in south-east Asia. One of the biggest producers of hard and cheap drugs.
The young soldiers were sick of the war, they had time to waste between battles, they had money: all was in place for drugs consumption. Of course as they were addicted, they bring back their habits in United States. The beginning of the heroin trade in U.S. can be traced to Vietnam war. The death merchants are still thanking god for that opportunity
One of the most important, and still perceptible consequence of Vietnam war is the defoliation. Vietcong were expert in the art of hiding, underground or in the forest. Since 1966 U.S. used a product called ‘Orange Agent’ to destroy the deep Vietnamese forests. The leaves of the trees were attacked by the ‘Orange Agent’ , fell on the ground and after few days the trees died.
Fifteen percent of Vietnam was treated and destroyed by ‘Orange Agent’
In 1969, the national cancer institute of United States revealed that dioxin, sub-product of ‘Orange Agent’ could be the cause of cancers and congenital malformations.
United States used too a ‘Blue Agent’ , to destroy the harvesting of rice, and to starve not only the enemy but the allied farmers too.
By treating with ‘Orange Agent’ and ‘Blue Agent’ the coastal forest, United States destroyed many species of shell fish and the Vietnamese fisheries are still suffering a lack of fish.
The soil full of ‘Orange Agent’ and ‘Blue Agent’ smashed by tanks, still hiding personal mines is, still today, hard and dangerous to harvest.
Now Vietnam has to face to the more important challenge since the war: Industrialisation. Don’t forget that half of the populations has known the benefits of our modern society of consumption. Ho Chi Min City, as Saigon is know called, once a town full of Americans cars is now a booming town of motorcycles. This could been seen as a progress because just after the war one could see only bicycles in the streets.
Since 1989, as the communism seemed to collapse all over the world, Vietnam opened its doors to foreign investment. After the forgotten promises of communism ‘A television and a fridge in every home’ Vietnam is know somewhere between communist economy and market economy.
Industrialisation is still only on the infancy but the Vietnamese manufactures are learning fast. Did you know that television made in Hanoi are sold in Europe with a ‘made in Korea’ label just to push up the sales?
In 1994 the U.S. dropped is nineteen-year trade embargo but the U.S. is only the fourteenth biggest investor in Vietnam. Maybe the project of more than two hundred millions dollars for a golf complex will be change this poor Ranking .
Vietnam is still between communist and market economy let’s prove it with the example of rice: in 1990 the government allowed the rice farmers on the Mekong delta to sell on the open market, a move that made Vietnam the world’s third largest exporter, behind U.S. and Thailand. But the government changed its mind and now rice can be exported only through state companies, which pay farmer less than the world prices.
The rules are always changing and that frightens foreign investors. The life in big cities is better than ever but half of a population lives below subsistence level.
Economic reform is removing all the population from health care and education. Many peasants keep their children at home to work the land. On the other hand Vietnam has now three private university, and Hanoi has an internet access called ‘Netnam’ that has as much business as it can handle. The infrastructure is very bad it takes five hours of driving and two ferry crossing to go from Ho Chi Min City to the Mekong delta, it’s to say to drive one hundred and thirty kilometres.
Mobil is prospecting for Oil and Ho Chi Min City is the capital of the still to come oil and gas industry witch nevertheless generates most of the nation’s export income.
Vietnam has still along day way to go, but you could be sure that one day, Mac Donald and Coca-Cola will win where the U.S. army was defeated !!!
Should we consider boat people as a consequence of the Vietnam war or as a consequence of the victory of communism ? Anyway, More than one and a half million of persons flew away from Vietnam and mainly by boat.
Some experts think that about one quarter died when they trying to go for another lost paradise. Some where killed even before sailing, some get lost and died of starvation, some where killed by pirates.
The wreck of cover crowded boats was the reason of the death of most of them. Many countries decided not to accept the boat people and sent them back to Vietnam. Few countries accepted to share a part of their. Wealth and among these countries, Canada was the leader by accepting one hundred thousand Vietnamese per year between 1975 and 1981
The Americans are trying to learn lessons of Vietnam for twenty years. The ghost of defeat, of a dirty war, is still present in mind when U.S. are involved. When U.S. send troops in Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yugoslavia (not bad for one country) people worry about getting stuck in ‘Another Vietnam’ that’s why U.S. is so reluctant in sending troops abroad but if the president decided to turn all the Televisions and reporters eyes on other direction than it’s personal sexual behaviour !
But the always optimistic people of America like to think they have won the war. They like to think they have stopped communist expansion in Asia. They created the dominoes theory : If south Vietnam fell down to Communism then another countries like Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia could be next.
In fact when U.S. went to the nine delegation conference on Indochina in Geneva and when U.S. sent troops to Vietnam It applied the same theory than in Korea: Partition of a nation for a specific time and after a while permanent partition but you can’t play two times the same game with the same success and what had worked well in Korea, went wrong in Vietnam. The only success of U.S. in Vietnam was to keep away China and Russia from war. It could have been the dawn of World War III.
