From: DN <
Date: Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 12:26 AM
Subject: ] "An Open Letter to the People of Viet Nam and America: I will never forget."
To: DD-ThaoLuan9 <
Date: Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 12:26 AM
Subject: ] "An Open Letter to the People of Viet Nam and America: I will never forget."
To: DD-ThaoLuan9 <
FYI
The
"Dark Days" of April are here once again!
This "Open letter" reminds us the worst
tragedy in our life, which is hard to forget for many of us.
This "Open Letter" also serves as an
explanation to our friends once again "why millions of us have been living
here, outside of Viet Nam" and accept our sincere thanks to those
who helped us in different ways to re-build our life in our second
homeland.
Semper Fi
(VNMC_PDX
4-28-2013)
DNguyen
PS:
Dear Col. LN-Binh
(WA) and Col. LM-Ngoc
(FL):
Please forward our thoughts and our thanks to
Mr. Bill Laurie.
From
this source:
Please Click Here
Or here:
=> Betrayed & Abandoned (Bill Laurie)
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UNTOLD STORY section — vnafmamn.com
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I
longed for the shy quiet beauty and the warm perfumed nights of Viet Nam. For
the first time in my life I felt homesickness. This is not right I told
myself. How can you feel homesick for some place that is not your home? But
the feeling would not go away. So, I made the final decision. I re-enlisted
in the Army and came back to Viet Nam, back to the country I knew I loved.
When I returned to the Viet Nam I had left, only a few short months before,
was no more. I knew then that I would never see that Viet Nam of 1966 again,
and it saddened me deeply.
The
American soldiers were coming in great numbers then and the misunderstanding
and bad feelings between Americans and Viet Namese spread and intensified. I
watched with sorrow as the Americans' money infected the simple and good
people of Viet Nam with the disease called greed and as the greed spread so
did corruption. I watched with bitterness and anguish as America tore down
the "Viet Namese" Viet Nam and built the "American" Viet
Nam.
This
"American Viet Nam" was a beautiful Viet Nam, beautiful for war
profiteers. But for everyone else it was a disgrace. It was degrading to the
people of Viet Nam to have everything taken over by the Americans. It took
away their pride and made them feel inferior. Before long the whole nation
and people of Viet Nam had a giant inferiority complex. Those who would not
feel inferior, those who still had their pride, for those it generated hatred
and scorn for many years.
After
America took away the pride and self respect of the people of Viet Nam and
replaced it with feelings of uselessness and dependence on Americans, the
great leaders and politicians of my country announced that now we must
"Viet Nam-ize" the war so that America can disentangle itself from
the "quagmire" of Viet Nam.
The
Paris Peace talks were started so that Viet Nam could obtain "Peace with
Honor" with "Freedom and Democracy" for the people of the
Republic of Viet Nam. Finally the big day came, the "Paris Peace
Accords" were signed. The people of Viet Nam once again dared to hope
that, after so many years of the tears, pain, horror, death and destruction
that make up this thing called war might come to an end. But I
did not believe it, not for one second did I believe it would stop. My school
book ideals and belief in Americans and their goodness were shattered long
before, shattered somewhere between the rape of a house girl and the My Lai
tragedy. I knew "those papers" were meaningless, and "those
phrases" offered by the prestigious diplomats were as hollow as a rotten
tree as far as the country and people of Viet Nam were concerned.
I
knew in my own mind that it only meant an end to America's entanglement in
the quagmire that they helped create. I did have one hope, one dream left
when the American and Allied Forces left Viet Nam. That dream and that hope
was that America would supply Viet Nam with the needed weapons, ammunition,
and equipment and that you, the people of Viet Nam, would reach deep within
you and pull out your wounded pride and regain your self respect and fight on
until victory over the barbarian aggressor.
My
dream and my hope was beginning to be fulfilled.
You
did mend your pride and you did regain your self respect and I rejoiced in my
heart for you.
Then
it happened, the promises were broken, the supplies came no more. Still, you
fought and died and lost your limbs for your homeland. You asked for help from
those who uttered the "empty phrases" and signed the
"meaningless papers" and they shunned you.
Again
you swallowed your pride and in desperation you pleaded. So the great
humanitarian peoples of America sent a delegation from Congress to your home
land. They saw the sons of rich riding their motorbikes around with their
long hair and Heroin dulled eyes, they saw the war profiteers driving their
expensive foreign cars and visiting night clubs. They talked with your rulers
and generals, then they were experts on Viet Nam, then they had a basis for
which to judge you and ease their conscience for the breaking of the
promises.
Now
the "honorable"(?) Congressmen, being authorities on Viet Nam and
it's people, made suggestions and recommendations. Some of these great
lawmakers recommended no more aid to Viet Nam, some said they would only aid
in the form of food and medicine.
It
will ease their conscience if you are killed with a full stomach instead of
an empty one. One of the great humanitarian experts was quoted as saying that
"Eventually the communists would prevail in Viet Nam because their
aggressiveness, will and purpose presently exceeds the aggressiveness, will
and purpose of the people of South Viet Nam."
If
this is true, I wonder who gave you a purpose and turned their back on you
when the going got tough? Who pushed your "purpose" into the mud of
the Mekong Delta? Who trampled your "aggressiveness" into the red
dust of the highlands? Who drowned your "will" in the South China
Sea off the coat of Da Nang?
We
know who did this don't we my friends? Yes, the U.S. delegation came and
looked and talked but they didn't go to see you shivering in the cold rain,
they didn't see your children with their eyes glazed in fear, they didn't
hear the screams of your agony....they didn't go to see the blood coming from
you open veins, they didn't see you in the last quivering spasms of your
death.
No
tears stained their cheeks, no choking sobs wracked their bodies. They will
never kneel in prayer with tears streaming from their eyes because of their
sorrow for you. They went back to their safe, secure, affluent homes in
America. Their families will never know hunger. They will never have to sit
alone in the middle of the night an decide if they should kill their own wife
and children to save them from torture should the Communist barbarians get
them. They will never have to worry about the searing hot shrapnel tearing
their families and friends apart.
My
dear friends I am afraid your pleas have fallen on deaf ears. Ears closed by
the callousness and indifference that is the product of the affluence. Do not
envy Americas affluence my friends, because as you can see, they have sold
their soul to purchase that affluence. And so my dear friends for the past 9
years I have been with you. I have loved you and sometimes I have hated you.
I have laughed with you and I have cried with you, and perhaps in the coming
days I will die with you also, and if this be so be it.
America!
Do you want to know what Viet Nam is today? What is this Viet Nam of 1975
that you have created? Listen! A few days ago while riding to Bien Hoa in
back of a small bus with my wife there were two very small children sitting
all alone crying because their young mother had gone in search of her soldier
husband who had fled from the Highlands, so they had to return home alone.
Another
woman was crying because her son had just been buried. A man crying because
he lost his whole family in Hue. Another woman who showed us the picture of
her husband and five children who were still trapped in Da Nang when it fell
to the Communists, and as she talked the same tears and choking sobs started.
I had to turn away. I could not look her in the face.
All
I could do was hang my head and stare at the floor in my shame. I felt her
pain and sorrow choking me as I sat with tears running from my eyes and
dripping to the floor.
This
is the Viet Nam of today. All sorrow, all pain, all blood and bones and
endless, endless tears. This is the Viet Nam that you, the great humanitarian
people of America, have created. The Viet Nam that you now refuse to take
responsibility for and traitorously turn your back on.
Every
time I read the newspaper now the choking knot of sorrow comes in my throat,
the tears flow from my eyes and the shame engulfs me like a dark cloud.
It
is not a shame I helped to create but it is a shame that I must bear because
I am an American. When you uttered those "empty phrases" and signed
those "meaningless papers" your breath should have been bleeding
Americans, bleeding like the children of Viet Nam are bleeding. Your heart is
stinking Americans, stinking like corpses that litter the "trail of
tears and blood" for a hundred miles from the Highlands to the sea. You
have washed your hands of Viet Nam Americans, but you have washed your filthy
hands in the tears and blood of my friends and the people I
love. Through your callousness, indifference, and inaction you gave your
consent to the communist barbarians from the North, you gave your consent for
the decimation of a nation and people you once called friends, allies, and
compatriots. How bitter those words are in [my] mouth today.
So
all of you great good American people and legislators go to your beautiful
homes and eat your good nourishing food and sit in your comfortable chairs
and sip you coffee and read the evening newspaper of the horror and tragedy
of Viet Nam today, and you say "that's too bad." You go to sleep in
your warm comfortable beds with what you think is a clean conscience.
But
when you awake in the still of the night and you don't know why, you listen
Americans, you listen very close, be still and listen and you may hear the
poor wretched people of Viet Nam, somewhere between tracers and their pain,
somewhere between shrapnel and their open vein, you will hear them call you
by your "real" name.
Easter
has just passed. Christ said when he was nailed to the cross "Lord,
forgive them for they know not what they do." You have nailed Viet Nam
to the cross Americans. I do not have the compassion of Christ and I will
never ask any man's God that you be forgiven, because you do know what you
do, and I will never, never forgive nor forget what you have done to Viet
Nam.
Never
again will I feel pride in being an American. Never again can I hold my head
high and feel the patriotism that I felt so many years ago. Now I can only
hang my head low in my shame. You have sickened me to the depths of my soul,
damn you America. You have destroyed my beloved Viet Nam.
P.S.
I must remain anonymous for reasons of personal safety. If you feel this is
worthy please see that some Viet Namese daily gets it in. I would be pleased
if the people of Viet Nam could know that some one understands, [and] why.
END
OF LETTER
"The one
who does not remember History is bound to live through it again."
George Santayana |
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