Thirty-five years ago today the heroic forces of the South Vietnam National Liberation Front and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam smashed through the gates of the presidential palace of the South Vietnamese Republic and ended a cruel episode in history. The United States and its puppets were defeated after they sacrificed tens of thousands of their own soldiers and killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. They had attempted to bomb North Vietnam back into the stone age, created a toxic ecological nightmare, and sowed the soil with unexploded munitions that are still taking innocent lives.
This photo shows an NLF field hospital in the 1960s. Say what you will about the plight of refugees in the years following the war or the lack of democracy in postwar Vietnam; but the heroism of the NLF shown here is breathtaking.
Giai Phong!
I remember seeing that picture a few years ago. It was one of several pictures by a Vietnamese combat photographer. He worked under incredibly difficult conditions and he was photographing people who worked and lived under even more difficult conditions. Incredible and somewhat heartening that Babylon the great could be brought to it's knees by those people.
ReplyDeleteBabylon indeed.
ReplyDeleteDear Iraqi & Afghan people, sorry we didn't manage to prevent our country from doing that to somebody else all over again.
I am in a murderous mood having just learned Haitian garment workers were ordered to work without pay for one month because of losses suffered by their American employers due to the earthquake. Prior to the earthquake they had been making $1.80 a day. It is my hope that the evil of US imperialism will be destroyed before it manages to destroy the world. Long live the Vietnamese victory!
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