After every Anzac Day there is a rush of baby boomer commentary about the Vietnam War. The ‘conventional history’ now suggests that Vietnam was a civil war, and that we (the US, Australia, New Zealand, Thais, Philippinos, South Koreans) were aggressors. This is just absurd. Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia were part of the long Cold War conflict that commenced in earnest in 1945. The Korean War and Malayan Emergency could equally be characterised as civil wars too. The difference in the outcomes in Korea and (then) Malaya reflected the defeat of the communists who were the aggressors in all these Asian conflicts and heavily supported by the Soviet Union and China. Malaysia and the Republic of Korea are now prosperous democratic states, whilst Laos, Vietnam, North Korea (PDRK) are one party states with appalling human rights records, Cambodia is barely any better. I feel sorry for the people of Vietnam as the real losers, they lost their country to totalitarianism (the number of legal political parties is always a good indicator). However we can just ignore what happens there as we don’t have to live with it day to day. If we do have a problem with ‘civil wars’ perhaps we should equally leave the people of Sudan, Somalia, and Afghanistan to their own devices too? We could also add Cyprus, Kashmir, Solomons, Rwanda …etc etc. Scepticism and cynicism should not just become an excuse for inaction.
