Saigon liberated

‘Vietnam belongs to the workers.’ That was the Workers World front-page headline following the liberation of Saigon—that electric moment on the morning of April 30, 1975, when a tank carrying the liberation soldiers crashed through the front gates of the Saigon presidential palace, and the remaining occupants of the U.S. Embassy scampered onto military helicopters to flee the Vietnamese people.

It was the first thoroughgoing military defeat for the U.S. imperialists. And it was at the hands of a country whose industrial development had been retarded by a century of first French and then U.S. imperialist rule. The organization of the Vietnamese communists, the skillful diplomacy of the Vietnamese statespeople and the almost unbelievable heroism of the Vietnamese people had brought to its knees the most powerful imperialist power.

This was all personified by the legendary Vietnamese national and communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, who led the liberation struggle of the Vietnamese for decades but unfortunately died before seeing a free Vietnam. “Uncle Ho” was a hero not only to his own people but to anti-imperialists all over the world, who had been inspired by the Vietnamese struggle to devote their own lives to the liberation of humanity.

U.S. imperialism, vindictive after such a decisive defeat, did its best to punish the Vietnamese population and rob them of the fruits of their victory. The new revolutionary government of a now united Socialist Republic of Vietnam administered a devastated economy. Millions of people had been displaced, the landscape was poisoned by defoliants like Agent Orange and littered with land mines.

Nixon’s promise of aid—really it should have been war reparations—was all taken back. Instead the U.S. imposed an economic embargo that lasted 20 years. Millions of Vietnamese had died, hundreds of thousands more were still missing in action, yet the U.S. used the excuse of several hundred U.S. MIAs to go back on all the Paris agreements and deny aid.

Imperialist spite could make the Vietnamese suffer, but it could do nothing to erase the impact of the Vietnamese victory on the world. When the 9/11 attacks took place, Pentagon generals and imperialist strategists were still speculating that this—26 years after their defeat in Saigon—would finally end the so-called Vietnam Syndrome. The term referred to the increased consciousness among U.S. youth that they shouldn’t risk life and limb for the multinational corporations. And even today, Iraqi resistance fighters, when asked if they can defeat the U.S. occupation, say, “The Vietnamese did—we can too.”

Vietnamese are now demanding compensation for the Agent Orange damages. They are building the strong united country that Ho Chi Minh dreamed of. The TV specials this week will report on the “fall” of Saigon. It fell into the hands of its workers, and just in time to celebrate May Day 1975 without the presence of U.S. imperialism.