(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Most of us know that Ho Chi Minh is president of North Vietnam, period. – Finding out more – about the man himself – is not easy, because he does what he can to hide behind his work. I have in front of me a book on 389 pages, published last year, 1967; it contains (probably) all the articles, speeches, calls and posts he has authored and sent out throughout his long life, from 1920 when he was a poor and ignorant, but jealous young man of the thirty, to 1966; I look for glimpses of Ho Chi Minh in private, I find one tiny glimpse that emerges on the occasion of a matrimonial law – he admits that he is somehow not an expert, because he is a bachelor. – Has he also sacrificed marriage for the sake of the case? It is possible.
And the thing – what is it then? Yes, it is first and foremost the Vietnamese people, its liberation from years of oppression, injustice and looting; from feudalism and from colonial power France, from poverty, hunger and ignorance; its education, well-being and welfare; its gathering and growth into peace, freedom and democracy; and secondly: true democracy and real peace throughout the world.
Yes, this is the case, the program for Ho Chi Minh; This is what he has worked for all his life, from early childhood, through manhood and into his old age. For this matter he has sacrificed everything, everything. And what has he not done? Almost everything except what President Johnson and his bombs prevent him from. He has awakened the Vietnamese people to hope and faith in the future; he has organized the party, organized the fight against the French colonial world; led this fight to victory; created the law of his father's country; worked for the reunification with South Vietnam, for the training and education of an entire people, and now he is fighting a battle against US military power, against napalm bombs and hundreds of thousands of soldiers. No wonder if he can get tired in his old age and have to seek shelter and rest up in the mountains – he is 77 years old.
Ho Chi Minh has learned much from Lenin, and he emphasizes that himself; but he has certainly also applied what he has learned.
One can only admire such a personality, his energy and endurance, his gentleness, loveliness and modesty, his ability to completely and completely forget himself – for the benefit of the case: the cause of Vietnam, the cause of the poor and oppressed, the cause of humanity.
Who does he really look like, who can he be compared to? Of course a statesman – of a very unusual format; he may have been given the rank of thinker, but he has never had the time and opportunity to develop any system, for the practical tasks have completely seized upon him.
- The idea goes to the great legislators and statesmen, such as Solon, Confutse and Caesar; to the self-indulgent saints, men, such as Akhnaton, Buddha, St. Francis; – no, there is no one who totally fits in the comparison, but it is in this company he belongs anyway. A saint, a man of the very best will, a father to his people and a benefactor to it and to the human race! And it is this man President Johnson goes to war with, this outstanding man as well as this his truly outstanding work!
How must President Johnson's brain be aligned? And all those brains that think like his? What do they understand by East Asia? Imagine a people who have lived on the famine for centuries, a people who have never had a clue what freedom means. What does communism mean to them? It simply means a promise of bread, a promise that tomorrow they will not starve for the first time, then they will finally once again become saturated, think, become saturated. Most Americans have never felt hunger, they have been so saturated their whole lives that such a state as the one in Vietnam they can not understand at all, it goes far beyond their wits. And then comes their awful fact, this outrageous misunderstanding: they imagine that ideas, that "communism" of distress and hunger and poverty and ignorance can and should be fought with bombs and cannons.
If President Johnson could try for a moment to think, to familiarize himself with the state of mind of the Vietnamese people; if he could understand that this war he would never win, because the Vietnamese people would rather die than go to the negotiating table as long as President Johnson continues to bomb their country. – Tell me, has North Vietnam ever attacked the United States? Have Vietnamese bombs ever dropped over New York, Chicago or Washington? When that happens, President Johnson, then some people might understand if you started a war.
Ho Chi Minh: On Revolution. Selected Writings, 1920—66.
Edited and with an Introduction by Bernard B. Fall. Pall Mali press, London, 1967.
