Vo Nguyen Giap

TIBERGE at Galliawatch reports:

It has been the one of the bizarre goals of the French Fifth Republic to devalue the heroism of the French Army in various wars, and to sing the praises of the victorious enemy, whether German, North Vietnamese, Algerian, or Mohammedan. This misplaced emotional attachment for the enemy and disdain for one’s own soldiers is a mysterious quirk of the Western mind, programmed, it would seem, to feel guilt for having attempted to save itself. We suffer guilt for winning a war, repentance for even fighting a war, and shame for having caused harm to the victorious enemy.

But usually it is a quirk of the left-wing Western mind, patriots being temperamentally more inclined to feel gratitude towards those who are willing to die defending them. If you recall the return of American soldiers from Vietnam you know that the great divide in the country in the mid-seventies would continue to split us into a so-called “cultural war”, and that this cultural war, like the fall of Saigon, has also been lost.

Before Saigon there was Dien Bien Phu in 1954, when a weakened French army suffered a monumental defeat at the hands of the fierce North Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, a name we heard every day on the news in the ’70’s. From Wikipedia (accents retained):

On 13 March 1954, Giáp launched his offensive. For 54 days, the Việt Minh seized position after position, pushing the French until they occupied only a small area of Ðiện Biên Phủ. Colonel Piroth, the artillery commander, blamed himself for the destruction of French artillery superiority. He told his fellow officers that he had been “completely dishonoured” and committed suicide with a hand grenade. General De Castries, French Commander in Ðiện Biên Phủ, was captured alive in his bunker. The French surrendered on 7 May. Their casualties totaled over 2,200 men dead, 5,600 wounded and 11,721 taken prisoner. The following day the French government announced that it intended to withdraw from Vietnam.

Now, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius …  has paid homage to Giap, who died at age 102 on October 4. Several bloggers have expressed their disgust and their sorrow at this latest violation of loyalty to the fallen French and to the superhuman efforts of the French army, not to mention all the others whose lives were decimated by the war in what was then called Indochina.

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