General Nguyen Khanh, former prime minister of Vietnam, told De Anza College students and faculty he has some admiration for Ho Chi Minh, the general who became the first communist prime minister of Vietnam.
“Ho Chi Minh was very poor but he achieved so much,” Nguyen said at the DeCillis Vietnam Conflict Center last Wednesday.
Dean of Language Arts John Swensson said he invited Nguyen to speak at De Anza because he believes that it is important for students to meet historical figures.
Swensson also recalled his first time meeting the general.
“I first met General Nguyen 40 years ago. We were eating lunch on the poop deck, or mess hall, and he said to me ‘See all those cadets out there, you’re all coming to my country’ and of course, I didn’t believe him, but he was right,”
Nguyen spoke to the audience about his experiences during the Vietnam war and the future of Vietnam.
Ngueyn said Minh made mistakes, including the civil war, the Indochina war, and the war with the United States.
Ho Chi Minh was one of the founders of the French Com-munist Party in the 1920s.
The United Nations could have helped Vietnam become a free nation, but Ho Chi Minh knew he could have more, so he went to France to negotiate Vietnam’s freedom and independence. He went with a lot of confidence because he founded the French Communist party but, left France with little support, Nguyen said.
“He is a terrible person because he thought he’d make a unified Vietnam with the French. When you’re a leader of a country and you make mistakes, you lose millions of people — 2 million Vietnamese people, in fact,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen started with humble beginnings in the mountainous city of Da Lat, as the son of a nightclub owner.
He graduated from Vien Dong Military Academy and Saint Saumur Military Academy and moved through the ranks as lieutenant, captain, lieutenant colonel, secretary general of defense ministry, lieutenant general and eventually prime minister of south Vietnam for 260 days in 1964.
Nguyen joked as he stepped up to the podium, “For the next two hours, you’ll have to support my English because I have a French and Vietnamese accent.”
He spoke about the Vietnamese Strategy of Defense for South Vietnam.
According to Nguyen, he received a call early morning about something on the radar but after a while, nothing showed up. Later in the morning, he heard reports of a ‘big bird’ landing and it turned out to be a communist helicopter.
After that incident, “President Ngo Dinh Diem gave me anything I needed so I could play James Bond in Laos and we did. Then the coup d’etat against Diem arrived.”
The coup included Nguyen, U.S. forces and other officials.
“These are true stories about the war that people do not write about but I did and I won’t publish them yet,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen said that he has no regrets about anything that has happened.
He is proud of his Vietnamese nationality. He wants to be true to himself and to his country.
“His Majesty Bao Dai asked why don’t we salute like the French and I said we’re a free, independent country. We need our own salute. We need the Vietnamese way,” Nguyen said.
The last Vietnamese emperor was often regarded as a playboy and “puppet of the French,” according to Nguyen. Dai abdicated the throne in 1945.
“I left the country because I do not agree with their policies at the time,” Nguyen said.
He said the biggest problem with communism now is that the gap between the rich and poor is growing.
“What they call the system now is that the communists choose and the people vote. We need a government for the people. We need the Republic of Vietnam with law,” Nguyen said.
On propaganda, Nguyen said that the government could give as much of it to the public as they like but one day, the public will learn that it is not true.
“I thought the presentation was splendid. The students asked very good questions and the General was very forthright and honest,” Swensson said.
