POW reflects: Senator McCain
Not an obituary, more some remarks and this sentence by Giap explains why:
Quote:
You and I should discuss a future where our countries are not enemies but friends.
Link:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...Tabs%3Darticle
‘ History will be kind to me for I intend to write it ’.
( Manufactured quote commonly attributed to Winston Churchill. )
Reading anything attributed to Vo Nguyen Giap may provide insight into his thoughts, behaviour and supposed accomplishments and into what he wanted other people to believe. But he was more a doctrinaire communist than historian and hence very different to Churchill who managed to speak and write objectively on historical aspects including some in which he was directly involved.
Not sure just which small war victories can be attributed to Giap. But destruction of the Viet Cong in 1968 could be described as a victory for his latter-day Viet Minh.
A usefully objective study of Giap and his brutish part in the history of Indo-China might be completed by a British or better still by a Canadian historian. Anything authored, compiled or otherwise approved by a Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, Korean, Japanese, French, Chinese, Cambodian, Australasian or American is likely to be degraded by bias.
scope for bias can and should be reduced
JohnT.
Vo Nguyen Giap was a nasty piece of work. But he was apparently human enough to want a generally favourable reputation carried into the future. And during his later years he was probably clever enough to engage in more and more subtle manipulation.
Any historian from a country that ‘ warred or policed ’ unsuccessfully in Indo-China is prone to bias as for example supposing that North Vietnamese successes were generally gained by merit rather than conceded by ineptitude. The British were there only briefly and the Canadians not at all.
It is preferable to avoid predictable bias. Hence, my opinion regarding the period during which Giap was a major or minor or inactive participant is that a regional history authored, compiled or otherwise approved by a Canadian is least “ likely to be degraded by bias ”.