From Enemy to Friend: A North Vietnamese Perspective on the War (review)

From Enemy to Friend is the second of former North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin's books to be translated into English. This book was published in Vietnamese in 1998 under the poetic title, May Mu The Ky [The clouds of the century]. The book is a thin volume, both in size (190 pp.) and in content. It is neither history nor memoir, but rather a collection of short answers to a series of eighty-odd questions on the Vietnam War and more contemporary topics put to Tin by U.S. and South Vietnamese veterans over the years. Unfortunately, the question-and-answer format and the length of the book do not allow even the weightiest of the questions to be covered in any depth.

Although Bui Tin defected from Vietnam in 1989, has lived in exile in France ever since, and vigorously denounces the corruption and dictatorship of the current Vietnamese Communist regime, he makes no apologies for the cause for which he fought from 1945 to 1975. As James Webb notes in his excellent foreword to this book, "Colonel Tin has not turned his back on either the communist war effort or the people with whom he served" (p. xvi). Tin remains a controversial figure in Vietnamese exile circles, where many harbor long-standing suspicions of him, and parts of the book seem specifically aimed at improving Tin's image in the overseas Vietnamese community.

The book was clearly intended primarily as a vehicle to promote Bui Tin's political views, and its value for scholarly and historical purposes is limited. Tin provides several intriguing bits of information from his own experience (a 1963 visit to Vietnam by a Chinese army delegation to discuss a secret Sino-Vietnamese military agreement for China to enter the conflict if the U.S. attacked North Vietnam; General Vo Nguyen Giap's comment that the war might have turned out differently if the U.S. had invaded southern North Vietnam to cut Communist supply-lines), but the serious student of the war will find little new information in this book. In fact, the information provided in some of Tin's answers can readily be found in postwar Vietnamese military histories and memoirs now available in the West.

Much of the interest in this book has been focused on Bui Tin's answers to questions on a number of controversial issues, such as whether U.S. bombing of North Vietnam's dikes or an extension of the Christmas 1972 B-52 attacks against Hanoi could have "won the war." Tin's responses to such questions, while generally reflecting the North Vietnamese propaganda line, do have some merit as the view "from the other side." The responses would have been more valuable, however, if he had fleshed them out with additional details or candid quotes from the senior officers with whom he worked. Tin's almost sympathetic explanation for the Communist massacre of South Vietnamese prisoners in Hue during Tet 1968 begs for additional detail and confirmation.

Bui Tin has led a fascinating and colorful life as a combat officer, front-line journalist, confidant of generals, and political dissident. Unfortunately, his extensive writings have revealed little of the details of that life. Hopefully, at some point Bui Tin will finally provide us with a full and frank personal memoir, a book that is truly of historical value.