My Viet: Vietnamese American Literature in English, 1962-Present

from In the Jaws of History, Bùi Điệm with David Chanoff

Bùi Điệm with David Chanoff Bùi Điệm was born in 1923 in Hanoi. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all achieved mandarin-scholar status under the Confucian system. Bùi Kỷ, Điệm’s father, published several volumes of poetry as well as collaborating with his own brother, Trần Trọng Kim, on an edition of the Vietnamese epic The Tale of Kiều and on one of Vietnam’s most definitive history texts. Điệm attended high school at the distinguished and radical Thăng Long secondary school in Hanoi where his father taught. There he studied with many of Vietnam’s most important intellectuals and leaders, including Phan Thanh, founder of the Socialist party in Vietnam, and Võ Nguyên Giáp, who would later lead the military defeat of the French at Điện Biên Phủ. At Hanoi University, Điệm studied mathematics and became increasingly involved in the nationalist struggle against French colonization, eventually joining the Đại Việt movement (a nationalist group in opposition to the Việt Minh). His professional career included both journalism and politics . From 1954 to 1963 he owned and edited a leading English-language newspaper, the Saigon Post. He served as a member of the Vietnam delegation to the 1954 Geneva Conference. He devoted his career to politics after 1965, serving as cabinet minister under Prime Minister Phan Huy Quát, as special advisor for Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, as Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States under President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, and as ambassador at large and special envoy to the Paris peace talks from 1973–1975. He left Vietnam in April of 1975, settling in the Washington, D.C., area. In the United States he has worked primarily in research and education: lecturing, consulting, and writing at the Rand Corporation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center (where he first began work on his memoir), and the Indo-China Institute of George Mason University. He currently serves on the advisory board of the National Congress of Vietnamese Americans. 66 | from In the Jaws of History from In the Jaws of History (1987) AmericanmilitaryinvolvementinSouthVietnamhadbegunwithadvisers sent to assist Ngo Dinh Diem’s1 fledgling army in 1954. Between 1961 and 1964 their number had grown from 900 to 23,000. But although this assistance had become substantial, American trainers and field advisers played only a narrowly defined instructional role in South Vietnamese army operations . As advisers, their numbers could be increased or decreased at any time and their presence in Vietnam was due to a long-term “advise and assist” policy that did not in any way suggest formal American military intervention. The first independent American combat operations in Vietnam (other than the retaliatory air strikes after the Gulf of Tonkin incident2) were carried out by U.S. air force and navy planes in February 1965. By the time Dr. Quat3 was established in office, Operation Rolling Thunder was already under way, striking at targets in North Vietnam and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail,4 running along the Laotian and Cambodian borders from north to south. This bombing campaign had been planned in December, when Nguyen Khanh’s reign5 was entering its terminal breakdown. But the Rolling Thunder attacks turned out to have far greater consequences than their planners ever intended. No one foresaw that they would constitute the first step in what quickly became a massive American military involvement in South Vietnam. For the United States, this intervention arguably has been the most significant episode in its post-World War II history. For Vietnam, it led to a cataclysm whose consequences can hardly be exaggerated. Yet the distinct steps toward intervention were taken in confusion and amidst an almost complete lack of understanding between the two governments that they so dramatically affected. Between December 1964 and June 1965 the United States decided to fight a major land war in Asia despite the accepted wisdom after the Korean War that such a thing should never again be attempted . Over the same period America’s Southeast Asian ally accepted the large-scale deployment of foreign troops on its territory. This against the better judgment of its political leaders and despite the fact that its own people were still recovering from eighty years of hated foreign domination, Bùi Điệm | 67 only recently ended by a long and bloody rebellion...