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Saturday, April 30, 2005

Saigon vs Baghdad

30 years ago, on April 30 1975, the last American soldiers flew out from Saigon leaving the communist tanks to raid the last base of the Coalition Forces. After many years of fighting the occupation force (America), the communist won and managed to defeat the USA forces.

Despite that American were superior in their armory and technology, the Vietnam communist army managed to 'kick' the USA out of Vietnam forever. Although American used chemical weapon of mass destruction that destroyed many trees and jungle at Vietnam, Agent Orange, Vietnamese still able to launch massive attack at the Americans army base.

Many USA soldiers died in the Vietnam war. The involvement of USA in Vietnam war was simply an agenda of them to defeat the communist ideology and to prevent the ideology to spread to another South East Asia countries. In those time, the communist had been prevailed in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia but those ideology has been rejected by the common people. The communist ideology were crushed to ashes by Suharto army in Indonesia in late 1965. The communist rage back in Malaysia were finally controlled by 1970s. Failing to get support from the public, the communist were forcefully had to retreat to fight in the border of Malaysia-Thailand.

Back in Vietnam, the winning communist army simply marked the aggressiveness of Vietnam communist army against the once-formidable USA army. You may wonder why the USA had to involve themselves at Vietnam, the land that is very far from USA. This is one of the side effect of the Cold War between Soviet Union and USA in those perilous period in human history. The communist ideology was seen by USA as their enemy of the democracy. Thus, USA had to work around the globe to prevent the communist ideology to spread and in the same time, spreading their own ideology of democracy. The Cold War ended when Soviet Union fell to their own people by 1990 and the communist ideology were finally replaced by democracy. Thus, USA remained until today the sole superpower in this world.

Having been humiliated by the defeat at Vietnam, USA film makers tried to uplift their image by producing many films picturing the USA army defeating the Vietnam communist army. Do you remember 'Rambo' and many films of the same genre in late 1980s? This was the effort they made to improve the image of USA.

Now, 30 years after being defeated in the land of Vietnam, the USA again is involved in another war. Now, they fought against the so-called terrorist in the land of Iraq. Have they won yet?

After two years of fighting against the guerillas in Iraq, the USA forces still unable to control the situation in Iraq. The promise they make upon capturing Baghdad, that they want to bring peace in Iraq is still not being delivered.

Saigon vs Baghdad....will the history repeated itself again?

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