The "Viet Cong" Debate

From giebel@u.washington.edu Sat Oct 16 16:22:27 1999

Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 15:15:10 -0700

From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"

Colleagues,

Aside from the debatable issue of whether or not "montagnard" is pejorative, I think that Frank has a valid and not-so-easily dismissible point in addressing the (neo-)colonial connotations of the term. Here's my pet peeve -- "Viet Cong." In this case, the pejorative meaning ("commie") and blanket denunciatory use of the term, dating back to Diemist terror campaigns, is, I think, beyond doubt. Contrast that with "Viet Minh," by the way. For many thousands, "Viet Cong" / "VC" / "Charlie" led to arrest, torture, broken lives, death. I never stop being astonished by how many authors use the term, even in scholarly writings -- and how many editors let them get away with it.

This is not p.c., but s.c.; scholarly correctness. "VC" served (still serves?) to obscure the variety of ideological commitments and post-war visions within the southern resistance, neatly feeding into the myth of the 'communist north attacking the non-communist south'. Sadly, in war times enemies get labelled, denounced, stereotyped. But who in his/her right mind would write histories using "Japs," "Krauts," "Redskins" as supposedly neutral terms? Why the insistence on "Viet Cong"? Oh, and to boot, but perhaps I am being "oversensitive": What about "Vietnam" vs. "Viet Nam," "Hanoi" vs. "Ha Noi," etc.? Isn't this also an issue of (neo-)colonial power relations? Burkinafaso? Srilanka? Unitedstatesofamerica?

So I think that Frank's point about "montagnard" should lead to some fruitful, more general rethinking of terms that have become suspect after decades of organized violence. With good cheers, nevertheless, from your Kraut in Wa Shing Ton

*********************************************

Christoph Giebel

Asst. Prof. of History & Int'l. Studies

Jackson School of International Studies

University of Washington, Box 35 36 50

Seattle, WA 98195 - 3650 (U.S.A.)

tel. 1-206-543-6885; fax 1-206-685-0668

*********************************************

From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Mon Oct 18 15:23:02 1999

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 07:54:12 -0400

From: Hue Tam H. Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Viet Cong

Dear all:

Actually, I try to avoid using Viet Cong which began as "Viet Gian Cong San", a phrase used extensively by the Ngo Dinh Diem government as I was growing up. Indeed, to characterize all those who were in the NLF as Communists is to make it impossible to understand the postwar tensions between many of those who had been in the NLF and the Hanoi leadership. People supported the NLF for a variety of reasons, some ideological, others purely personal (i.e. out of friendship, or because they were related to actual NLF members). Some were anti-Americans, others wanted reforms though not along Marxist-Leninist lines and were frustrated by the Saigon governments' failure to carry out any meaningful reforms. To use the term NLF is not only to respect what its members called themselves but allows us to make distinctions among different levels and kinds of commitment to the NLF program, to distinguish between COSVN and rank and file members of the NLF or of front organizations.

On the subject of "ethnic minorities," this is fine, though of course, Cham, Khmer and Chinese also qualify as such.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 18 15:27:51 1999

Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 21:02:01 -0400

From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"

During the war, this was a contested term. The formal organizational name used by the guerrilla movement from late 1960 onward was "National Liberation Front" (NLF). The NLF claimed to be a united front of diverse groups, in which the Communists were included but not dominant. The government in Saigon, wishing a good ideological foundation for the war it was waging against the guerrillas, called them "Viet Cong" meaning Vietnamese Communists, expressing its claim that the guerrilla movement was simply Communist.

In this case, it was the government in Saigon that was being more truthful. The guerrilla movement was under the complete control of the Communist Party. It contained non-Communists, but they were not very influential. The movement's claims to be a broadly based coalition were mostly political fiction, bolstered by the pretense by which non-Communist figures were given impressive titles in the NLF.

I have far more respect for the guerrillas than I do for the Saigon government. But I don't allow my terminology to be dictated by my political sympathies. The term "Viet Cong" describes the actual nature of the guerrilla movement far more accurately than does "National Liberation Front," so there are many contexts in which I use the term "Viet Cong."

The myth of the Communist North attacking the non-Communist South deserves to be refuted, but to base the refutation on another myth--that the NLF was a broad coalition not controlled by the Communist Party--is to lean on a very weak reed.

Edwin Moise

History Department

Clemson University

From dduffy@email.unc.edu Mon Oct 18 15:28:05 1999

Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 22:19:12 -0400 (EDT)

From: Daniel Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong" (fwd)

Ed, I agree with your characterization of how many people used Viet Cong" during the 60s.

I do think that it is more proper for academics to call them "NFL". I reason by this analogy: both the Democrats and the GOP have pursued a consistent policy of US global dominance, but people who refer to them all as "US imperialists" in academic publications are marginalized. Fair's fair: call the communists what they called themselves.

"Viet Cong" is just a slur, here in the US. Hasn't anybody ever called you that? Among Parisian Vietnamese and in US Academic circles the term is "CIA." I'm not a communist and I don't do government work, but it is sometimes convenient, emotionally, politically, academically, for someone to stigmatize me as one or the other. It hurts my feelings and damages my life opportunities.

That's the principle, or the interest, of my opposition to painting anyone with a broad brush.

To sound a chord from your discipline rather than from mine, don't you think it is a deterministic, retrospective view of events to suggest that, of all the groups and individuals contesting for leadership of the revolution in the 60s, the Party as we know it now, which won, was always completely in command?

Dan Duffy

Graduate student

Department of Anthropology

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, NC

27599 USA

919-932-2624

<dduffy@email.unc.edu>

From proschan@indiana.edu Mon Oct 25 19:40:16 1999

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 23:26:38 +0700

From: Frank Proschan <proschan@indiana.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: RE: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong" (fwd)

Since Dan Duffy has invoked Democrats and Republicans (below) in the discussion of "Viet Cong," it might be instructive to examine how in the U.S. Republicans (at least for the last 15 years or so) insist on referring to their opponents as members of the "Democrat Party" rather than referring to them respectfully as members of the "Democratic Party." I'm not sure when this began, but it is quite careful and consistent--the deliberate refusal by Republicans to use the self-designation (and the official name) of their opponents has the effect (as I am certain it is intended to have the effect) of demeaning, denigrating, or derogating them (even though in itself there is not necessarily anything derogatory about "Democrat Party").

The whole thing becomes much more insidious when the misnomer "Democrat Party" begins to creep into the speech of careless broadcast journalists. If this insidious effect can be discerned even with a relatively innocuous or neutral term like "Democrat Party", it is even clearer when a term like "Viet Cong" was coined and deployed with the intention to demean or derogate--in fact, to demonize--those so labeled. This is separate and apart from any question of whether or to what extent the NLF/NFL was dominated by communists - one can make that claim discursively and dispassionately without resorting to shorthand name-calling. (The inverse can be seen in many Vietnamese-language historical studies where the RVN can never be designated neutrally under its own name, but has to be labeled as "puppet" or some other more derogatory term.) I would not presume to call Edwin "Eddie" or Dan "Danny" unless I knew that they themselves embraced and accepted the name--the same common courtesy seems to be due to members of the Democratic Party and NFL/NLF.

Frank Proschan

-

Research Associate

Indiana University

Temporary telephone in Hanoi, until 27 October 1999 - 826-5328 rm. 9, or fax

to 84-4-836-0351

Mail: Folklore Institute, 504 N. Fess, Bloomington, IN 47408-3890 USA

Office (no mail): 271 Aydelotte (Ashton Center)

Email: proschan@indiana.edu tel: 1-812-855-9073 fax: 1-812-855-4008

From giebel@u.washington.edu Mon Oct 25 19:43:09 1999

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 13:17:02 -0700

From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"

Dan, Tam Tai, and Frank have made important points in reply to Edwin's insistence on "Viet Cong," so I don't want to belabor the point. I also respect Edwin's assessment of the NLF, though I disagree with it on factual and historiographical grounds. Here just two question for Edwin: Why do you ignore the pejorative character of "VC" and its bloody consequences for tens of thousands of innocents, starting in the later 1950s? I have yet to meet a Vietnamese who would not agree that "Viet Cong" is pejorative along the lines of "commie." (Insist on "redskin" to expose the fact that these people had, indead, "red" skin? Insist on "krauts" to expose the fact that these guys were fed cabbage in the trenches?)

Why not say something like "Communist-led resistance" or "Communist-dominated NLF" (if you do feel that you have to expose the communist character of the resistance in the south) instead of appropriating a fighting word used by one side against the other? ("Viet Cong," by the way, predates the NLF.)

Also, I do not wish to be misrepresented. You write "...another myth-that the NLF was a broad coalition not controlled by the Communist Party" -- however, I wrote about "the variety of ideological commitments and post-war visions within the southern resistance" WITHOUT speaking to the extent of communist control at all (which is beside my point about "VC" anyway). And only by ignoring my argument about the historical *usage* of the term can you seriously imply that I "allow my terminology to be dictated by my political sympathies."

Regards,

Christoph

*********************************************

Christoph Giebel

Asst. Prof. of History & Int'l. Studies

Jackson School of International Studies

University of Washington, Box 35 36 50

Seattle, WA 98195 - 3650 (U.S.A.)

tel. 1-206-543-6885; fax 1-206-685-0668

*********************************************

From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 25 19:43:37 1999

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 17:18:25 -0400

From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"

At 01:17 PM 10/18/99 -0700, you wrote:

>Dan, Tam Tai, and Frank have made important points in reply to Edwin's

>insistence on "Viet Cong,"

I would not quite say I have insisted on the term. I have said I think it can appropriately used in some contexts. There are other contexts in which I use NLF.

>Why do you ignore the pejorative character of "VC" and its bloody

>consequences for tens of thousands of innocents, starting in the later 1950s?

I think you have the logic reversed, when you suggest that the bloodshed was a consequence of the term. I think the Saigon government called these people Viet Cong because it had decided to attack these people; it did not attack them because it had decided to call them Viet Cong.

>Why not say something like "Communist-led resistance" or

>"Communist-dominated NLF" (if you do feel that you have to expose the

>communist character of the resistance in the south) instead of

>appropriating a fighting word used by one side against the other? ("Viet

>Cong," by the way, predates the NLF.)

In many contexts, I prefer a two-syllable phrase to a seven-syllable or ten-syllable phrase.

> And only by ignoring my argument about the historical *usage* of the term can

>you seriously imply that I "allow my terminology to be dictated by my

>political sympathies."

I did not ignore your argument; I said quite a bit about the historical usage of the term, and what I said seemed to me in reasonable agreement with what you had said about the historical usage of the term. I was trying to make it clear that I did not think this history constituted an adequate reason not to use the term. And if you are going to suggest I have implied that you allow your terminology to be dictated by your political sympathies, I would really be grateful if you would quote, in full, the passage in which you think I have implied this.

The term "Viet Cong" means Vietnamese Communist. I do not think of it as carrying the insulting diminutive connotations of "Commie;" I think it is simply an abbreviation. The dispute over whether it was an appropriate term, during the war, was a dispute over whether it was an accurate term; those who rejected it, rejected the description of the revolutionary movement that it embodied. My attitude to the term is based not on my judgement of the *actions* of the people who used the term--I think I have made it clear that they used the term as an excuse for committing actions of which I disapprove--but on the accuracy of the term as a descriptive.

Edwin Moise

From giebel@u.washington.edu Mon Oct 25 19:43:52 1999

Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:18:22 -0700

From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"

Edwin,

>I think you have the logic reversed, when you suggest that the bloodshed

>was a consequence of the term. I think the Saigon government called these

>people Viet Cong because it had decided to attack these people; it did not

>attack them because it had decided to call them Viet Cong.

You continue your misrepresentation of my points. I said nothing to suggest the above -- simply stating that it brought dire consequences being branded "Viet Cong". This holds true for Diem's opponents of all shades as it does, for example, for the untold thousands of civilians in so-called "free fire zones."

>>Why not say something like "Communist-led resistance" or

>>"Communist-dominated NLF" ... instead of

>>appropriating a fighting word used by one side against the other?

>In many contexts, I prefer a two-syllable phrase to a seven-syllable or

> ten-syllable phrase.

Well, hurrah for historical accuracy, if this should be one of our profession's operating principles!

>The term "Viet Cong" means Vietnamese Communist. I do not think of it as

>carrying the insulting diminutive connotations of "Commie;" I think it is

>simply an abbreviation.

Last time I looked, "Vietnamese communist" translated to "nguoi cong san Viet Nam." Perhaps from now on you want to refer to them in abbreviated form as "Cong Viet"?

>The dispute over whether it was an appropriate

>term, during the war, was a dispute over whether it was an accurate term;

>those who rejected it, rejected the description of the revolutionary

>movement that it embodied.

But this is not a dispute over the accuracy of the term, nor is it a war-time dispute. My calendar says 1999, and my problem is the inappropriate use of "VC" as a supposedly historically neutral term. I maintain that in the country that saw HUAC in the 1950s and "popped some Charlie" in the 1960s, the continued use of "Viet Cong" shows a high degree of historical insensitivity while preventing deeper historical understanding.

Regards,

Christoph

*********************************************

Christoph Giebel

Asst. Prof. of History & Int'l. Studies

Jackson School of International Studies

University of Washington, Box 35 36 50

Seattle, WA 98195 - 3650 (U.S.A.)

tel. 1-206-543-6885; fax 1-206-685-0668

*********************************************

From eemoise@clemson.edu Mon Oct 25 19:47:20 1999

Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 12:10:59 -0400

From: Edwin Moise <eemoise@clemson.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: On "montagnard" -- howzabout "Viet Cong"

At 03:18 PM 10/18/99 -0700, you wrote:

>Edwin,

>>I think you have the logic reversed, when you suggest that the bloodshed

>>was a consequence of the term. I think the Saigon government called these

>>people Viet Cong because it had decided to attack these people; it did not

>>attack them because it had decided to call them Viet Cong.

>You continue your misrepresentation of my points. I said nothing to

>suggest the above -- simply stating that it brought dire consequences being

>branded "Viet Cong".

Chris:

Your exact words were "Why do you ignore the pejorative character of "VC" and its bloody consequences for tens of thousands of innocents, starting in the later 1950s?" This appeared to me very clearly to suggest that the bloodshed was a consequence of the term.

In my post, I quoted your words, and then followed this with my interpretation, making it easy for readers to see whether my interpretation was reasonable. When you wrote your reply, claiming that I had misinterpreted you, you deleted your original words, the ones you were claiming I had misinterpreted. This left readers unable to compare your original words with our two interpretations. I think it would have been better, when you were arguing that you had been misinterpreted, if you had not deleted your original words.

Edwin Moise

Christoph Giebel wrote:

Edwin,

Sorry about the late response. You are right that I should have included the section in question, although I think that those who care to follow this exchange were aware of my point. Also, I should have used the words "misreading" or "misunderstanding" instead of, in the "heat" of our exchange, the word "misrepresentation."

I still see no "reverse logic" in drawing attention to the violence visited upon people labeled with the pejorative and dehumanizing term "VC." And, respectfully, I find your distinction between <logic = "the Saigon government called these people Viet Cong because it had decided to attack these people"> vs. <reverse logic = "attack[ing] them because it had decided to call them Viet Cong"> terribly flawed.

*Both* scenarios, in fact, took place numerous times. Yes, terror against opponents --even for petty personal reasons-- could be "justified" by calling the victims "VC." But not only were certain people killed and then, as it were, labeled "VC," but whole groups of human beings were labeled "VC" and then killed. What about the US "policy" of "creating refugees"? An area was declared "free fire zone," and those folks who had not left "voluntarily" after a while were considered "VC," i.e., fair game.

The insidiousness of "Viet Cong" was its open invitation to abuse, torture, rape, kill people thus dehumanized without any compunction. Have you never come across those chilling, somewhat casual G.I. accounts along the lines of <the peasant ran from our helicopter gunship; must be Charlie; I killed her>?

"Viet Cong" -- you find it "simply an abbreviation"?

Regards,

Christoph

*********************************************

Christoph Giebel

Asst. Prof. of History & Int'l. Studies

Jackson School of International Studies

University of Washington, Box 35 36 50

Seattle, WA 98195 - 3650 (U.S.A.)

tel. 1-206-543-6885; fax 1-206-685-0668

*********************************************

From dduffy@email.unc.edu Mon Oct 25 19:49:51 1999

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 21:46:24 -0400 (EDT)

From: Daniel Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: bureaucracy & transgression; mapping & hailing; style sheet I'm struck that we can have such a spirited discussion among creative researchers on a matter of description. I have an interpretation. There is a dynamic in description of war, between bureacratic, technical speech and the speech of stigma and transgression.

Look at Douglas Pike's "Viet Cong." The sexy term shouts from the dustjacket, while within the covers the scholar is scrupulous not only to call them "NLF" but also to specify exactly what kind of NLF each one is. Look at the rationality of the area term "I-Corps" and listen to how obscene the term sounds when an angry man says he was there. Imagine a room full of naked young men, fresh from their lessons in the US Armys standardized nomenclature of the parts of the M-14, each holding his weapon in one hand and his penis in the other, chanting together "This is my rifle and this is my gun"

One need not engage with this dynamic in speaking of Viet Nam in the 60s. There is the lovely way a woman in Raleigh might speak of her uncle in Ha Noi, "Chu ay theo cach mang." To "follow the revolution" is a rich phrase. It suggests agency and adventure, like following the circus, but it also suggests the role of contingency and fate, like following a road. But to use verbs, as is my habit, is to avoid engaging with an important issue, the question of what makes these descriptions so vexing. I think that there is a confusion between two social practices that are also used as analytic procedures. Lots of the creative work of Vietnamese studies has been in what I call "mapping", the application of categories to the face of the earth and to the people on it. Most famously, the Vietnamese Communists have mapped the category of Viet Nam onto the planet. Scholars have adopted the social practice as an analytic procedure, to address the question of how that worked. To stress mapping is to pay less attention to hailing. Althusser drew attention to this practice of modernity with his anecdote of the police officer shouting "Hey, you" to a crowded street. The point is that both personalities and societies are constructed by people calling each other names, and responding. There is negotiation involved, and guessing.

Where mapping puts person into a category that is an identity, hailing calls and awaits a response. Hailing is not any more gentle or progressive than mapping, as a social practice or as an analytic procedure. In the 60s, while USMACV mapped the revolution with overlapping acetate representations of intelligence reports, the CIA hailed the revolutionaries by social science polling. But a concern with hailing does direct the researchers attention to the fact that people do one thing and then another, that individuals may be better perceived as members of networks of agency than of social categories, that one individual may be hailed by competing discourses, and so on. These facts, as well as the bureaucratic/trangressive dynamic, are strong reasons why scholars are not going to agree easily on how to label the categories on maps of Viet Nam.

Its worth trying, though. Correct language is the kind of thing people want from scholars, and the project is an interesting way to address some important issues. I am interested in promulgating a style sheet for academic press editors. So far we have "VC" and "Montagnard." An obvious addition is the practice of using "Vietnam" to mean some issues in the history of the United Sates. Any other suggestions?

Dan Duffy

Graduate student

Department of Anthropology

University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill, NC

27599 USA

919-932-2624

<dduffy@email.unc.edu>

From autopoy@brandx.net Tue Oct 26 12:02:24 1999

Date: Thu, 21 Oct 1999 16:37:10 -0700

From: Pensinger <autopoy@brandx.net>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: NLF versus VCI

Dear Christoph:

I enjoyed reading your exchange with Edwin Moise posted on the Vietnam Studies Group e-mail list. I think I heard a variant of that conversation every day I worked at the Combined Intelligence Center and Strategic Research and Analysis, MACV-HQ. The fact that that conversation is still going on speaks to the brilliance of German Communist and Lenin associate Willi Muenzenberg who developed the theory of double-stacking in mass associations and the "minimum-maximum program" that goes along with it. As you know, I don't read Vietnamese, but in 1968 I spent an enormous amount of time with the translators at Combined Document Exploitation Center driving them crazy with questions. I think close study of the documents on archive in the William Joiner Center and/or Suitland, MD (I suppose that, as was the case at CICV and CDEC in Saigon, there will often be included with the English language translation of the given document at least the Vietnamese language cover sheet) will clearly demonstrate that the NFLSVN did not exist in anything like what the general discourse in the history books has it: e.g., "Communist-dominated NLF". The kinds of documents that must be studied in order to understand how Willi Muenzenberg's program of double-stacking worked in Viet Nam are the bureaucratic nuts-and-bolts documents, not the policy statement documents generally relied upon by historians (which policy documents were largely internal kiem thao, a kind of party-chapter-level equivalent of the intracellular phe binh, and, having functions other than simple communication, in significant measure functioned as a form of self-propaganda in the process of consensus building). As a for-instance for nuts-and-bolts documents: "Effective April 14, 1966, Sau Dan is transferred from Chau Thanh District Finance and Economy Section to the Farmers' Proselytizing Section of Long An Province Committee." On the original cover sheet of this personnel transfer order in Vietnamese, all the main elements of information are given in alphanumeric code: Sau Dan is an AKA cover name; the district, the F & E section, the province, the proselytizing section will all be given in one of their half a dozen or so codes, which change periodically. This is a party document. A party member is being transferred from one party chapter to another at the same time he is being moved from one party committee to another and assigned within the committee to one of its functional element subsections. But nowhere in the document is the Peoples' Revolutionary Party mentioned. The document is printed on NFLSVN stationary (by stamp). In fact, I know of no evidence there ever was PRP letterhead anywhere in Viet Nam ever. So, one of the practical day-to-day aspects of double-stacking is a matter of what goes on paper and what does not.

There were a few crazy people out there (about a dozen I have known personally, and not many more than that in the history of the war) like Sam Adams who immersed themselves in detailed comparative analysis of these nuts-and-bolts documents. Once you have ascertained what alphanumeric codes go with what functional elements during a given historical window, say November-December 1967 in, say, Military Region 4, and you have, say, 10,000 captured documents like the above relative to the full range of bureaucratic variables (personnel transfers, change of job description, creation of new functional elements, boundary changes, new letter box number codes, reorganization of agencies within an echelon, creation of new echelons, institution of reverse representation in a given area, and so on) during the period of consideration, then you can seriously map out information flow channels and chains of command. When you do this in detail, and it was done with hundreds of thousands of documents between late-1966 and mid-1970 (involving a large number of people, when you consider all the steps involved in document capture, sorting, translation, de-coding and so on), one striking thing becomes apparent in relation to the discussion you recently had with Edwin Moise. At district, province, and military region echelons there was a permanent standing committee of the echelon NFLSVN committee that actually had real people associated with it. As far as I know, no one ever saw any document, however, that passed between the NFLSVN permanent standing committees at these echelons. No one ever saw any document pass between the given permanent standing committee and any of its supposed subordinate voluntary associations. In fact, the NFLSVN committees did not actually exist at these echelons, given that they had no membership at these echelons, which was seen in captured attendance rosters of national proselytizing conferences held under the auspicies of COSVN, the Central Office for South Viet Nam. The executive committee of the NFLSVN committee at these echelons did not actually exist either. Only the very small permanent standing committee existed and held very rare meetings in relation to public ritual. Where the people of South Viet Nam met the NFLSVN was through the village

NFLSVN committee, which actually sent paper work to its subordinate voluntary associations. Where the people of the world met the NFLSVN was via the national Central Committee of the NFLSVN. But no paper ever passed from that central committee to any of it subordinate village committees. Now, remember that every paper used throughout the resistance has the NFLSVN stamp on it. So every personnel transfer order (or any other directive related to any other bureaucratic variable) is as if it were an NFLSVN directive, but no such directive ever originated from an alphanumeric code for any NFLSVN committee. All such directives originated from alphanumeric codes for party committee functional elements. At the district, province, and military region echelons, the only people associated with the NFLSVN were those few people who sat on the permanent standing committee (about a dozen at each echelon) of the non-existent echelon NFLSVN Committee and its internally-nested but non-existent executive committee. So, to say "Communist-dominated NLF" is very far from what was actually the case within the organization. And the captured primary nuts-and-bolts documentation is lavish on the evolution of this organization back to the early 1950s, with considerable descriptive content in those documents relative to the period 1945 thru the early 1950s. Many of the large document stores captured during the late 1960s (particularly post-Tet '68 when the biggest finds occurred) contained considerable historical memory in the form of many old documents. I have seen no evidence of serious historian interest in this nuts-and-bolts material, however -- as was the case during the war, when only a few crazy people like Sam Adams were into it. Your statement that you wrote about "the variety of ideological commitments and post-war visions within the southern resistance" is extremely well taken. What is less well known is the variety of ideological commitments and visions of post-war Viet Nam within the Peoples' Revolutionary Party itself and how profoundly these have played themselves out in post-war Viet Nam. All the best,

--William L. Pensinger.

From wturley@siu.edu Tue Oct 26 11:39:44 1999

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 09:20:05 -0500

From: William S. Turley <wturley@siu.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: words 'n stuff

>I'm not even sure it was sticky rice, by the way. But maybe we could just

>"laisse tomber" as the French say and get back to work?

It is heartening to see some detachment and humor return to this discussion in the last couple of days. But before you laissé tomber, let me remind you of the lesson one can draw from the meaning of "Viet Cong" in common parlance among Vietnamese today, including younger members of the Party.

Time and events have eroded its original resonances and meaning, even for those whom it originally disparaged. Many of the differences and arguments among you are more properly traced to the same process than to politically incorrect ideas, erroneous interpretations, or evil intent. Such is the fate of words, including the neutral ones you are trying to find or invent in the present.

For those of you who wish to get back to work on the grubby stuff of politics and economy, allow me to note the recent publication of "The Politics and Economics of Transition to an Open Market Economy in Viet Nam," by James Riedel and William S. Turley (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Development Centre, Technical Paper No. 152, September 1999). It is available through the OECD or at http://www.oecd.org/dev/publication/tp1a.htm.

Cheers,

Bill Turley

William S. Turley

Department of Political Science

Southern Illinois University

Carbondale, Illinois, USA 62901-4501

phone: (618) 453-3182

fax: (618) 453-3163