It's odd indeed that America cannot seem to move on from the war it lost in Vietnam 30 years ago this week. Revisionists are busy re-fighting the campaign with ludicrous claims that they never lost the war. Do they ever look at a map? Meanwhile, the Vietnamese people are moving on and moving up. While Vietnam remains poor by Western standards, it has the highest growth rate after China and is a young, dynamic and determined economy. Oil, gas, textiles and agricultural produce are its main source of income and is making strong inroads into the IT sector.

This weekend just past, the Vietnamese celebrated the end of the 'American war' when 30 years ago on April 30th 1975 communist tanks broke down the gates of the American embassy and declared victory over the American occupation. How could this have happened? How could the mighties army earth lose to what was essentially a nation of poorly armed peasants?

Some in the US still cannot accept that they lost the war in Vietnam, claiming that they didn't lose a single military engagement and therefore could not have been beaten. They prefer to comfort themselves by claiming that it was the fault of 'liberal pacifists' and weak politicians back home, and that had the will been there they would surely have won. Such pathetic revisionism reveals a deep fault line in American society. This was shown in the recent poisonous American election, where false allegations of Kerry's service record almost definitely cost him the presidency. Thirty years later Vietnam is still an issue in American politics and minds.

The Tet offensive in 1968 was the turning point in the Vietnamese war. The new year offensive saw the North Vietnames forces simultaneously attack 80 different towns and cities, including the Southern capital Saigon where they took the American embassy. They were beaten back, but only temporarily, for the Tet offensive was to become the beginning of the end of the American war. Up until the Tet offensive, a gullible American public has been upbeat about the war. Before Tet, military spokesmen spoke of 'light at the end of the tunnel', the compliant media dutifully reported how weak the North Vietnamese forces were but suddenly, there they were in the capital, storming the American embassy. The truth began to sink in. When General Westmoreland called for an additional 200,000 troops to sustain the wat effort in Vietnam as a consequence of the Tet offensive, public support for the war simply crumbled. Images of a South Vietnamese General shooting a prisoner in the head on the streets of Saigon revealed the brutal nature of the puppet regime that the Americans were propping up. Americans suddenly became aware that they had been indiscriminately bombing southern Vietnamese villages, and now they saw the USAF bombing southern Vietnamese cities.

The biggest mistake the Americans made was in not realising that they weren't just fighting communists they were fighting patriots, people that wanted simply to be free.

The Americans had lost the stomach for the fight, and it is this that the right wing apologists refuse to come to terms with. They forget that wars have many dimensions to them, that wars are not just about hardware and fighting. There are social, political, idealogical and economic as well as miltary aspects. The Tet offensive showed the American people that they were fighting an unjust war, a war that they could not afford ecomically, a war that with a few exceptions the rest of the world did not support, a war that was costing their sons and daughters libes and a war that was not going well. Less than two years after the Tet offensive the Americans begin to withdraw troops from Vietnam, and negotiate with the North, reducing the number and nature of the bombings in the North.

In 1973 the Americans withdrew most of their troops from Vietnam, and in 1975 the last of the Americans fled the country altogether. The folly of a pointless war which cost 3 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American lives was laid bare for all to see. The Vietnamese had seen off the French and the Americans, and would soon repulse the Chinese.

It's important for the apologists to come to terms with the defeat in Vietnam, because unless the lessons that history teaches us are understood, they are doomed to be repeated. Today, thirty years on the Americans are fighting and are losing another unwinnable war in Iraq. Once more, upbeat reports of a 'decrease' in insurgency attacks abound, even while they are raging the length and breadth of Iraq and conmen, religious fanatics and their families are assuming control of the country through so called elections.

The Vietnamese don't care about Iraq. Astonishingly, they bear little grudge against the Americans. This is largely because most Vietnamese weren't even born when the war came to an end. They want to and are, moving on and up. While infantile right wing American fantasists dream about what might have been even while they repeat their folly in Iraq.

Thirty years on, the Vietnamese celebrate their right to free their land from hostile occupation forces and their right for self-determination and liberty.

yechydda,