Real reason for Vietnam War was rice

Recently, Cambodia captured Nuon Chea who was Pol Pots No. 1 man during the genocide of the 1970's. Cambodia wants to have him tried in a U.N genocide court. One can bet the farm that he will not be tried in Cambodia or in an international United Nations court. A trial would expose the real reasons for the war in Cambodia and in Vietnam. Russia, China and the United States will do everything to block a trial.

The only crime of the Vietnam War was not telling our troops the reason for the war. The Vietnam War wasn't fought because of oil or gold - of which that country has very little. The war was fought because of rice! South Vietnam was called the rice bowl of Asia. There was enough rice in South Vietnam and a part of Cambodia to feed all of China. Fifty percent of the population of this planet uses rice for 80 percent of their diet.

During China's "great leap" forward between 1958 and 1961, over 6 million Chinese died of starvation. Mao Tse-tung attempted to industrialize China to build a defense industry, but China's food to people ratio was about one to one. When the people were taken from the farms and put into the factories, they started starving to death. Rice makes up about half of Chine's food supply.

Up until 1958, China and Vietnam had very little in common. Vietnam celebrates four days a year for the battles they fought against the Chinese in ancient wars. North Vietnam wanted guns and ammunition to take back the South. China was very willing to give those supplies to the North to get access to the rice it needed to industrialize.

The Soviets, in the beginning of the war, demanded hard currency for arms, so there was very little arms coming from the Soviet's until early 1963. In case anyone has forgotten, this hard currency demand by the Soviets during the Korean War was the cause of the rift between the Soviets and China, which existed till the break-up of the Soviet Union.

At first, I don't think the Soviets realized what the Chinese were after. By 1963 the Soviets realized that if the Chinese got access to the rice in South Vietnam and Cambodia, they could once again start an expansionist program against their neighbors! At the time, the Chinese had a 6 million man army on the Soviet border. The Soviets had 126 artillery divisions, and they knew all that would do was stop the Chinese troops for about three days. After that, the Soviets would have to use nuclear weapons.

After 1963, the Soviets became the major supplier of arms to North Vietnam. Most of the arms came by rail across China from the Soviets. China would stop some of the trains and put Chinese markings on weapons and ship them to North Vietnam.

Vietnam was a war of attrition. We could have bounced the rubble in Hanoi and in six months brought the North to their knees. By early 1965, the Chinese were busy tearing themselves apart with their Cultural Revolution that had got out of control. What the U.S. didn't want to do, was give the Chinese an issue that would unite them. If the Chinese troops had been sent to aid the North Vietnamese, nuclear weapons would have been used to stop them.

If this scenario had played out, there were no assurances that the Soviets would have unleashed their nuclear weapons. If the escalation had played out fully, we are talking about wiping out a third of the world’s population! Once one sees the potential of this war, is it any wonder politicians were willing to adopt a go-slow approach to the war?

In 1973, a cease-fire accord was signed but never implemented. In 1974, a liberal Congress cut the money for the war. By the time the Communists overran the South, in 1975, only a few hundred American men and women were left in Vietnam and they were advisers.

The Soviets filled the power vacuum that the United States once held in Southeast Asia, but the Chinese still had an ace in the hole to get the rice they so desperately needed. For five years the Chinese supported the Communist guerrilla war in Cambodia and in 1975 Pol Pot and his Khmer Rogue, took control of Cambodia. Pol was believed to be of Chinese ancestry and had little feeling for the Cambodians.

The Delta that was so rich for farming rice in Vietnam also extended into Cambodia for hundreds of square miles. The communist Pol Pot government then set about emptying the cities of all the people to plant rice for shipment to China. Within four years, Pol Pot had killed (or starved to death) over four million Cambodians.

The Soviets became paranoid watching the millions of tons of rice going into China and convinced the Vietnamese (in 1978) to attack Cambodia in order to stop the rice shipments. When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, the Chinese invaded four northern provinces of Vietnam. This kept pressure off Pol Pot and kept the rice coming.

North Vietnam, using many American weapons left over from the Vietnam War, repulsed the Chinese in the north. Vietnam overran Cambodia with Soviet help. In 1989, Vietnam withdrew its forces, not because they wanted to, but because they could no longer afford to occupy the country. The Soviets had run out of money. The doors that President Nixon opened with China could not have happened at a better time. Market oriented reforms were initiated in China in 1985, and China could now trade with the world to get what it needed.

The object of the Vietnam War was to keep rice from China at a time when China was in an expansionist mode. I say this to every Vietnam veteran in this country: "You won the war. You accomplished what your country wouldn't tell you about. Your pain, nightmares, and sorrow were NOT in vain no matter what the liberal cowards would have you believe."

Never would I advocate harming any woman, and I never have, but I would really like to press Donna Shalala's nose against the Vietnam Memorial Wall and have her repeat her statement that " we didn't send our best and brightest sons to Vietnam." Shalala, and her elitist groupies that controlled the White House, have finally slipped into history, contributing nothing to this country.

There are those who say we lost the war. For two years before the communists overran Saigon, there were no combat troops in Vietnam. Sure we still had advisers; the South Vietnamese were doing the bulk of the fighting.

The North Vietnamese, Cuba and the Soviet Union orchestrated the anti-war demonstrations in this country. On College campus across the country. The demonstrators were being used like puppets, and to this day, most of the demonstrators had no idea of what was really going on!

The anti-war protesters should talk to the survivors of the Communist retraining camps in South Vietnam. Tens of thousands died in these camps. The ones, who either escaped or were let loose, had lost their hair and their teeth due to lack of protein in these camps of horror. In the two years after the Vietnam War, the Communists killed more people in Southeast Asia than the 10 years of war in Vietnam.

RED CHANDLER

Yuma