Word: nguyens
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...timing, says General Vo Nguyen Giap, the top North Vietnamese commander, "the key was April 21, when Thieu resigned. Then I knew, we all agreed, we had to attack immediately, seize the initiative." That night at the NVA's forward headquarters in Loc Ninh, 75 miles from Saigon, General Van Tien Dung, commanding the armies moving on the capital, gave the go-ahead to start the climactic offensive...
...General Tran Van Tra, operations commander for the final push, ordered his columns to move into the city from five different directions.They had waited, says Tra, because "our main purpose was to seize Saigon, not to kill people. We didn't want to stop the evacuation." In fact, Nguyen Huu Hanh, who had come out of retirement as an ARVN brigadier general to join Big Minh's government, says "it was our troops" that fired at least some of the tracer bullets so prominent in accounts of the helicopter flights the previous night. "They were angry...
...party leader Le Duan promised a television and a refrigerator in every home within 10 years. Instead, there followed what Vietnamese call "the 10 bad years," during which orthodox communist policies and a costly occupation of Cambodia made Vietnam one of the world's poorest countries. In 1986 Nguyen Van Linh, a southerner, took over with a call for gradual reform. In 1989, as communism seemed to be collapsing elsewhere in the world, Vietnam flung open its doors to foreign investment. The economy has been growing at an annual rate of 7% to 8% over the past three years...
...health care, however, and many now keep their children at home to work the land. Peasants are beginning to pour into Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City in search of work. Most don't find it. "Before, we launched a war against foreign aggressors," General Vo Nguyen Giap told Time. "Now we must launch a war against poverty...
...epic struggle, but this time a kind of Paradise Regained. "You have to strain to find the war now," he says. "And it's beside the point." Everywhere, the economy is booming, and, says Gibney, "everyone wants a piece of Vietnam's future." Even legendary war hero General Vo Nguyen Giap, now in his 80s, who used to talk of nothing but the war, is snapping up books about development. "Vietnam," Giap told Gibney, "will be one of the key topics of the 21st century...