Ho Chi Minh is also known as uncle Ho by the Vietnamese people. A city was named after him and according to Time magazine he is one of the top 100 people of the world.


Ho Chi Minh
Life
Saigon

so what about him ?

He is a well- known Vietnamese.

lol, depending on whom you asked, he could be well known or well hated. To me, he is just another revolutionary and like all revolutionaries, they have their good and bad sides. Every freakin person has their own freakin agenda. Sigh.

a city was named after him? isn't it more like he named the city after himself????? stillll most ppL calll it saigon .... i dont know anyone call ho chi minh.. excpt when they abbreviate HCM ....

Um, comparisons btwn HCM n Saigon r up in the post HCM or Saigon. Oh yeah, most of the ppl that were born b4 the Viet war, and those whose parents where South, say Saigon.

It's amazing how the Southerners dislike Ho Chi Minh who came from the North.

Over here in the States, especially in California, Southern Vietnamese really hate (yes, truly using this strong word) Ho Chi Minh. Even some Chinese who had to escape from Vietnam to avoid socialism hated Ho Chi Minh.

Yet you talk to the Northeners, they love him.

It's the same case in China. Many people dislike Mao Tse Tung because they are afraid their wealth would be confiscated and they escaped to Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere. Those who left still have a mistrust of Chinese communism.
The progress of China is a subject worth discussing in the Chinese culture section.

But all in all, here is the question.

Did Ho Chi Minh serve the country well ? And is the Vietnam today better than Vietnam before socialism ?

the name HO CHI MINH itself is "CHINESE" also
and he personally idolized MAO ZE DONG.....he in many ways were like
mao's second in command.....same with kim il sung of north korea........
him and his followers were pattern
the way of thinking and way of doing things behind mao ze dong until
his sudden unexpected death and then his successor went totally seperate
way with china

HO equals to "HU" in chinese......his name purnounce like HU ZHI MING in chinese the same MING as yao ming's MING

i think vietnam was much better bEFORE ho chi minh and his communists came into vietnam.
In theory his way might've been good but in practice, he probably just made everything worse.. thats just my opinion .. because.. vietnam is still a very poor country anyway you're either rich or poor

^ I dunno... if Ho Chi Minh wasnt around then Vietnam might have been still under French rule. I think its better the Vietnamese rule themselves than having a puppet leader under foreign rule. plus Vietnam is changing a little bit now just like China so who knows what will happen now. i think Ho served Vietnam well in the sense that he kicked foriegners @$$. but thats all.

Ho Chi Minh i think was a nationalist before a communists. Ho Chi Minh actually went to the US for help. He even quoted from the Declaration of Independence. But the US supported the french. so Ho Chi Minh went all commie on them.

There's a dude who got stabbed in the back constantly because he put the ho chi minh picture in front of his store in cali

Ngo Dinh Diem was no pupet president. He even refused US military to take over the South, later how coincidence he got assasinated


He was born into a Mandarin house of Nguyen dynasty

Ho Chi Minh's real name was Nguyen Tat Thanh. I don't know when or why he changed his name. Gotta look it up.

Is she pure-bred Chinese? She looks Korean to me.

I heard Ho Chi Minh had a Chinese wife, but later he abandoned her and went for a Russian wife.
Any Chinese here, please clarify.

who is she

most likely your sig. i dont see any korean in her. must be an idiot.

Yeah i heard about that. some ppl are sensitive to it because of the war and everything. even in america you cant express yourself freely without social consequences. anyways what do you think of Ho? what do you think of Diem? Diem i think wasnt a very good leader. he persecuted buddhists i think because he was catholic. he ended up making a lot of enemies. but yeah the main reason he was assassinated was because he didnt do what the US wanted him to do. That shows how much the US wanted to control the whole situation. all the south wanted was better weapons.

The whole vietnam/american war was a lose lose situation. on the one hand you got Ho Chi Minh and his commies and on the other hand you got a buncha foreigners who want to exploit vietnam. at least there's peace now and no foreigners. so hopefully the government will change a little bit to be more free.

What the heck are you talking about?
A Chinese can look like either Korean or Vietnamese and vice versa. What's wrong with that? Is it better than what you said "they don't look Vietnamese" in my topic Miss Vietnam, remember? Fool!

Just going by what you said. What’s your problem? Is it hypocrisy?

If you guys have too much "Chinese pride" in you, take it to somewhere else. This is Vietnamese chat.

Please show some respects for our Vietnamese people.

I respect Ho chi min and what he his nation.

Ho Chi Minh was that communist right??

don't know much bout him but my family hates him

and yes...we're from the south

QUOTE

Lady-Rachel Posted on Jan 14 2004, 02:08 PM
Ho Chi Minh was that communist right?? 

um, I think you need to learn some history about your home land, Rachel

Seriously, if all you know about Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh was "that communist", you got a lot of reading to do ... For all your viet pride and stuff, I am shocked you don't know more about the recent history of your own country.
Steve
PS Please don't think I am just trying to start an arguement. I am not. I am just expressing genuine suprise at your lack of knowledge on the events surrounding Ho Chi Minh, especially as these events are probably the reason why you and your family now live in The Netherlands! - a long way from Vietnam

That's a typical trait of Asian Americans. They were educated in the American sense that "all communists are evil" and "we must hate communists" that type of simple logic.
It's ok to hate Ho Chi Minh, hating him without any knowledge about him but "he was that communist", then it's quite senseless.

Amen to that, my brotha ;-)

From what I read, Ho Chi Minh spent a long time in China studying before returning to Vietnam to start the revolutionary. That's the only thing I know about him that hasn't been brought up yet.

Is Ho Chi Minh good? That's completely subjective. Just remember, history is written by the victor. In this sense, the victor isn't necessary the side that wins a battle or a war, but the side that has the most power. Today, U.S. has the most power and therefore everyone is infuenced by the "American view".

I don't hate him... why hate a great leader just because of what he believes in?? Anyway of course we ABCs are supposed to be brainwashed into believing that communist are evil -

Indeed. But the ho chi mihn communist question is just ridiculous. Especially from a vietnamese. It doesnt get worse than that.

communism is not evil, but it's the people who use it for their exploitation are evil: Ho Chi Minh, Mao, and Stalin. namely, they are nothing but butchers. And for that, people hate communist---not because what they believe in but because of what they do. Look at north korea, their people have been eating mad-cow beefs donated ever since the discovery a mad cow.



if you look it in reverse, you are a typical communist.

-------
most and all of the vietnamese refugee hate Ho Chi Minh for the catastrophy he brought upon Vietnam and the Vietnamese People. whether it's his fault or not, it doesn't matter. it was the path that he chose, and so it is his to bear. Just look at the vietnam-reality: poor as f u c k. more and more village girls are going into prostitution; little kids are being exploited day by day while the "supreme leader" are getting fat. And whose fault is it? Communism. To be more specific---Ho Chi Minh. Uncle Ho's dream has never been so apparent.

Evil? Who are you, Bush Jr.? There are no good and evil in the world, there's only a gray area. As much as Bush Jr. would like the world to believe, we don't live in the bible world where there's good vs. evil. Yes, Ho, Mao, and Stalin made many bad decisions but can you honestly say they contributed NOTHING to their own society?



That makes no sense whatsoever.

so...say Mao killed 30 million of his own people. stalin killed aroun 17 mil, and Ho is merciful enough to kill only a less than a million. If you say that's the grey area of nothing evil nor good, i'm sorry to say it to you, but you think like Lucy (it's not the blond i'm referring to).

it's not the question of whether or not they contribute anything to their society because anybody, being a part of a society, contribute something, but in their cases (mao, Ho, and Stalin), they did NOTHING good, such as killing their own people in the name of their radical ideology, and that's the difference.

Please don't throw random numbers around without evidence to back you up. This is how facts get manipulated.

I don't know this "Lucy" you're refering to.

I never meant to suggest that if an individual contributed enough to his or her society, it'd be OK for them to kill people. All I said was, you can't ignore the good deeds a person has done and just focus on the negative, and vice versa.

They did "NOTHING" good? How did you come to that conclusion? I can think of at least one major good thing that each one of them did right now.

Mao: Stablized China after 200 years of war and conflict brought on by both foreign invaders and internal rebellions. Created a strong military to keep foreign invaders out. Shaped China to become a strong nation who would keep the U.S. from taking over the whole world.

Stalin: Eliminated the great wealth gap between the rich and the poor in Russia. Established the U.S.S.R. who eventually kept the world in balance along with the U.S. No matter what you say, a multipolar world will always be better than a unipolar world, we need check and balance.

Ho: Kicked the French out of Vietnam. South Vietnamese government was extremely pro-French that they even spoke French. If South Vietnam won, Vietnam would be another Japan or South Korea, U.S.-controlled puppet state, although South Korean have been more rebellious against the U.S. lately, the S.K. government is still quite obidient.

Again, I'm not saying Mao, Stalin, and Ho are good or bad. I'm just making sure both their good and bad deeds are acknowledged.

I agree. These children on this eat the american propaganda like fine candy. Though most of the men that were mentioned were brutal or insane they did contribute greatly to their countries. This is worth respect. Though millions died under mao by starvation look at the contributions he made to china. Stalin killed 27 million russian in the world war two. But look what he did for country. Piss peasants became a super power and kept american in line. Of course the americans did not like this do they only focus on the bad. Terra ate each ounce of their propaganda.

calling Mao a murdurer is like accusing Hoover because many people died during his term.

I never called mao a murderer and I do not think that he was. I actually really respect mao. He looked ridiculous but he is to be respected.

I was referring to those "American" kids.

Yeah right. Ho Chi Minh died before the Vietnam war ended so how can he name the city after him when he already died.

So what if they name it after him, the proper name now is Ho Chi Minh City. When the wars are won the victor is always right.

Hmmm

Who said anything about communism? Anyway, I think it's possible some people hate Ho Chi Minh because he resorted to communism.

Yeah

Bryon has a point. During the Cold War era, many smaller countries had to choose between one of the two factions: American "Democracy" or Soviet "Communism". I used the quotation marks because it wasn't really about democracy vs. communism and even then, communism wasn't truly communism.

Fact is according to many Western essays the Americans had killed 3 million vietnamese by massacres and stuff. It was mostly genocide. The amount of atrocities commited by the Vietnamese government today is nowhere as near as the amount of damage the West did. Ho Chi Minh could have made a better Vietnam if he were still alive. Again he did not seek fame or glory just wanted to free his people.

My father also told me in his journals after he died he confessed in believing their was a God. A communist that believes in God. Wow. I don't think he is as bad as boat people Vietnamese make him out to be.

Believing in God doesn't automatically make him a good person. It makes him a religous person is all. Religous people can be evil as well.

I know but him believing in God does help clean away his portrayal as an evil commie by the American Vietnamese. If you read his life he really had mostly a modest,humble life. Communist today in Vietnam are nothing like what he wanted.

I have no doubt about that, but saying that he believes in God shouldn't affect his image. Saying that he believes in God only describes his religous preference.

Actually, saying that he believes in God may actually hurt his image. Christianity and Islamic religions are quite different from Asian religions such as Confucism, Daoism, and Buddhism because their attitude is "if you're not with us, you're against us." Christian's belief is that if you don't believe in God, you will go to hell. Islamic believes are more straightforward, they kill you if you don't believe in the Koran. They have the Koran in one hand and a sword in the other, this is their symbol. So in a way, you can say that a Christian or a Muslim is more likely to force others to believe in what they believe.

Clarification: Nothing wrong with Christianity. I respect all religions but the doctrines of each religion usually doesn't acknowledge another religion.

A basic Confucian value states that "treat others as you'd like to be treated." A religion doesn't have to acknowledge other religions in order to exist, it only has to do that to be a reasonable religion. The reason why there's so much hostility between Christians and Muslims, which led to the Crusade, is because both religions believe they are the only one "true" religion. This is very dangerous thinking. Not only is it self-righteous, it's narrow-minded and illogical.

I was once baptized as a Christian but I quit the religion six months later after I've learned a little too much about it. There are many Christian values that are good at philosophical level. But to believe in something without proof is too much of a blind faith for me. Also, I despise the self-righteousness.

Sorry but in Christianity one can only get to God through Jesus Christ. Sorry but it was Jesus who made the world what it is today. No one in the world has influenced the world as much as he has.

That's one of the illogical parts.

You know why Christianity has the most believers in the world today? It was because of European imperialism. Europeans committed genocide on the Native-Ameicans in both North and South Americas and forced those who survived into Christians. They did the same in Africa except they didn't kill as many people as they did in the Americas. Oh right, don't forget Australia and New Zealand.

I won't deny that Jesus was a good man and I won't deny his sacrifices. But to say that "my God is the only God and all your gods are false gods" just digusts me. If you don't want others to tell you that your god is a false god and what you belief in is wrong and evil then why would you do that to others? Eastern religions, with the exception of Buddhism, are based on philosophy and logic. If they ever do worship anyone, it would be their ancestors who provided them with what they have today, not a mythical figure.

It says so right in the bible that there is only one God. Do you expect a true Christian to say there are more Gods and thus contradicting what it says in the bible?

So the Bible is the "holy book"? Do you know how narrow-minded that is? To say there's only one of anything automatically kills off all possible alternates. I don't really blame the Christians for their behaviors, I believe the blame should go to whoever came up with the idea of "I'm right, everyone else is wrong."

Uh huh.