Once the Viet Minh forces, under the leadership of the legendary general
Vo Nguyen Giap, had dealt a death blow to the French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the Eisenhower administration in Washington effectively decided to take on the white man's burden.
Le clou des relations d'amitie et de solidarite algero-vietnamiennes etait d'une part la lutte pour l'independance nationale des Vietnamiens representee aussi par les noms Ho Chi Minh et
Vo Nguyen Giap connus de tous que par ceux de localite Vietnam et Dien Bien Phu et, d'autre part la similitude de la situation des deux pays.
The military mastermind behind Vietnam's victories against the French and the Americans, General
Vo Nguyen Giap, labelled China's 1979 invasion as "dirty" and "cowardly" and a betrayal of socialist internationalism.
It was to the credit of Marshall easily among the greatest military minds since Clausewitz and
Vo Nguyen Giap that he listened very carefully to the arguments made, summarizing it as a call for the US military to leave Iraq altogether, although US tactics changed not a whit thereafter.
On the other side was General
Vo Nguyen Giap. He had fought against the Japanese Army which surrendered in 1945.
Vo Nguyen Giap rather than from some feeble cub politicians.
The man was General
Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietnamese military genius who had led his country to victory, first against France's attempt to reimpose colonial rule in the aftermath of the Second World War, then against the unparalleled might of the United States when it subsequently sought to permanently divide Vietnam and install a client state in Saigon.
(There were eyewitnesses and photographs; a Vietnamese 12.7 mm machine-gun round lodged in Maddox's superstructure; and in 1984 General
Vo Nguyen Giap told former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara the attack was deliberate.) The lesson for all of us is that, in professional ethics, theories are interesting but facts matter, usually decisively.
Viet Minh sources are limited to contemporary documents captured by the French, prisoner of war interrogations, and the writings of Ho Chi Minh and
Vo Nguyen Giap. Maps, tables, figures, and photographs abound to support the text.
Boot also covers insurgent invaders, like Mongols and Turks, who occupied Europe and the Middle East, the home-grown irregulars who supported the American Revolution, the Spanish guerrillas who fought Napoleon's best, as well as the methods of South Africa's Boers, the IRA, Mao Zedong, and
Vo Nguyen Giap.
They were not aware that in April 1973, Le Duan and General
Vo Nguyen Giap had formed a secret committee to plan the conquest of South Vietnam within a two-year period.