Sang says he and his comrades risked their lives so Viet Nam would be "free from exploiters and bourgeoisie." Do you think this is true? What would have been different if the US had never intervened?

Sáng tells his mother that he and his comrades risked their lives to bring justice to their country, and shed their blood so his country would be "free from exploiters and bourgeoisie." Do you think this is true? Do you think they accomplished this goal? What do you think would have been different and what would have turned out the same if the United States had never intervened in the region's politics?

I think it's true that people felt compelled to get rid of foreign influence in their country, after being an occupied nation for so long. I can also see why they'd frame it as being free from "exploiters and bourgeoisie," as communism and socialism were certainly gaining traction during that time period. However, I think that in any society some will always be exploiters and some will always be better off than the majority of the population (making them bourgeoisie in some people's eyes), so in some respects Sang's reasoning is naive.

If the US hadn't gotten involved I still think the country would have had a revolution that killed a lot of people, and likely would have ended up with the same system of government it has now. Fewer people would have died, the country wouldn't have experienced food shortages to the same extent, and certainly no one would have been impacted by Agent Orange.

Sang speaks for the many citizens of places in which First World countries use war to impose their own way of life on others. The idea that a form of government is superior because it's the one under which you live is arrogant and untrue. Cultures and countries evolve in their own image shaped by religion, geography and history. If we look at the mess the western nations have made of Indo-China, Africa, the Mid-East, and their own indigenous nations, it's clear that ignorant interference and thoughtless creation of national boundaries regardless of the people within those boundaries has created war, poverty, and chaos. Pure socialism may have been the best outcome for the Vietnamese people and it may have evolved naturally without western intervention. Instead, lives and traditions have been lost while VietNam exists in a morass of avowed Communism, people working in factories to provide cheap goods to our capitalist society, and the destruction of much of the tradition of village and agrarian life.

Vietnam was the victim of foreign government exploitation and imperialism repeatedly from Japan, France, the British, China, Russia and America. I suspect Vietnamese history is rife with imperialistic designs and exploitations for centuries. It has lots of natural resources and yet retains a character of its own. The Vietnamese people have struggled to maintain their country. They have succeeded at least on some level. There is still a Vietnam.

This is the theme of all war to me.
One belief system pushing against another belief system.
Propganda.
Exploitation.
The base boards of brainwashing.
It's an everlasting theme and why everything becomes so convoluted and complicated in war.
We let our beliefs become more important than that of the other so much so that the character forsook his own family for a theoretical way of being rather than existing in the arms of his kin.
I have read so much historical fiction (more in the WW2 genre) but it always follows the same thread. Cruelty is the cost of reform and I am glad that there was a brother represented in this category because I feel that it is truly the crux of war and why it continues to happen and why history will continue to repeat itself.
It is intrinsic in our society as well.
Right at all costs.
It is an ego game, it is a masculine energy and won't be rectified until we are willing to lay ourselves down and pick up a more open state of mind.
This character really held that mantel of what happens when the mind is closed and the ego rules.

Sang's statement is naive given the fact that North and South Vietnam were reunified as a communist state in 1975. Despite its growth, Vietnam remains challenged by corruption, poverty,
pollution and a poor human rights record including persecution of religious groups, human rights advocates and intensifying restrictions of civil liberties.

The U.S. should have never intervened in the Vietnam war. At the very least, we would not have lost so many American lives in a war we couldn't win. The effects of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians still exist today in terms of genetic defects.

Americans did not belong in this war. I have many clients who are proud Viet Nam vets and most are broken- mentally, physically, or both. And yet, even though I have compassion for them, I am mostly left with the feeling that they sacrificed so much for so little and so much wrong.