Vietnams Declaration of Independence - Case Study Example

Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence The service Ho is referring here is the help he accorded the United States’ Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as the U.S found it difficult to fight the Japanese. During the last year of the WW II, the liberation movement of Vietnam, Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh was seeking freedom and independence not only from the French but also from the Japanese (Bradley, 2000). Since the United States had tried in futility to defeat the Japanese, the OSS turned to Ho to assist them in organizing an intelligence network in Indochina to help fight the Japanese as well as help the U.

S spy group rescue American pilots downed in the area. Additionally, the Japanese coup against the French meant that the OSS was cut from the flow of intelligence from its base in Indochina, and, therefore, it persuaded Ho to work with the United States to defeat a common enemy. In March 1945, Vietnamese guerrillas rescued a U.S pilot who had been gunned down in Vietnam. In fact, Ho took the initiative to escort the pilot back to Fourteenth Air Force base in Kunming (Bradley, 2000). One month later, on April 27, Captain Patti requested Ho Chi Minh to allow the OSS team work with the Annamites with the intention of gathering intelligence on the Japanese.

Ho agreed to the Captain’s request and set up a camp in the jungle that would later be Viet Minh’s headquarters. It is worth noting that all requests made to Ho by the United States, he agreed to. 2 In his DoI speech, Chi Minh used the second paragraph of America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence to assert his point. He states that Vietnam’s wish to be a sovereign nation is in agreement with the principles of humanity and equality. He further states that all Vietnamese, like any other sovereign citizens, have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Bradley, 2000).

According to Ho, this statement means that all men, irrespective of any differences, have a are all born equal at birth and that freedom cannot be taken away, meaning the rights at from birth are inalienable. In emphasizing these principles, Ho states that the same principles were used by the United States in the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Ho goes on to point out that the same principles were the foundation of the 1791 Declaration of the French Revolution on the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

The French declaration mainly states that all men are born free, have equal rights, and must at all times be free with equal rights. If these principles were reasserted in the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of French Revolution, then they should be applied to Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence as well (Bradley, 2000). 3 While the French committed major atrocities in Vietnam, some were very severe and, therefore, warranted Vietnam’s independence. First and foremost, the killing of uprising Vietnamese fighters to the extent that Ho refers to the blood shed as rivers of blood.

This means that the French massacred Vietnam citizens with due disregard for humanity. Secondly, Ho states that the French built more prisons than school a move that consequently saw the number of POWs grow massively (Bradley, 2000). As a result, the families were left without fathers and the country became weak. Thirdly, they weakened the economy of Vietnam by robbing peasants of their rice fields, mines, forests as well as raw materials. These three crimes were so severe that Ho was justified to ask Vietnam’s allies to help the country fight for its independence.

References Bradley, M. (2000).Imagining Vietnam and America: The making of postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.