Cuba and Vietnam

So Similar, So Different!
{Monday, April 10th, 2017}

       Often on this Cubaninsider blog I've excoriated America's television networks, including CNN, for evolving primarily into propaganda machines instead of the responsible news outlets they certainly have the resources and wherewithal to be. Networks like MSNBC, for example, spend 24 hours-a-day with anchors such as O'Donnell, Maddow, and Hayes trying desperately to destroy the Trump presidency instead of even making an effort to deliver the news. During daytime and prime-time hours with anchors such as Harlow, Burnett, Cooper, Lemon, etc., CNN is no better than MSNBC. Yet, CNN is still the network to watch, at least between 3:00 A. M. and 6:00 A. M. That's when CNN actually covers the news with a brilliant array of reporters, such as the world's best war correspondent Arwa Damon. Last weekend -- Saturday, April 8th, 2017 -- CNN exposed Arwa's importance and brilliance in prime-time with her one-hour documentary entitled "Return to Mosul." It was...is...a brilliant example of broadcast journalism at its finest.

       For years Arwa Damon has reported for CNN from the most dangerous war zones in the world, wars that are drastically significant to the U. S. and other powers who routinely provide ultra-modern weapons to foreign elements that fight seemingly unending proxy wars, such as the Civil War in Syria that, in recent years, has killed about a half-million civilians and flooded many countries with frightened refugees. For the most part, CNN only airs Arwa's superb and important reports only in the 3-to-6-AM period, otherwise mocking broadcast journalism with endless streams of propaganda pundits. But Arwa's documentary "Return to Mosul" in prime-time Saturday was a fantastic exception for American broadcast journalism.

      The image above illustrated one of the many emotional segments in "Return to Mosul" for Arwa Damon and her viewers. She has spent so much time reporting from ongoing war-torn hellholes like Mosul in Iraq that she speaks the native languages fluently. Beyond that, she has bonded with the civilians who, as always, suffer the most from such ungodly conflicts. The newly born Mosul baby that Arwa is holding is named "Arwa" after Arwa. That illustrates the enormous respect the besieged citizens of Mosul have for Arwa because, more than anyone else, she has reported their plight to the rest of the world. In the very Mosul house where this baby was born, Arwa recently spent 28 hours direly threatened, along with the Iraqi civilians and their out-gunned Iraqi defenders who were trying desperately to ward off a blistering ISIS attack on the home. Upon her "Return to Mosul" the fearless and dedicated Arwa was showered with appreciation via hugs and kisses...and a baby named for her. Americans should appreciate Arwa too. 

       Instead of being normally relegated to the 3-to-6 A. M. time-slot, CNN's most brilliant and most important broadcast journalist, Arwa Damon, should be featured and highlighted in prime-time every night. That would make amends for America's broadcast journalism that highlights an endless stream of propaganda-spewing pundits, which is an insult to Americans, to Democracy and to journalism.

       Saturday -- April 8th, 2017 -- in prime-time on CNN, right after the superb documentary "Return to Mosul" that featured Arwa Damon, the "Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown" documentary series kicked off its 8th season. Mr. Bourdain returned to his favorite place -- Communist Vietnam -- to host his superb season opener from Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital that now is home to 8 million nice and U.S.-friendly people.

        As it happened, U. S. President Barack Obama was in Vietnam when Anthony Bourdain and his CNN crew got there, so they shared on camera some beer, a nice meal and an interesting conversation. Mr. Obama mentioned how important it was to become friends with "former enemies." Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, of course, had also paid a loving visit to Communist Vietnam. Vietnam is, after all, now a major U. S. trading partner. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, right after overthrowing imperialist France in a bloody war, Vietnam was faced with a far bloodier and longer war when the U. S. sought a regime-change in the distant country. The superpower U. S. discovered, as had the French, that military superiority on foreign soil was no match for people willing to die to defend their sovereignty.

         And so, a united Vietnam in 2017 is a Communist country but also very sovereign and very prosperous...and one beloved by U. S. Presidents such as Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. The photo above from "Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown" shows Obama with a Vietnamese lady who is now an expert chef. Like many Vietnamese women today who are extremely U.S.-friendly, back in the 1960s and 1970s this woman was a fierce "Vietcong" fighter vilified in the U. S.

      This photo was taken from the ABC-TV documentary entitled "How Women Won the Vietnam War." Vietnamese women like these, unknown to most Americans, were the primary and decisive fighters throughout the Vietnam War, something the Vietnam War had in common with Cuba's Revolutionary War.

A typical "Vietcong" female soldier.

This woman captured a U.S.-armed South Vietnamese soldier.
She also took his U. S. rifle, which gave her two.

"Vietcong" female with captured U. S. soldier, 1966.

This "Vietcong girl" captured this downed U. S. pilot.

A do-or-die "Vietcong" female soldier.

A captured "Vietcong" soldier with his child.

"Vietcong" soldier brutalized by U.S.-backed soldiers.

Beheaded "Vietcong" male soldier displayed.

       But the main "Vietcong" soldiers that determined the outcome of the Vietnam War were females like the two shown above. Those who survived are like the women who so warmly hosted Presidents Bush and Obama in modern-day Communist Vietnam, and who hosted Anthony Bourdain and his "CNN Parts Unknown" season-opening documentary Saturday, April 8th, 2017. This photo reminds me of Cuba's Revolutionary War in the 1950s that preceded the 1960s Vietnam War that featured these two female "Vietcong" soldiers.

      During the Vietnam War, broadcast journalism in the U. S. was so superbly respected that once the great Walter Cronkite indicated that the "bloody experience" should end, it quickly ended...and so did the Presidency of "LBJ" because President Johnson was blamed by Cronkite for prolonging it. However, Mr. Cronkite has died and so, for the most part, has America's respect for broadcast journalism. That, of course, direly hurts America and, as an offshoot, threatens Cuba because there is today no mainstream broadcaster in America that has the guts to report fairly on U.S.-Cuban-Batistiano relations.

         It was not the U. S. government that decided the Vietnam War should end, it was a great broadcaster named Walter Cronkite and caring U. S. protests led by key Americans like Dr. Benjamin Spock and Martin Luther King who declared that the Vietnam War should end. Too bad, I guess, that the likes of Cronkite, Spock and King have not injected themselves into ending America's Cuban policies -- the embargo, the occupation of Guantanamo Bay, etc. -- that currently have a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. 

       Cuba's do-or-die female guerrilla fighters like Celia Sanchez and Haydee Santamaria were the primary architects, recruiters and warriors that predicated the victory for the Cuban Revolution in 1959 against superior forces backed by the strongest nation in the world, the United States, and by the strongest criminal organization in the world, the Mafia. The aforementioned ABC-TV and CNN documentaries in hindsight acknowledged the leading role Vietnamese women played in winning the Vietnam War and confirmed that a united Communist Vietnam is today a top U. S. trading partner and a key American ally and success story. Also, the female "Vietcong" fighters are no longer labeled anti-American fiends. But by sharp contrast, the United States media to this day is too afraid, too politically correct or too biased to acknowledge the greatness and decency of Cuban warriors like Celia and Haydee or to fairly judge the very decent generation of Cuban women on the island today who have similar values. Of course, the difference between the island of Cuba and Communist Vietnam today is simply this: No brutal Vietnamese dictatorship was overthrow by a popular revolution and then allowed to regroup on American soil.

       This recent photo is also pertinent. It shows a present-day Cuban female leader signing a major agreement with a present-day female Vietnamese leader. Cuba and Vietnam are close friends today; in fact, Cuba today has just one enemy and that happens to be the nearby world superpower that allows a few revengeful Cuban-Americans to dictate its Cuban policy. Thus, Cuba has been under the dire restraints of a U. S. economic embargo since 1962 while Communist Vietnam is today a major U. S. ally and trading partner. To repeat, the difference is the fact that, since 1959, remnants of the overthrown Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba have been permitted to dictate America's Cuban narrative and Cuban policies. Vietnam today, of course, dictates its own narrative and policies thanks to its back-to-back victories in bloody wars against France and the United States. As the updated photo above shows, Cuba today is trying to emulate the prosperous Vietnam economic system but, as always, the Batistiano-influenced U. S. Cuban policy fiercely fights Revolutionary Cuba's ongoing efforts to remain sovereign and to prosper.

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