April 30 marks the 50th anniversary of the final defeat of the U.S. in its war against Vietnam. By the late 1960s, America had over half a million soldiers in Vietnam and overwhelming air power, as well as a million-strong puppet army and armed forces from some of its allies and puppets. America and those under its command slaughtered an estimated three million people in this war, including in the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia where U.S. troops and planes also carried out massacre and horror.

On top of that, America waged chemical war to strip away the forests and jungles in Vietnam that the Vietnamese fighters traveled through. These chemicals, called defoliants, continue to cause terrible birth defects in Vietnam. Yet even in the face of this juggernaut of horror, the Vietnamese people prevailed! The image of the vaunted U.S. Marine Corps scurrying out of Vietnam in helicopters taking off from the roof of the American embassy showed the world that even the richest, most powerful and most destructive and murderous empire in history could be defeated by a people mobilized around a revolutionary cause. While that revolution was later betrayed, the lesson that a force that starts out weak can defeat a much more powerful enemy, so long as it has the support of the masses and a basically correct strategy, cannot be erased and must be learned from. 

Trump has ordered the U.S. embassy in Vietnam to boycott the commemoration of this victory next week in Vietnam. This goes along with the fascist regime’s crusade to erase the real history of this country—America’s deep roots in genocide and slavery, and its whole history of imperialist war and plunder. Trump actually tries to turn this on its head, whining as if America is somehow the victim of those it oppresses. When Trump imposed his tariffs, he again made his ludicrous claim that “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike." Vietnam—whose workers, in a bitter irony, are now super-exploited by U.S. capital—was hit with an exorbitant 42 percent tariff, which will have a devastating effect on the people of Vietnam. 

But who really is raping who… and who has been raping and plundering for nearly two and a half centuries now? These articles are part of answering that question. Today we republish articles on the My Lai massacre; the U.S. bombing campaign against Cambodia; and the brutal sexual exploitation—the literal rape—of Vietnamese women by the U.S. Armed Forces.