Two days before our July 4 celebration marked the 50th anniversary of the formal reunification of Vietnam into a single country. The war had ended the previous year, in April, 1975, when North Vietnamese army tanks rolled onto the palace grounds in South Vietnam’s capital, Saigon. Surrender time. During the 14-month period of reunification, to rub it in, the name Saigon got removed with a red eraser. Not liberation and not independence. The new name on July 2, 1976, Ho Chi Minh City.

All of us who went off to war in the late ’60s and early ’70s remember the name Ho Chi Minh, the dictator of North Vietnam. Few Vietnam vets, if any, remember or have ever heard the name To Lam, but he is now the top dog in ‘Nam, the Communist Party’s General Secretary. Fifty years has brought a lot of change to Vietnam, but most startling is To Lam’s and the CP’s embrace of capitalism.