What Clinton can do to heal the wounds of the Vietnam War
In November President Clinton will join a growing group of Americans
who have been traveling to Vietnam trying to reestablish some
meaningful connection with that country.
Since the 1980s, despite opposition - sometimes from government,
sometimes from veteran or refugee groups - Americans, veterans, widows,
children of combatants, antiwar activists, and Vietnamese families have been
making their way to Vietnam seeking ways to engage themselves
constructively with that country again.
In a historic moment, President Clinton will become the first sitting president
to travel to Vietnam in 30 years. His visit will mark the culmination of efforts
geared toward supporting peaceful resolutions to long-standing conflicts in
the areas such as the Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and
Africa. For his decision to add Vietnam to that list, the president should be
applauded. It marks an important recognition; for, in the minds of many
Americans, we are still at war with Vietnam.
Making peace with Vietnam has never been an easy business. The words
''resolution'' and ''peace,'' in fact, are not words we use often when we
speak of Vietnam. But from his experience in aiding efforts in the Middle
East, Ireland, Africa, the Balkans and other parts of the world, President
Clinton knows better than most that the work of making peace is never easy.
He knows that it requires work: the hard physical work of addressing the
injuries and wounds of the conflict, the tough intellectual work of looking to
its true causes and consequences, and the detailed spiritual work of helping
people to heal. He knows too that its final objective must be to free future
generations from the burden of past hatreds.
Through his visit President Clinton can begin to lay the groundwork for a
true peace for future generations. He can do this by proposing that
Americans and Vietnamese direct attentions together to some of the
unfinished business of the war. He might start by proposing a few concrete
efforts such as: (1) an effort to assist in the cleanup of areas contaminated by
US chemicals and weapons in Vietnam; (2) an effort to assist Vietnamese to
help identify and properly bury the bodies of hundreds and thousands of
South and North Vietnamese soldiers listed as missing; and (3) an effort that
will promote cultural and educational exchanges, language fluency, and
increased understanding among the young of both countries.
President Clinton should take the opportunity to make commitments at home
as well. The lack of support for veterans of the South Vietnamese Army and
their families in this country has been one of the sad legacies of the war.
Those who fought with us and suffered imprisonment after the war deserve
attention and recognition. Support for health care, education, job training,
and counseling programs for them, programs administered by fellow
Vietnamese, might help heal some of the wounds in a community where
some, after 40 years of war, see nothing but betrayal on all sides.
Through his trip, President Clinton can start to help us see Vietnam more
clearly, to see it for what it is now: a country that has passed through three
wars and dramatic changes and that has moved, not without difficulty, from a
time of war through a time of postwar isolation - a time when freedoms were
restriced, former soldiers imprisoned, when life was hard, when hospitals
lacked basic medicines and equipment and schools lacked books - into a
new period, a present where the young read English and economics and
writers pen novels critical of the past, of old leaders, and of the conduct of
war.
Through his journey, President Clinton may lead us to acknowledge, finally,
that without dialogue, exchange, education, and hard work there can be no
groundwork for peace; what there will be instead is a wasteland of pain,
misunderstanding, and hatred. Americans should support the president on his
journey, join him in his efforts to make peace with the past.
Kevin Bowen is director of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War
and Social Consequences at UMass-Boston.
By Kevin Bowen - The Boston Globe - October 24, 2000.
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