Clinton to visit 'sacred' U.S. mission in Vietnam
TRUONG VUONG - On October 15, 1965, a U.S. Air
Force F-105 fighter-bomber plunged out of the sky over
North Vietnam and exploded in a paddy field about 90
km (56 miles) northwest of Hanoi.
Thirty-five years later, a team of 12 American servicemen
and civilians and more than 70 Vietnamese workers are
digging in the mud for the fragmented remains of the pilot.
Washington calls this its "highest priority" in relations with
communist Vietnam -- accounting for servicemen listed
MIA, or missing in action, from a conflict that ended in
1975.
It still recognises the possibility that some of these
"MIAs" may still be alive, even though there has not been
a single confirmed case of an American being held
captive since the war.
This week, Bill Clinton will become the first serving U.S.
president to visit Vietnam since the war and to witness
first hand the MIA search effort in the country, a
long-running programme costing tens of millions of dollars
a year.
"It's a truly historic event," said Lieutenant-Colonel
Franklin Childress, spokesman for Joint Task Force-Full
Accounting, which coordinates MIA search efforts in
Southeast Asia.
"It expresses the national commitment to bring back
those unaccounted for who were left in Southeast Asia
and to uphold this commitment."
The United States has characterised Clinton's November
16-19 visit as one that will turn the page on the bloody
Vietnam War past. But analysts say the MIA issue
remains an obstacle to full normalisation of ties between
former Cold War enemies.
Costs dwarf aid
Total costs of accounting for U.S. MIAs from World
War Two, Korea and Southeast Asia now run to about
$100 million a year and the $19 million annual
on-the-ground costs in Vietnam dwarfs U.S.
humanitarian aid to the country.
Carl Thayer, a professor at the Asia-Pacific Centre for
Security Studies in Honolulu, argues full normalisation will
not be possible while the United States insists on full
accounting.
"Until the United States changes its policies, Washington
will continue to hold the whip hand over Hanoi," he said.
"No matter how much Vietnam cooperates, it will be
Washington that determines whether such cooperation is
satisfactory."
The United States lists 1,498 servicemen missing in
action in Vietnam, and is pursuing 896 of those cases.
The rest are presumed lost forever, for instance after
crashes at sea.
There is a certain pertinent irony to the crash of the
F-105, which had been part of a four-plane strike
mission.
It came down attempting to mark the crash site of a
second aircraft, whose pilot ejected and was taken
prisoner. He was eventually released with other airmen
after a 1973 peace agreement, but the pilot who had
tried to ensure him a chance of rescue never made it out
of Vietnam.
Excavations since last year have uncovered human
remains which have been sent for identification by DNA
testing. More bone fragments were found during a
November 9 visit by journalists, but for the sake of
relatives, the search won't end until there is no reasonable
possibility of finding more.
The scouring of the site has already taken nearly 90
people about 50 days. Searchers like excavation
anthropologist Ann Bunch, from Medina, New York,
acknowledge that full accounting in Vietnam will take a
long time.
"It could take years from now," she said. "We're also
working on Korean and World War Two cases that are
missing."
The process is painstaking and involves sieving by hand
countless bucketloads of mud dug from the crash site, an
18-foot deep crater villagers turned into a fish pond.
At the bottom of the pond is a complete F-105 engine,
but most other aircraft parts found have been tiny.
"The remains you find on a Vietnam War crash site are
different from those you would find from World War
Two or Korea," said Bunch. "They are much more highly
fragmented."
"It shows the devastation of an impact at more than 600
miles (1,000 km) per hour," adding that the fragmentation
made identification much more difficult.
Repatriation ceremony
On November 18, Clinton, who avoided the Vietnam
draft, is to visit another crash site northwest of Hanoi --
that of a F-105 lost on November 8, 1967. He will then
preside over repatriation of remains thought to be of two
servicemen recovered from a CH-53D helicopter that
crashed in July 1972.
Vietnam agreed to cooperate with the United States on
MIAs to encourage the lifting of a punishing post-war
trade embargo and normalisation of ties. The United
States, which now conducts dozens of MIA searches in
rural Vietnam a year, has praised Hanoi's cooperation
but said it could do more unilateral work.
Hanoi in turn argues the United States should be doing
more to help it deal with war consequences, including its
300,000 war missing, huge quantities of leftover U.S.
ordnance that still kills and maim dozens of people a
year, and the effects of toxic defoliants like Agent
Orange.
But for many Americans, MIAs are an emotional issue,
not least because of the bitterness of defeat in Vietnam,
making any softening of Washington's stance unlikely any
time soon.
Childress called it a "sacred mission" for which search
team member Sergeant First Class Sean Bendele from
Victorville, California said he had just put in for two more
years.
"I'm doing something for my country," Bendele said. "If it
was me, I'd want someone to do the same."
Bunch, a civilian archaeologist married to a U.S.
serviceman, said she was inspired by a college friend
whose father was missing in action in Vietnam.
"I saw what she went through and what her family went
through. Her father was identified through operations
such as this. I saw how she could move on after that.
"So it goes much deeper than anyone can imagine, unless
they went through it themselves."
Bunch said the tax dollars were well spent. "The conflict
divided the nation and I think this is one way we can get
closure and healing as a group and as a nation and for the
families."
But she said she sympathised with families of Vietnam's
MIAs.
"In an ideal world, I would really love to see them have
the same resources and ability to do the same kind of
work. I feel very much for them as they have many
people they lost in the same conflict."
Reuters - November 14, 2000.
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