For Vietnam, Clinton visit may bring closure to War
HANOI - Three college professors--all
veterans of the war against the United
States--were talking over lunch, and soon
the conversation turned, as all
conversations here seem to these days, to
President Clinton's official visit to Vietnam
this week.
"I wouldn't expect him to make an apology for the war," said
Do Duy Truyen, a Russian-language instructor who was an
antiaircraft gunner protecting Hanoi three decades ago. In fact,
Truyen wouldn't mind if the war didn't even come up. "I'd rather he
talk about the future, not the past," he said.
Tong Duy Tinh's body is still riddled with shrapnel, and Nguyen
Ngoc Hung's brother was--until his remains were located and
identified last December--one of Vietnam's 300,000 MIAs, but
they don't bear a grudge. "The anger is gone," Tong said. "We've
made our peace, and now Clinton is turning the last page of the
war's history."
In many ways, the three professors, and the university itself,
symbolize what Clinton will find when he arrives in Vietnam on
Thursday--a country and a people carrying few visible scars of a
war that killed an estimated 3.2 million people.
This is a nation that has largely forgiven, if not forgotten, past
transgressions. Its goal is not the settling of old scores but the
pursuit of stability, prosperity and international acceptance, and
Clinton's visit is seen here as playing an integral part in that process.
"Your president's done a lot to ease the pain both our countries
know," Hung said to an American at the table, set up in a garden at
Hanoi University of Foreign Studies. Two-thirds of the school's
5,000 students are taking English, and few have any interest in
Truyen's Russian classes. A nearby dormitory had been struck in
1967 by U.S. bombers aiming for a Voice of Vietnam relay station
a mile away. And a pool in the garden was fashioned from a bomb
crater, Hung said.
Clinton is "the one who opened the door between us," he said.
"No other president could have the impact in Vietnam he'll have. . .
.
"We've shared so many tears over the years, and now it would
be good to share some laughter."
To the aging old-guard Communist leadership, Clinton's visit
represents a kind of final triumph--an acceptance by Washington of
Vietnam's war-won unification and independence, and an
acknowledgment of its regional importance. To ordinary
citizens--60% of whom were born after the last U.S. soldiers left
Vietnam--it raises hopes that better relations with the United States
could lead to increased opportunities for study abroad, economic
growth at home and a relaxation of the authorities' obsession with
control.
Although the Clinton administration lifted the trade embargo
against Vietnam in 1994 and established diplomatic relations with
Hanoi in 1995, the U.S. economic role here is small.
The U.S. ranks 10th on the list of foreign investors, with
projects worth $1 billion. Last year, Washington provided Vietnam
with $3 million in aid, which represented about a quarter of the
interest Hanoi owes the U.S. each year for the $145 million debt it
inherited from the Saigon regime.
First Presidential Visit Since '69
Clinton, who will spend four days in Vietnam, an unusually long
stay in a country that is a minor player on the world stage, is the
first American president to visit Hanoi and the first in Vietnam since
Richard Nixon spent six hours in South Vietnam during the height of
the war in July 1969.
Addressing two rifle companies of the 1st Infantry Division 12
miles outside Saigon, Nixon criticized Hanoi's unwillingness to
respond to peace overtures and said, "Out here in this dreary,
difficult war, I think history will record that this may have been one
of America's finest hours, because we took a difficult task and
succeeded." He went on to note: "This is the first time in our history
when we have had a lack of understanding of why we are here,
what the war is all about."
Helicopters hovering overhead kicked up whirlwinds on the
plain, and as Nixon moved among the troops, shaking hands and
talking baseball, he stepped backward into a puddle, splattering
mud on his shoes and dark suit. "Vietnam," he said, "is the only
place in the world where you can be blinded by a dust storm while
sinking in the mud." The soldiers nodded in agreement.
The Communist nation that emerged from the mud and ashes of
that war is still riddled with problems three decades after Nixon's
visit: grinding poverty, with a per capita annual income of $350; a
countryside strewn with 3.5 million land mines; a human rights
record that has improved significantly but still falls short of
international standards; graft that seeps through all levels of society;
and an indecisive government that has failed to develop the
potential of a bright, industrious, educated populace whose interest
in communism ends where dollars and cents begin.
Island of Stability in Region of Turmoil
But Vietnam is also an island of stability in a region adrift in
political turmoil, from Indonesia to the Philippines. The
improvement in its standard of living over a decade's time, in the
cities at least, is arguably without parallel in the developing world.
The literacy rate exceeds 90%, the press has grown a bit freer, and
the postwar generation believes its opportunities are great. The
National Assembly has become more than a rubber stamp, though
all real power remains in the hands of the Politburo--18 mostly
elderly men who are accountable to no one but themselves.
Many things about the United States perplex these men. They
don't, for instance, understand why officials from Washington seem
to dwell more on Vietnam's failures than its accomplishments. Or
why so many of them arrive to lecture Vietnam on human rights,
democracy and the need for an open-market economy, as if their
ultimate goal were to create an Asian country in the United States'
image. Such a notion has an unsettling echo of policies from a
generation ago.
Albright Remark Angered, Embarrassed
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright angered the Hanoi
government, and embarrassed U.S. diplomats here, last year when
she asked party Secretary-General Le Kha Phieu when he thought
Vietnam would abandon communism--the equivalent of Phieu going
to Washington and asking Clinton if he thought democracy had a
future. In April, John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona
who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said over and
over again that the wrong side had won the war.
"Clinton doesn't need to dwell on the war while he's here," said
Chuck Searcy, a Vietnam War veteran who has lived in Hanoi, the
capital, for six years working on humanitarian projects. "All he
needs to offer is a simple acknowledgment of the suffering the war
caused on all sides. In 25 years, no high-level American official has
done that. I think the silence has been painful for the Vietnamese."
In an effort to ensure that Clinton is not placed in any politically
compromising situations, Vietnam has closed for "rehabilitation" the
Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum and the nearby Memorial for
Fallen Soldiers, sites that most foreign dignitaries visit.
"The Vietnamese have not made any demands, and they're
trying to make sure Clinton is not embarrassed in any way," said a
senior U.S. official who refused to be named because he is not a
spokesman for the embassy. "This has been a partnership with both
sides working together. The level of cooperation we've had is
rather amazing."
By David Lamb - The Los Angeles Times - November 13, 2000.
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