-Caveat Lector-
In Vietnam, Clinton Is a Hero for His Anti-War Protest Days Days
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
International Herald Tribune via Washington Post Service
Wednesday, November 15, 2000
When President Bill Clinton arrives in Hanoi this week as the
first U.S.president to visit Vietnam since the fall of Saigon, he
will be warmly welcomed in part because of a decision he has
spent his entire political career trying to live down: avoiding
the war.
In this struggling but proud Communist country, which lost more
than 3 million people in a conflict known here as the American
War, Mr. Clinton's opposition three decades ago is seen as
laudable.
"The bad Americans were the ones who bombed our country," said
Tran Duc Cuong, who directs the Vietnam Institute of History.
"The good Americans were the people who opposed the war and the
crimes that were committed here. President Bill Clinton, because
he protested against a war that violated the freedom and the
independence of our country, he was a good American."
Mr. Clinton's anti-war stance, coupled with his administration's
efforts to foster stronger diplomatic and commercial links
between the two countries, also has won him admiration from
Vietnamese leaders, many of whom are deeply suspicious of U.S.
politicians.
During his three-day visit, scheduled to begin Friday, Mr.
Clinton is not expected to express his personal views about the
war. He will not apologize for U.S. policy at the time,
officials said, but will recognize the trauma inflicted on both
sides.
Although some Vietnam veterans have criticized the visit as an
insult to the 58,000 Americans who died in the conflict, Mr.
Clinton's journey has elicited a generally favorable reaction
from veterans groups, many Vietnamese-Americans and members of
Congress who fought in the war. The relative lack of controversy
is a remarkable sign of how far both countries have come in
dealing with one of the most convulsive episodes in their modern
histories.
Parts of Mr. Clinton's historic trip will touch on the past.
He will visit a rice paddy near Hanoi where forensic experts are
searching for the body of a U.S. pilot whose plane was shot down
during the war. Mr. Clinton also will attend a repatriation
ceremony for soldiers whose remains have recently been found and
hold talks about the lingering effects of the U.S. use of the
defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam.
But the bulk of his visit will look toward the future and focus
on the growing economic, cultural and diplomatic ties. Mr.
Clinton will discuss the landmark trade agreement reached this
summer and Vietnam's proposed entry into the World Trade
Organization. He will announce new business ventures and a
debt-forgiveness program.
U.S. officials say Mr. Clinton also will encourage the Hanoi
government to allow its citizens greater political and religious
freedom, a subject of great importance to several congressional
veterans.
"I will make clear to Vietnam that we expect continued
cooperation," Mr.
Clinton said in his radio address Saturday. "I will also offer
the support of the American people as Vietnam becomes more open
to the world, promoting trade and more ties among our people and
championing human rights and religious freedom."
"I go to open a new chapter in our relationship with its people,"
he added.
The trip is a symbolic high point in a gradual process of
establishing ties with Vietnam that stretches back to President
Ronald Reagan, who sent General John Vessey Jr. to press for a
full accounting of those missing in action. Dialogue improved
when George Bush became president, and visits by such veterans as
Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and John Kerry,
Democrat of Massachusetts, provided political cover for Mr.
Clinton to build the relationship.
It was during Mr. Clinton's first term, in 1994, that the U.S.
government lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam. The
following year, the two countries restored diplomatic relations.
Both countries have taken significant steps since to bring about
what the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Douglas Peterson, calls a
"true normalization of relations between two former enemies."
Mr. Peterson, a former prisoner of war, said Hanoi now provides
"full cooperation" in helping U.S. officials locate the remains
of the more than 2,000 American soldiers still listed as missing
in action.
The U.S. government has provided $1.8 million worth of equipment
to the Vietnamese military to locate the thousands of unexploded
bombs that continue to kill and maim dozens of people every year.
And last month, a U.S. Air Force plane touched down for the
first time in 25 years at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Ho Chi Minh
City, formerly known as Saigon, to bring relief supplies to
victims of flooding in the Mekong Delta.
Officials on both sides view the trade agreement as the crowning
achievement in the rapprochement. Once it is ratified by the
U.S. Congress and Vietnam's National Assembly, it will gradually
permit unfettered commerce between the countries for the first
time since the war.
More than half of the population of Vietnam was born after the
last U.S.
helicopter left during a panicked evacuation from Saigon.
Vietnamese say they now are more concerned about building a
prosperous future than dwelling on the past, and they hope Mr.
Clinton's visit will spur a wave of American trade, tourism and
investment.
For Americans, the legacy of the war will be a more central theme
of the visit. "It is all about reconciliation, putting that sad
chapter in our history behind us, and opening the door to the
future," said John Terzano, vice president of the Vietnam
Veterans of America Foundation.
For some, Mr. Clinton's trip to Vietnam in his waning moments as
commander in chief refocuses attention on the motives of a young
man who decided in the late 1960s that the war was wrong. After
being drafted, he avoided induction by agreeing to join a Reserve
Officers' Training Corps program, then gave up his deferment when
it seemed clear that his chances of being inducted were low.
For a vocal minority of veterans and military personnel, Mr.
Clinton's journey is like tearing the scab off a wound that had
recently begun to heal.
"The first president to visit Vietnam since the end of the war
should not be a president who was a draft dodger of this very
war," said J.D. Wetterling, a former fighter pilot who earned two
Distinguished Flying Crosses in Vietnam.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
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