Betraying Free Vietnam, Again

(Washington, D.C.): Lest anyone believe the damage done by President Clinton
to the United
States’ standing as the world’s leading champion of political freedom and economic opportunity
around the world has ended, his trip to Vietnam last week should be a painful wake-up call.

A powerful column published in today’s Boston Globe by Jeff Jacoby highlights
the fact that Mr.
Clinton not only failed to use the occasions presented by his visit to advance these causes in a
country that has not known either individual liberties or free market economics since it was
violently overrun by totalitarian communists in 1974. Worse still, the President of the United
States treated with moral equivalence, on the one hand, those who sought brutally to impose their
will on South Vietnam and, on the other, those in the South and in the United States who tried to
spare free Vietnam that horrible fate. Such pandering to Hanoi would be odious even if it were
not coming from an individual whose sympathies during the war lay with the perpetrators of that
aggression.

Mr. Clinton’s deplorable performance in Vietnam clearly establishes the inadvisability of his
making further overseas trips — or otherwise being allowed to do additional harm to American
prestige and interests — during his remaining weeks in office. In particular, he must be dissuaded
from making presidential visits to North Korea or other unsavory destinations (e.g., Cuba) in
search of an elusive legacy and, in the process, presenting his successor with as many unpalatable
new “facts on the ground” as possible.

The Boston Globe, 30 November 2000

TURNING HIS BACK ON THE VIETNAMESE — AGAIN

by Jeff Jacoby

Bill Clinton had a chance to advance the cause of freedom and democracy in
Vietnam 31 years
ago. He dodged it. He had another chance last week. He dodged that one, too.

Why did Clinton go to Vietnam? His trip served no important national interest. It resolved no
thorny issues. It achieved no diplomatic breakthrough. What did he expect to accomplish?

Perhaps he imagined that the pomp of a presidential visit would wash away the stain of his
dishonorable behavior in 1969, when he ducked the draft by falsely promising to join the
University of Arkansas ROTC. Perhaps it was a way of getting in the last word on the subject, of
mocking his detractors: “You always sneered because I didn’t serve in Vietnam. Well, look who’s
in Vietnam now.”

Over the years, other Vietnam-era draft-evaders had second thoughts and said so, showing an
integrity as adults that they had lacked in their youth. P. J. O’Rourke, for example, opened his
1992 book, Give War a Chance, by acknowledging, in a dedication both funny and contrite, that
others paid a price when the draft-dodgers stayed home:

“Like many men of my generation, I had an opportunity to give war a chance, and I promptly
chickened out. I went to my draft physical in 1970 with a doctor’s letter about my history of drug
abuse. The letter was 4-1/2 pages long…. I was shunted into the office of an Army psychiatrist
who, at the end of a 45-minute interview with me, was pounding his desk and shouting, ‘You’re
f—-d up! You don’t belong in the Army!’ … Anyway, I didn’t have to go. But that, of course,
meant someone else had to go in my place. I would like to dedicate this book to him.

“I hope you got back in one piece, fellow. I hope you were more use to your platoon mates
than I
would have been. I hope you’re rich and happy now. And in 1971, when somebody punched me
in the face for being a long-haired peace creep, I hope that was you.”

Bill Clinton would never express such a sentiment. I’m not even sure he could think it. He
stood
last week in Tien Chau, a village 17 miles northwest of Hanoi, and watched as workers searched
for signs of Lt. Col. Lawrence Evert, a US pilot shot down in 1967 and never seen again. Did it
cross Clinton’s mind that Evert, or someone like him, might have been the guy sent in his place?
Has it ever crossed his mind that a man may have died in Vietnam — or been wounded or
imprisoned there — because he stayed home?

Clinton could have seized the moment in Tien Chau to speak a few words of self-reproach
for
acting so selfishly in 1969 — and for denying it for so long. (“All I’ve been asked about by the
press,” he fumed in February 1992, “are a woman I didn’t sleep with and a draft I didn’t dodge.”)
That would have been an act of remarkable grace and stature. It would have earned him genuine
respect from Americans in uniform. It would have stunned his critics.

He didn’t do it, of course. Because he still doesn’t believe he was wrong. Even after eight
years as
commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces, he doesn’t think there was anything admirable
about the US attempt to block a totalitarian conquest of South Vietnam. Or at least he doesn’t
think it any more admirable than the communists’ attempt to carry out that conquest. Listen to the
answer he gave when he was asked whether his views had changed since 1969:

“When we look back on it, the most important thing is that a lot of brave people fought and
died
in the North Vietnamese Army, the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese Army and the United
States Army…. And the best thing we can do to honor the sacrifice and service of those who
believed on both sides that what they were doing was right, is to find a way to build a different
future, and that’s what we’re trying to do.” (My italics)

It is frankly staggering that an American president would draw a moral equivalence between
the
troops who fought to plunge Vietnam into a Leninist nightmare of tyranny, torture, and “re-
education” camps, and the troops who fought to stop them. It is outrageous that he would
pronounce them equally deserving of our honor. No doubt Hanoi’s army and the Viet Cong did
believe “that what they were doing was right.” But what they were doing was strangling freedom
and extinguishing all hope of democracy in Vietnam. And killing 58,220 Americans in the
process.

Clinton had a chance to redeem himself on Nov. 17, when he spoke at Hanoi National
University. There, before the sons and daughters of Vietnam’s communist elite, he could have
done what President Reagan did at Moscow State University in 1988: He could have delivered a
ringing defense of political and economic liberty. He didn’t. He told them — in a few sentences
more than halfway through his speech — that freedom and competition were good. And then he
took it back.

“Now let me say emphatically,” he assured his audience, “we do not seek to impose these
ideals,”
he said. “Vietnam is an ancient and enduring country…. Only you can decide how to weave
individual liberties and human rights into the rich and strong fabric of Vietnamese national
identity.” The message was unmistakable — and disgraceful: We like freedom, but it’s okay if you
don’t.

There was no good reason for Clinton to be in Vietnam. But having decided to go, it was his
duty
to speak up for liberty and democracy. His timidity was a betrayal of Vietnam’s people. It wasn’t
the first time he let them down.