CLINTON’S UNBROKEN, ODIOUS RECORD ON VIETNAM: CENTER DEPLORES DECISION TO LIFT THE EMBARGO

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton has reportedly decided that the moment is opportune to lift the nineteen-year old trade embargo on Vietnam. A recent Senate resolution (the subject of an attached column by Center for Security Policy director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. which appeared in yesterday’s Washington Times) and a rising crescendo from interested business parties are obvious contributing factors.

But the real impetus appears to lie in an obligation that Mr. Clinton — and many of his closest advisors — have evidently felt ever since they decided more than two decades ago that communist Hanoi was right, and the United States wrong, in the Vietnam war. These prominent anti-war activists appear determined to allay their shared guilt over what they perceive to have been America’s past "criminal" behavior by offering what amounts to compensation to the Vietnamese. Such compensation would, at the moment, take the form of trade, investment and other economic life-support desperately sought by Ho Chi Minh’s successors.

Ironically, those who will most immediately suffer the consequences of Bill Clinton’s latest contribution to the Vietnamese communists’ cause are the same people who were most grievously victimized by the agitation against the war in which he and many other Americans engaged long ago:

First, there are the U.S. servicemen who were unaccounted for — and possibly left behind — when the Nixon Administration was obliged to pull the plug, and their families and former comrades who have kept a lonely vigil ever since. Should any of these POW-MIAs have survived two decades of brutal incarceration at Hanoi’s hands, and there is evidence that some may have, they will almost certainly be liquidated now that America’s last leverage is being squandered.

More of what passes for Vietnamese "cooperation" on full accounting — the belated and still selective assistance in searching for human remains that is lauded as "progress" requiring rewards — will, at best, turn up more bones and teeth. The full truth about the missing Americans, however, will not be discovered so long as those with guilty knowledge continue to run Vietnam.

Second — and presumably no less important to a nation that is still mourning its sacrifice of over 58,000 Americans and that claims to stand for freedom and human rights around the world — there are the Vietnamese people who will remain enslaved by the tyrants in Hanoi. Make no mistake about it: Even in the unlikely event that resumption of trade with America were marginally to improve the economic quality of life in Vietnam, official repression would continue to deny the populace the most basic liberties. Since a regime that does not respect the rule of law and the rights of its own people domestically generally disregards international legal norms as well, the perpetuation of such a government will inevitably have unsavory repercussions for populations beyond its borders, too.

In short, the Clinton decision to lift the trade embargo is an ignominious one, unworthy of a freedom-loving nation. It is as strategically shortsighted as it is morally reprehensible. That it is being perpetrated by people who did much to lose the war in the first place adds fresh insult to odious injury. A powerful letter making these and related points which was sent by the National Commander of the American Legion, Bruce Thiesen, to President Clinton this morning is also attached.