Past meets future with Clinton visit
by Michael A. Lev, Chicago Tribune

      HANOI, Vietnam—At Mrs. Hang’s tiny beer stall, just before President Clinton arrived, there was lively talk of the war, of names from history like Johnson and Nixon and of customer Nguyen Van Dan’s two fateful days in 1965 when his anti-aircraft battery shot down American jets.

      “I was so proud,” recalled Dan, 60, who saw the pilots eject.

      Now a construction manager, Dan’s anger at the United States over the war has never completely faded, but his perspective has softened and his interest in the first visit by an American president to a unified Vietnam is focused not on how Clinton will address the past but on how America can improve Vietnam’s future.

      “Of course I’d like it if he apologized, but politically that’s very unlikely,” Dan said. So, he hopes to see signs of a deepening relationship based on trade and investment that will bring prosperity. “Whether we close the past will depend on what America does.”

      This is the prevailing view from Hanoi, a city still deeply etched in the American psyche as an enemy capital. Nonetheless, in the reality of modern Vietnam, Hanoi appears far less preoccupied with history than Clinton was during his four-day visit, which focused on American MIAs and unexploded mines as well as business ties.

      Reminders of the war still exist, like a standing portion of the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison that held American POWs. But the energy of this very lakeside city, with motorbikes and cellular telephone stores, points away from historical reflection.

      After decades of war followed by 20 years of isolation and then some hesitant attempts to join the global business mainstream, Vietnam has a pragmatic rather than psychological point of view. It is looking at the Clinton visit as a way of enhancing its political legitimacy and jump-starting international investment rather than settling accounts.

      Vietnam’s government has been silent about any expectations it has for how Clinton will address the war, and residents—many who belong to families that fought the United States—seem comfortable separating past from present. There is no gloating.

      “I’m more interested in what he says about the future,” said a 24-year-old graduate business student named Nguyen, the son of a North Vietnamese army nurse who drives a Japanese scooter and spoke about America in the lobby of a hotel.

      Nguyen said he thinks America owes Vietnam something, but not an apology, reparations or any particular acknowledgement of responsibility.

      “That won’t bring back millions of lives,” he said. “Besides, many Americans have already acknowledged America’s wrongdoing, or flaws, to many Vietnamese in a very sincere way.”

      Tran The Koi, a former army officer who fought the United States. in Laos and is now in the antiquities business, dismissed the idea of an apology or blood money with an emphatic wave of his hand.

      “We’re not begging for money,” he said. “We expect a mutually beneficial relationship.”

      Searching for an easy way to explain Vietnam’s point of view, he grabbed a photo album that contained pictures of him in uniform. “The war is like a book. We only open it when it’s absolutely necessary.”

      The American perspective on the trip was tied both emotionally and politically to the war. What he said about the war resonated much louder in the United States than what he said about anything else.

      Vietnam remains a poor country with undefined potential that does not have the allure or geopolitical clout of China. The war looms largest for Americans out of recognition of how badly it ended, of the social and political trauma it unleashed and the fact that the first president visiting a unified Vietnam opposed the war and avoided military service in it.

      In describing the trip, National Security Adviser Samuel Berger said, “Vietnam should be seen not only as a war, but as a country. We are not closing a chapter here; we’re opening a new chapter in the relationship.”

      Chuck Searcy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, one of a handful of American veterans living in Hanoi—U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson is another—said the bigger challenge of the trip will be gaining American acceptance of Vietnam, not improving diplomatic ties with the Vietnamese.

      “I think if the visit is successful ... it will go a long way to allowing the American people and veterans in particular to acknowledge the reality of Vietnam, as opposed to the mythology of Vietnam in the past,” he said.

      Searcy knows many Americans remain “locked in the past” because they come to Vietnam totally unprepared, “I mean stunned,” he said, to see a vibrant country that may still be under communist rule but is also full of promise.

      The population is young, cities are full of students eager to learn English, and after years of ambivalence and delay, the government seems eager to join the global economic mainstream.

      In July, the United States and Vietnam signed a long-awaited trade pact. American businesses, which have been in Vietnam since the U.S. trade embargo was lifted in 1994 and are impatient for growth, also hope Clinton’s visit will refocus the image of Vietnam.
“My big hope for the visit is that everyone will stop writing about Vietnam as that place where the war ended,” said Frederick Burke of aChicago-based law firm, who has been in Vietnam since 1991.

      Clinton’s itinerary included meetings with leaders, a speech on the future of relations given to students at Hanoi National University, a visit to an MIA excavation site and participation in a ceremony marking the repatriation of the remains of several American servicemen.

      Another issue addressed was Agent Orange, the defoliant used during the war that is suspected of causing widespread birth defects in Vietnam. The United States. has acknowledged its impact on American veterans but not on the Vietnamese.

     The Agent Orange issue is one of the most sensitive war-related questions yet to be resolved because the chemical’s impact is still under scientific debate and because of the financial liability considerations it raises.