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Book Review: Vietnam Now

By Pete Zastrow

The Time is Now: Recognize Vietnam
Pete Zastrow, VVAW National Office

It's a strange experience to read Vietnam Now: A Case for Normalizing Relations with Hanoi by ex-Congressman and staunch conservative John LeBoutiller. His conclusion—that the U.S. should recognize Vietnam and normalize relations—is absolutely correct, but he's wrong on almost every premise in his argument for this change in U.S. policy.

Take the loud and continuing issue of "POW's" held in Vietnam fifteen years after the liberation fo the country. LeBoutiller echoes the idea that since the Vietnamese deny having American prisoners, they are no doubt being hidden in Laos. According to the author, if the U.S. government were to recognize Vietnam and establish normal relations, all these POW's would be returned home, apparently in gratitude. POW's are being held, it follows, as a bargaining chip for someday/maybe/whoknows negotiations for normal relations.

How POW's can be a bargaining chip when the Vietnamese government denies their existence is not clear. In fact the many arguments concerning the existence of POW's in Vietnam flounder on the same point: how can the Vietnamese government say there are no POW's if they want to use these same imaginary POW's to force the U.S. to negotiate.

There are no POW's Vietnam. It's possible there are American GIs who decided to stay in Vietnam although when a VVAW delegation was in Hanoi several years ago we were told that the Vietnamese government knew of none. It is not hard to understand that families of men missing in Vietnam want to hope their relatives are still there; and there are, unfortunately, a few individuals who will play on this hope to make careers for themselves.

Certainly there are MIA's; almost any Vietnam vet can recall the speed with which vegetation grows in Vietnam. Even something as large as a downed plane would be almost invisible within a matter of years. There is no reason to believe that the Vietnamese government is not doing all it can to help find remains of U.S. servicemen and return them. It is not, however, an item of utmost priority. When VVAW visited Vietnam we were told that the Libertarian Forces and the North Vietnamese had somewhere around 100,000 MIA's in South Vietnam, about 100 times the number of U.S. missing.

There is a reason for why the MIA/POW issue refuses to disappear, a reason beyond the hope of the relatives. Ever since the U.S. lost the war in Vietnam, the U.S. government has been searching for ways to put its own spin on the outcome, to interpret what happened in Vietnam in a way which will not disturb plans for future U.S. incursions, invasions, aggressions or whatever.

How to justify a war which the U.S. lost and which grew more and more unpopular as years progressed? One way to do this is to portray the enemy as the worst possible species of sub-humans—that is to say, people so low that they would hold gallant U.S. servicemen prisoner all these years after the end of the war. And so the U.S. government jumps on the POW/MIA issue and keeps it alive, knowing that if the U.S. people can be convinced that the invasion of Vietnam was right, they will also be convinced that the Panama invasion might be "right," and the invasion of Nicaragua or the Philippines or Cuba might also be "right."

For LeBoutiller, recognizing Vietnam is both a political and economic issue. The Russians are influential in Vietnam (the book was written while the USSR was still an "evil empire," and to LeBoutiller, it probably still is) but the U.S. has consistently pushed Vietnam into the Soviet camp by our actions. A Vietnamese official apparently whispered in the author's ear that CamRanh Bay, the massive U.S. base turned into a Soviet naval base following the U.S. retreat from Vietnam, could once again become a port for U.S. ships following recognition of Vietnam by the U.S. government. From this LeBoutiller has constructed an entire scenario with the USSR losing influence in Southeast Asia and the U.S. once again becoming a dominant power.

Of course the author cannot or will apply his new-found understanding to U.S. actions elsewhere in the world. If the U.S. economic boycott of Vietnam helped to push Vietnam into the arms of the soviet Union, how much more potent was a similar activity in our own hemisphere—as in Nicaragua or even Panama? Has the U.S. government learned anything? The answer, unfortunately, is yes, but all the wrong things.

Primary for LeBoutiller is that Vietnam is an economic plum waiting to be plucked, and the U.S. is the biggest and best plucker around. U.S. corporations are missing out on big bucks both in terms of markets and even more so in terms of investments. LeBoutiller visualizes another Hong Kong or South Korea where labor will be plentiful and cheap; he does not seem to realize that, as friendly as members of the Vietnamese government might be and as open as they are to economic changes, they are not open to exploitation of their people.

Vietnam is in sad economic straits, brought on in large part by the U.S. boycott. Vietnam needs the economic boost that could come from large-scale U.S. trade. Of course U.S. companies would benefit and increase profits; Vietnam would probably benefit more because the country is starting from poverty.

It seems as if Vietnam is being penalized for winning the war. U.S. economic aid to the defeated enemies of World War II is well known—and these countries are economic giants today. The U.S. did sign a treaty with Vietnam not only promising normal relations but reparations. All the conditions that the U.S. government has thrown up as roadblocks to normal relations—Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, release of supposed political prisoners, among others—have been met.

The time has come. Normalize relations with Vietnam. All kinds of other reasons to normalize relations may arise, but the fundamental reason is that it's right. The U.S. government has no reason to refuse to deal with the nation of Vietnam; the people there need our help to repair some of the damage we've done to their country. We need relations and trade and the interchange of people and ideas from which we can all learn.