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My View: Recognize Vietnam

By John Zutz

John Zutz
Midwest Regional Coordinator

The Vietnamese government has just released all the documentation, including photographs, concerning US POWs.

Think of how much resistance there must have been in the Vietnamese government and military to releasing even portions of those records. We know our own comparable records are classified so highly that Senate committees can't read them. There are likely to be many interesting things recorded in Hanoi's version.

Those records will surely tell more than the status of prisoners. If you know how to read them, you will probably be able to determine strategies, force deployments, and who knows what else of military intelligence value. But Hanoi is so desperate for aid that they are opening those records and giving a former enemy carte blanche.

What else may be in those records? I suspect that there will be some evidence of the Soviet Union's interest in our pilots. Even though it was a conventional war, guys surely were thoroughly trained about our nuclear capability. There were few secrets kept in Vietnamese prison camps. Certainly those who returned were already debriefed on that subject. But I suspect we won't hear about minor details like that, unless the records show our pilots were shipped from Hanoi to Moscow.

What won't be in them? Anything about most of those shot down in Cambodia or Laos. The Vietnamese were influential in those countries, but they did not control them. Holding the Vietnamese liable for actions of other countries is like saying the US can control Canada.

To understand why there won't be any hard evidence of live POWs we need to remember what was happening eighteen to twenty years ago. We also have to examine Vietnam's place in the world today.

As the war ground on, we were beginning to realize that we couldn't win the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese. We had even less chance of winning the war. Nixon and Kissinger were looking for a way to withdraw without looking like the Vietnamese had won. This strategy was called "Peace with Honor."

The Paris peace talks ended with a number of promises on each side. North Vietnam promised to withdraw its troops and return our POWs. The US government promised to withdraw its troops and pay North Vietnam millions of dollars in reparations. Later on we refused to pay the reparations, and North Vietnam decide not to withdraw its troops.

Now, to use any remaining POWs (as some insist) as trading chips to get the reparation money, Hanoi would first have to let us know they are holding them. They have stated over and over, from the beginning, that on the contrary, they don't have anyone.

It's hard to blackmail someone if you deny you are holding the hostage.

Why else would they hold anyone? As slave labor, some say. But the Vietnamese population is growing by about one million people per year. There is plenty of cheap labor. The work ethic is strong-you either work hard or you starve. It would cost them more to guard, clothe, fee and house the 'slaves' and their keepers than the labor would be worth.

As one of the poorest countries in the world, the Vietnamese are dependent on aid from others and therefore are extremely conscious of the world's opinion of them. They also have a well-developed sense of honor. Can you imagine their embarrassment if somehow they had to publicly admit that they lied, or were just uninformed about some prisoner who happened to crop up? And can you imagine the heads rolling if the evidence of that prisoner came from their own detailed records?

Hanoi wants to move forward. They are tearing down the "Hanoi Hilton" and building a luxury hotel complex on the site. They have sent strong signals (they release of the records is only the latest of many) that they want friendly relations.

So, as I said, there are likely to be some interesting things in Hanoi's records. But the one thing that will not be in them is hard evidence of live American being held against their will. The MIA zealots will be disappointed.

I feel it is time to move on. We can normalize relations with Vietnam without forgetting the past. We can help build a strong partner at the same time that we are looking for crash sites. The Vietnamese have gone a long way down George Bush's "road map." It's time we made a substantial move.