Was the U.S. Fighting for Freedom in Vietnam or Free Enterprise?

During President Clinton’s recent trip to Vietnam, the country’s Communist leadership closed Ho Chi Minh’s tomb in Hanoi as a diplomatic gesture. They didn’t want to embarrass the president by making him feel obligated to visit the resting site of the Communist leader. But judging from the crowds that swarmed the U.S. president, Clinton may have attracted more visitors than Ho Chi Minh.

The president’s visit was so successful among the Vietnamese populace that the Communist leaders had to back off and remind their citizens what the war and their struggle against American imperialism was about.

So much for “Yankee Go Home.”

Some 25 years after the fall of Saigon, the United States has redeemed what it lost on the battlefield and achieved most of its strategic wartime objectives:

* The dominoes have not fallen in Southeast Asia.

* Vietnam is at peace with its neighbors.

* The country is not aligned with China or the Soviet Union.

* Vietnam has initiated free market reforms.

* The United States and Vietnam, which have full diplomatic relations, signed a historic trade pact last summer that awaits congressional approval.

These outcomes would have pleased presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. In fact, Nixon negotiated for far less.

The settlement that led to the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam in 1973 left the Republic of South Vietnam hanging. Within two years, Communist North Vietnam conquered the south and reunified the country.

It has taken a quarter-century for a president, who opposed the war as a young man, to visit Vietnam as a victor.

Most Americans should be pleased by the events in Vietnam, except for one thing. The country remains a dictatorship.

During the war, the United States pledged to fight for freedom and democracy in Vietnam. President after president characterized the war as part of the struggle between the Free World and Communism. Some 55,000 Americans lost their lives fighting to keep South Vietnam free.

But Vietnam has never had a democracy in its long history. And the United States propped up one dictatorship after another in the Republic of South Vietnam.

The regimes in Saigon were as autocratic as the present regime in Hanoi.

When Congress debates the trade pact this winter, the United States will have a second chance to demonstrate its commitment to freedom and democracy in Vietnam.

In the next few months before Congress votes on the Vietnam trade agreement, Vietnamese refugees, who have become U.S. citizens and have gotten a taste of democracy, plan to lobby on behalf of human rights. They want the trade agreement linked to political reforms in Vietnam.

For the past quarter-century, Vietnamese immigrants have been unsuccessful in influencing policymakers in both Republican and Democratic administrations to do so.

The unanswered question in the minds of Vietnamese Americans is whether the United States cares more about free enterprise than political freedom.

The immigrants are not naive about foreign policy and domestic politics. They know the government of Vietnam won’t change overnight and that Congress has been reluctant to link human rights policies to trade agreements, especially with China.

But they know that the economic situation in Vietnam is more desperate than in China and that the United States has the economic muscle to pressure Vietnam to initiate reforms.

Such reforms include releasing political prisoners and guaranteeing freedom of speech, press and religion.

There is no question the United States has the power to promote free enterprise. But does it have the resolve, and has it ever had the desire, to promote democracy in Vietnam?

This very well may be the true legacy of the war.