Crowds Line Hanoi Streets to See Clinton

In a trip designed to bring formal closure to one of the most painful chapters in American history, Bill Clinton today became the first U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the war ended--and the first ever to visit Hanoi, one of the world’s last bastions of Communist rule.

Despite the midnight hour of his arrival, Clinton was greeted by thousands and thousands of people lining the streets on the long ride into town from the airport. Some had been waiting for eight hours or more for a glimpse of the American president.

The three-day visit is heavy on symbolism of the past and the future, blending a tour of a site being excavated for the remains of a U.S. pilot with a speech to Vietnamese youth born after the war ended in 1975.

Yet the historic visit, a quarter-century after U.S.-backed South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam, also has substantive and strategic importance. The goal is to expand and deepen ties that could, over time, leave a stronger U.S. imprint than the war did, according to Vietnamese officials and Americans alike.

“For totally different reasons, this could rank with [President] Nixon’s trip to China--beyond its contribution to closing a chapter for both Americans and Vietnamese,” said Stanley Karnow, who covered Vietnam as a journalist and later wrote the highly acclaimed book “Vietnam: A History.”

Strategically, the Clinton visit signals that the United States is committed to remaining a major part of the Pacific community. That’s important to a Vietnam fearful of a strong and growing Chinese influence in the region.

“The Vietnamese are deathly afraid of the Chinese and have been for 5,000 years,” so in an ironic twist, Hanoi now wants the United States in the region as a counterbalance to China, Karnow said.

Substantively, Clinton will encourage political and economic openings, press human rights and religious freedom issues, promote trade and announce joint programs in education, law enforcement and health to foster cooperation and contact between the former rivals.

In his radio address last weekend, Clinton said he would go to Vietnam “to open a new chapter in our relationship with its people.”

A Possible Turning Point in U.S. Psyche

The visit will also mark a turning point in the American psyche, analysts contend.

“It’s a curious thing. A lot of American kids don’t know about Vietnam, yet it’s become a buzzword about far more than the war,” Karnow said. “It resonates.

“Ever since then, when the United States has become involved in a conflict, the big question is whether it will become another Vietnam. Vietnam has become an adjective. This trip helps exorcise that ghost.”

The magnitude of the change is reflected in the words of leaders from both countries.

As far back as 1963, two years before the first U.S. combat troops landed at Danang, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay suggested that the best solution in Vietnam would be for the United States to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age.

In 1966, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, the political architect of revolutionary North Vietnam, struck an equally militant note, saying: “How long do you Americans want to fight? One year? Five years? Twenty years? We will be glad to accommodate you.”

In the run-up to this trip, officials from both nations spoke almost warmly of the relationship and its future potential. Last week, National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger said Washington wants Vietnam to see that the United States supports its development, “while encouraging those in Vietnam who have been willing to risk opening the country both economically and politically.”

“President Clinton deserves credit for his participation in the process of improving ties between our two countries,” said Phan Thuy Thanh, a spokeswoman for the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry. “We hope his visit will further promote bilateral ties and contribute to peace, stability and prosperity in the region and the world.”

The visit also ends a painful chapter in Clinton’s life that still colors his standing as commander in chief among GIs past and present. As a student in the 1960s, Clinton wrote and spoke and marched against the war.

In 1969, he sent a letter to the head of a local Arkansas ROTC thanking him for “saving me from the draft,” which he called “illegitimate” for forcing men to fight a war they might oppose. He reluctantly agreed to accept the draft only to “maintain my political viability.” In a reflection of changing times, the president has strong bipartisan support for his trip three decades later from former prisoners of war, including Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

But the fact that he is the first U.S. leader to make the trip sparked bitter reactions in some quarters.

“He has a lot of nerve after he dodged the draft and failed to do his part,” said retired Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1970 to 1974. “I wrote to the mothers of the men who were killed, and I know how they feel. I don’t see how he has the nerve to go. It’s totally inappropriate.”

Retired Army Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, who did two tours of duty in Vietnam, said he was one of “a few million” who looked “with disdain and disgust” at the trip because of Clinton’s past.

“As a Vietnam vet, the issue is not the reconciliation process,” he said. “I’m not surprised that he will be welcomed and wined and dined as he was part of the agitation. Is the purpose the national interest of this country, or the Clinton legacy?”

In stark contrast, however, are the views of many Vietnamese. Clinton is widely admired here, not because he opposed the war but because he has been the only U.S. president to support reconciliation unequivocally. He lifted a trade embargo in 1994, restored diplomatic relations in 1995 and secured the signing of a U.S.-Vietnamese trade agreement this year.

Indeed, as historians judge his legacy, reconciliation with Vietnam is likely to be rated one of his major contributions, experts say.

Since dispatching the first post-Vietnam War ambassador to this Southeast Asian nation in May 1997, the United States has “moved the relationship from pretty awful to pretty good,” U.S. Ambassador Douglas “Pete” Peterson, a former Air Force pilot who spent six years in Vietnam as a prisoner of war, said in an interview with reporters traveling with Clinton. “They’re not allowing the past to obscure the future.”

Many Vietnamese appear to agree. “Oh, we’ll miss Clinton so much. He’s done many good things, especially for Vietnam,” said Nguyen Anh Diep, a college-educated waitress at Au Lac Cafe in Hanoi. “I wish he could stay in office another 10 years.”

His popularity is so high that the Monica Lewinsky episode rated hardly a line in the local media, and most Vietnamese were delighted that his impeachment ended in acquittal.

Elite Avoids Talk of Clinton’s Draft Efforts

Everyone at the higher levels knows that he wiggled out of the war, said Lady Borton, an American who has worked in Vietnam since the 1960s as a representative for Quaker Service-Vietnam.

But out of respect for him, it’s not something they talk about.

Not so popular, interestingly, are antiwar activists such as Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Although their role in rallying public sentiment against U.S. military involvement in the 1960s and ‘70s is appreciated, the nationalistic Vietnamese never respected them, believing that anyone who turns against his or her government in a time of war is suspect.

The war is and will remain a backdrop of relations for years to come, U.S. officials acknowledge.

Speaking at Arlington National Cemetery for a Veterans Day commemoration Saturday, Clinton said that he had moved forward with Vietnam “based on one central priority--gaining the fullest possible accounting of American prisoners of war and Americans missing in action in Southeast Asia.”

Although the remains of 283 Americans have been discovered and repatriated since 1993, 1,498 Americans are still listed as missing in action. More than 58,000 Americans and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese died in the war, which also left Vietnam’s economy and landscape in tatters.

Yet the focus of the trip is reflected in the delegation accompanying Clinton, which includes executives from more than 30 U.S. corporations, among them big guns such as General Motors, Boeing and Coca-Cola.

In a reflection of the times, a small Vietnamese company has crafted a pin to commemorate Clinton’s visit that shows the U.S. and Vietnamese flags exploding from the top of a Coca-Cola bottle. Coca-Cola returned here shortly after Washington lifted the trade embargo in 1994, and it already runs three plants with 2,000 employees.

“They’re very, very, very interested in American economic advice, management and, certainly, science and technology, which is an area that they admire a great deal on our side,” Peterson said.

At the Veterans Day commemoration, Clinton described Vietnam as a country emerging from half a century of upheaval, isolation and conflict and ready to “turn its face to a very different world.” He said the U.S. mission should be to encourage Vietnam to become “more interdependent and open to the world.”

In reconciling the past and the future, Clinton urged, “let us resolve never to stop trying to build that better world for which our veterans have sacrificed.”