From: JFT%NCCIBM1.BITNET@ncsuvm.cc.ncsu.edu (** Tua^'n **)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: Re: Re:  WHAT DO THE AMERICANS WANT?
Date: 15 Apr 92 18:57:00 GMT
Organization: Station Zebra Public Access UNIX(tm), Sunnyvale CA  (408)739-1520

Dear Tri',

 Thank you for your comments on that article, I 'm glad
somebody said something.  I agree with all you said.

>
> >
> >
> >
> > 		"WHAT DO THE AMERICANS WANT?"
> >
> >    "U.S. policy is strangling hopes of 67 million Vietnamese"
> >
> > by T.T. NHU
> >
> >
> >     One evening after dinner, I walked Nguyen thi Binh back to her room.
> > The Regency Hotel in Nadi, Fiji, had a series of elaborate intersecting
> > walkways that connected hundreds of rooms and were baffling in the dark.
> > In the humid, velvety night, Binh laughed as she took my arm and we plunged
> > into a dark passage: "Now, let us descend into the labyrinth.  Ever since I
> > have been negotiating with Americans, it's been impossible to figure out wha
> > they want.  Tell me, what do Americans want?"
> ..............................................................................
>  ..................................>
>
> > because she is the granddaughter of one of Vietnam's greatest anti-colonial
> > patriots, Phan Chu Trinh, who has a street named after him in almost every
> > town in Vietnam.  Binh has been dealing with Americans for the past 25 years
> > and she's still puzzling over the contortions the United States has convolut
> > into policy in order to rationalize the war and its aftermath.
>
> *          I think Nguyen Thi Binh is now very disillusioned with the
> Communist regime.  I wonder why she still lets them use her to carry
> their propaganda message around the world.
>
> >
> >     Seventeen years after the end of the war in Vietnam, the light is still
> > at the end of the tunnel.  Only this time it is Vietnam that is seeking to
> > get out of the tunnel, and the United States is bloking the exit.  The Bush
> > administration is not ready to end the de facto economic war - the embargo -
> > which has put the squeeze on Vietnam since 1975, making it one of the poores
> > countries in the world.
> >
>  *         Go ahead and put all the blame on the Americans.  Forget
> about how the Communists mismanaged the economy.  Forget about how the
> Communists treated the country's professionals and intellectuals that
> they had to flee abroad.
>
>
> >
> >     In 1990, there were indications that the United States was considering
> > renewing relations with Vietnam.  I was invited to the White House in May th
> > year along with two dozen other Vietnamese-Americans to discuss the
> > implications of normalization among the Vietnamese in America.  It seemed
> > fairly certain at the time that the administration intended to move in that
> > direction and was putting the Vietnamese-American community on notice.
> > Although publicly there was opposition to normalization, privately many
> > Vietnamese were relieved.  There was a feeling that ending Vietnam's isolati
> > would open up more possibilities for democracy and begin to resolve the
> > desperate poverty that is strangling the nearly 67 million people of Vietnam
>
>   *        Mind you, poverty is just one strangling factor.
>
> ..............................................................................
>  ........................................................
> >
> >     The issue of the remains of 2,273 unaccounted-for Americans is what bloc
> > the normalization process.  This stumbling block is bewildering to the
> > Vietnamese, who have more than 300,000 MIAs of their own and have spent
> > 600,000 working days in efforts to recover American MIAs.
>
>    *       You are going to make me cry soon.
>
> ....................................................................
> > recrimination.  The Vietnamese desperately want to resolve the issue and are
> > acutely aware that the POW/MIA issue will continue to be used to humiliate
> > them until the United States considers it politically expedient to end the
> > punishment.
> >
> ........................................................................
> >
> >     For Hanoi, lifting economic sanctions so that Vietnam can rejoin the
> > international market is the top priority.  Whether the US decides to resume
> > diplomatic relations is not all that urgent.  "All we would like is for the
> > to remove the impediments which prevent the international banks from lending
> > us money and other countries from trade investments which could revive us,"
> > said Binh.  "Let us breathe."
>
>     *      Binh meant "Let the regime breathe". If you want to rejoin
> the world, let me give you a hint.  Most civilized people prefer a
> pluralistic system to a dictatorship.
>
>
> >     Whether it is a question of 2,273 missing persons or one, the POW/MIA
> > issue is really a poor excuse not to recognize Vietnam.  Almost everyone
> > except Jesse Helms and a few others agree that re-establishing ties would
> > improve the chances to resolve the MIA issue and other matters such as
> > refugees and humanitarian concerns more directly.  But the Bush
>  administration,
> > facing a tough re-election campaign, swamped by economic woes and nervously
> > reacting whenever the Republican right wing says "boo," is too timid to
> > normalize relations with Vietnam and risk losing more votes.
> >
> >     So the question of normalization must wait until after the November
> > elections.  A Democratic president would have no qualms about bringing the
> > Vietnam War to a close in the spring of 1993, 47 years after the United Stat
> > first became involved in Vietnam by trying to help the French regain the
> > colonial empire they lost in World War II.
> >
> > -- end of article
> >
>           The Communists and Nguyen Thi Binh do not represent the 67
> million people of Vietnam.  They are just being a bunch of hypocrits.
>
> tri'
>
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese