Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Fri, 13 Nov 1992 17:08:11 -0600
From:         Max Becherer <becherer@SUNA0.CS.UIUC.EDU>
Subject: Re: US-Vietnam relations

  Response to G. Sussman.


> I don't know who Max Becherer is, but judging by his messages on this
> medium it would be hard to conclude that he other than painfully ignorant
> about U.S. foreign policy and, in this case, about the U.S. war in Indochina.
> I suspect he must be some sort of aficionado of right wing manifestos and
> militarist renditions of the war on the Vietnamese people.  What city/town do
> you live in Max?  Perhaps some of us could recommend a few good bookstores.
> I'll send you a few titles when I get the next chance. GS

      No, GS, you really have no idea who I am.  I also suspect that you have
not read many of my postings, or perhaps you have, but only paid attention to
those parts you could easily take out of context.
      Most of my closest friends are Vietnamese refugees; they know the Hanoi
for what it really is, a brutal police state.  My best friend's family was
murdered by the Communists, I know people who have been in those so-called
"Re-Education" camps.  I have heard enough first hand stories, and read enough
accounts of Communist brutality in Vietnam to keep my stomach turning for
years.  My friends know the real face of Communism, not the romanticized, and
sanitized version you have likely been exposed to.  Tell me, GS, do you know
any Vietnamese ?  Have you heard their stories ?  Or do you base your knowlege
on left-wing magazines and books ?
      As far as being "some sort of aficionado of right wing manifestos and
militarist renditions of the war on the Vietnamese people", that is one of
the most ridiculous things I have ever been accused of.  I love the Vietnamese
people.  When (not if) the Vietnamese overthrow the Hanoi regime, I plan to go
to Vietnam and devote my life to helping the Vietnamese people rebuild their
country from the triple disasters of Colonialism, War and Communism. My dream,
and the dream of all freedom-loving Vietnamese is for Vietnam to realize it's
full potential as a free and prosperous country in a peaceful world.  Under
Communism, this is, of course, impossible.
       Where U.S. foreign policy is concerned, I long ago lost my faith in
the purity of Washington's motives, and it seems that every time I turn
around, yet another nail is driven into the coffin of that long-lost faith.
Good recent examples are George Bush's softline policies towards the Butchers
of Beijing, and the shocking betrayal of the Kurds during the Gulf War.
Washington talks a good lone about freedom and democracy, but it's just that,
talk.  Why, for example, doesn't the "Roadmap" for U.S. normalization of
relations with Vietnam say a word about freedom and human rights for the
Vietnamese people ?  If Washington really cared, human rights and democratic
reforms would be THE primary preconditions to normalization.  Anything else
would rate a distant second.

      GS, I am more interested in knowing where you got your overly rosey and
utterly unrealistic notions about the nature of Communism in Vietnam.  I think
you mean well, but you really don't seem to know much about Vietnam today. I
would suggest you put down your books and magazines and get to know some
Vietnamese people.  They know far better than you or I what it is like to live
Under Communism.  Besides, if nothing else, it will give you a chance to make
some wonderful friendsips, then you may know why I love the Vietnamese people
so much.


> The U.S. should normalize relations with Vietnam now.  Any of the following,
> if not all, would be sufficient reason for doing so:
> History--U.S. foreign policy toward the USSR in the 1920s, China in the 50s
> and 60s, Cuba in the 60s to present, were disastrous mistakes and contributed
> to world tensions and conflicts (the rise of Naziism, the Korean War, the
 worst
> excesses of Stalin, the physical deprivation of the Cuban people, etc.).  His-
> tory has shown that it is far more constructive to deal with other states than
> not to deal with them and that the breakdown of communication ultimately leads
> to war and violence against innocent people.

      Your logic is tenuous at best, and that is being VERY generous.  The
events that lead to Stalin's Red Terror, the Holocaust and the Cultural
Revolution are far more complicated than American refusal to deal with those
regimes.  It would be nice if the world were so simple, then perhaps tragedies
like these would be easier to forsee and avoid.
      The policy you are advocating is called Constructive Engagement, and it
is one of the worst ideas to come out of Washington in years.  It has been
tried in a number of countries, and has failed miserably.  South Africa and
China are two excellent examples.  In South Africa, the U.S. constructively
engahed Pretoria for years and accomplished zilch.  As for China, we need only
turn the pages of history back to one dark night in Tienanmen Square to see
how little the Chinese Communists have really changed.

> Human rights--The U.S. is no beacon of human and civil rights but selectively
> uses "human rights" as a smokescreen to mask its real objections to countries
> it censures.  It is obvious that socialist and radical nationalist countries
> are singled out for criticism and ostracism, while right wing reactionary re-
> gimes have long received a free ride and enormous material support (Marcos,
> Suharto, Lee Kuan Yew, Zia, the Shah, the Saudi govts., Kuwait, Park and
> Chun Doo Hwan of S. Korea, Diem, Thieu, Ky of Vietnam, Cristiani of El
 Salvador,
> South Africa, and many other ruthless, oppressive and undemocratic
 dictatorships
> most of which were considerably more brutal or as brutal as the countries the
> U.S. govt. decries.

      You are right, the double standards the U.S. holds are appalling.  But
on the other hand, you are advocating that the U.S. get in bed with yet
another blood-stained dictatorship, namely the Hanoi regime.  You are guilty
of the same double standard.  Personally, I think thet the labels Right Wing
and Left Wing are arbitrary, and obscure the point.  Like different breeds of
dog, "Right Wing" and "Left Wing" regimes may look different, but they are
fundimentally the same thing; tyranny is tyranny, regardless of which wing it
claims to be.  I don't think that the United States, or any other country
should deal with any tyrannical regime.  In other words, the World Community
should be an exclusive club: Tyrants of any stripe need not apply.


>                    In Indochina, the U.S. was directly or indirectly respon-
> sible for the killing of millions of civilians, having dumped more than twice
> the explosives on that region up to 1973 as all of the "theatres" of war in
> World War II combined.  No scholar on Vietnam should have any illusion about
> the brutal and racist attitude of the Johnson and Nixon governments toward
> "enemies" of color, including the Vietnamese peasants.

        Actually, though it still left a lot to be desired, American treatment
of civilians in the Vietnam war had improved considerably since World War II.
As you noted, we dropped more, and more powerful bombs on Vietnam then were
used in all of World War II.  Conservative estimates place the number of
civilians killed by U.S. forces in World War II at 10 million.  The highest
figures I have heard for Vietnam are around 2.5 million.  In actuality, about
half of the civilians deaths in Vietnam were caused by the Communists, but
for the moment, let us assume that any civilian death was at least indirectly
the fault of the United States.  Based on this, in Vietnam the U.S. dropped
more bombs on a far smaller area than in World War II, yet killed only a
quarter the number of civilians.
         Unfortunately, this "improvement" still translates into a lot of
innocent lives lost.  While a decided improvement over World War II, U.S.
bahavior in Vietnam was far from perfect.  For instance, soldiers guilty of
atrocities like the massacre at My Lai should have faces a firing squad,
prferably with the survivors of the massacre watching.
         On another note, I find the fact that Communist war atrocities are
rarely mentioned interesting.  Everyone knows about the American massacre at
My Lai, but what about the Communist massacre at Hue ?  3,000 people were
murdered and dumped into mass graves when the Communists took the city during
the Tet Offensive.  My Lai-syle mass killings were considered business as
usual for the Communists.  For all the harping about American and South
Vietnamese war atrocities, in many ways the atrocities committed by the
Communists are more significant.  Why ?  Because the South Vietnamese
government no longer exists and the Americans have been gone for nearly a
quarter of a century.  The Communists, however, are still in Vietnam, and they
are in power.  They continue to brutalize the Vietnamese people to this day.


> The American people and its representative have a moral obligation to not only
 r
> estore relations but in some way to compensate the widows, the orphans, the
 dis-
> abled, the elderly, the ecology of Vietnam for the meanest war ever
 perpetrated
> on a human population, comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and yes even the
 dea
> th camps in Europe.

        Tell me, what has happened to the billions in military and economic
aid the United States poured into "Right-Wing" dictatorships like Guatemala,
El Salvadore, etc. ?  These regimes became stronger and more capable of
oppressing their people.  And what of the people ?  Perhaps a little of that
aid trickled down to them, but was it really worth it ?  Was whatever tiny
scrap they got really worth forstalling the day when the citizens can breathe
the fresh air of freedom ?  I think not.
        What makes you think the Hanoi regime will behave any differently
from the "Right Wing" regimes you decry ?  If the United States were to
hand over 4 or 5 billion dollars (or more) to Hanoi, it would benefit the
Communists, not the people.  All U.S. debts are payable to the Vietnamese
people. We owe the Communists NOTHING, not one cent; in fact, the Communists
themselves are deeply in debt to the Vietnamese people for all the misery and
suffering they have caused.
        When the regime in Hanoi is overthrown, I think the U.S. should give
massive aid to Vietnam, but not before.  The Hanoi regime has one of the
worst human rights records in the world today, and to send aid now would be
tantamount to giving money to a slave owner in the hopes that a little will
reach the slaves.  A little probable will, but as I said earlier, it's NOT
WORTH IT.  Only when the Vietnamese poeple live in freedom under a government
which actually cares about them as human beings will U.S. aid do any good.
        If anything, your desire to blame everything bad on the U.S.
strengthens my arguement; after all, wouldn't propping up the dictatorship in
Hanoi be adding one more wrong to the already-long list of U.S. crimes against
the Vietnamese people ? Secondly, when (not if) the Vietnamese poeple liberate
themselves from Communism, will you still be so enthusiastic about sending aid
to Vietnam ?

        An aside on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: these were among the worst single
military atrocities ever committed by the United States, likely THE worst,
though U.S. firebomb attacks on Tokyo, Yokohama and Dresden came close.  In
fact, there is good reason to believe that the atomic bombings were in fact
nothing gruesome nuclear tests, with human guinea pigs.
        Why ?  First of all, Japan was already VERY close to surrender, so the
military value of the attacks is at best, debatable.  The most damning
evidence, however, is the fact that Nagasaki was nuked a mere three days after
the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima: long before the Japanese leadership had a
chance to fully realize what had happened to Hiroshima.  Why is this ?
Because the U.S. wanted to use the second bomb before Japan knew what was up
and surrendered.  I doubt Germany would have been treated the same way.


> "Moral pragmatism"--Even within the utterly disingenuous logic that this
> political phrase represents, it makes more sense to try to destabilize
> regimes by exposing them to the material, political, cultural, etc. allure-
> ments and enticements of exposure to American goods, American habits, American
> values.  This was echoed by such U.S. leaders as Kennedy and Humphrey, among
> others, because it has been understood by them that a western-oriented
> subclass within such societies forms the bridgehead of U.S. penetration
> of its social, economic and political institutions.  Isolation only serves
> to strengthen the most radical and nationalist tendencies within societies
> that are targeted by the superpower.  Look what happened to China in the first
> two decades under communist party rule compared to the opening established
> by Nixon and Kissinger (moral pragmatists).

      As I have said earlier, Constructive Engagement has a pitiful record.

> A Peaceful World--Most people are tired of having nearly 5 decades of cold and
 h
> ot wars, and would like to see other, less macho, less bullying, less
 hegemonic,
> values tested in int'l relations.  The world might just be a better place if
> the U.S. made its best efforts to set a high standard of social and human
 rights
> at home, while encouraging less democratic societies to move in a direction
 with
> out fear of destabilization and interference in their internal affairs.
> Vietnam has already paid an enormous price in lives and development through
> the U.S. orchestrated policy of global isolation and retribution for surviving
> the U.S. attack on its people and sovereignty.  It's time to try a more en-
> lightened approach.
> GS

       What you do not understand is that the real losers of the Vietnam War
are the Vietnamese people. The Hanoi regime has one of the worst human rights
records in the world today.  To say Vietnam under communism is a Hell on Earth
would not be far from the truth; in fact, I have heard those vary words from
Vietnamese people more often than I can remember.
       Your double standard is all too glaring; warm relations with a "Right
Wing" dictatorship is "Imperialism", etc, while equally warm relations with a
"Left Wing" dictatorship is an "enlightened approach".  What you propose the
United States do will prop up the Hanoi regime, a regime which is despised by
its people.  This will only serve to prolong the misery of the Vietnamese
people.  Haven't they suffered enough already ?

                                       Max Becherer
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