KERRY'S NEW VIETNAM FIX REFUGEES OF COMMUNIST TAKEOVER WON'T FORGET, FORGIVE HIS PAST.

Byline: Jan Golab Local View

``IF you want to be president, you have to talk to everybody in America, and that is what we are going to do,'' Sen. John Kerry declared last July, when he spoke before the NAACP. It was a dig against President George W. Bush, who had declined an invitation to speak to that organization.

But there's no way Kerry will ever speak to America's 1.2 million Vietnamese-Americans, most of whom live in California. Many of California's Vietnamese-Americans will be in Washington, D.C., today to join with Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and many thousands of other veterans in a nationwide protest.

Little Saigon, which straddles Garden Grove and Westminster in Orange County, is the largest Asian community outside of Asia. A Vietnam War memorial stands there, featuring a statue of a South Vietnamese and an American soldier, depicting U.S.-South Vietnam kinship. Some 70,000 Vietnamese-Americans live there, serving as an epicenter for the half-million Vietnamese-Americans who live in California.

When a Little Saigon store owner put a picture of Ho Chi Minh in his window in 1999, it triggered 50 days of large-scale demonstrations that made international news. ``The anti-communist sentiment in this community is as strong, if not stronger, than anywhere in the world,'' says Garden Grove Police Chief Joseph Polisar. ``The chances of John Kerry coming here are slim to none, and it probably would require a substantial police presence.''

The Swift Boat Veterans have raised serious questions about Kerry's 1971 statements about American troops. Just as bad, however, were his naive statements about the enemy - an issue that has largely been ignored by the media.

As a star of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Kerry preached that the Vietnamese communists were not repressive totalitarians like the Soviets or Chinese. The Viet Cong were hippie rice farmers who just wanted to hold hands and sing ``Kumbaya.'' They were the nice communists. America, meanwhile, was an imperialist oppressor.

Millions of boomers bought into this terrible lie.

Kerry lionized Ho Chi Minh, ignored Soviet support of the NVA and accused the U.S. of being ``paranoid about the so-called communist monolith.'' Asked by a questioning senator in 1971 what would be the effects of an immediate U.S. withdrawal from South Vietnam, Kerry responded: ``Having done what we have done to that country, we have an obligation to offer sanctuary to the perhaps 2,000, 3,000 people who might face political assassination or something else.''

That same week, he appeared on the Dick Cavett show. ``There'd be no interest on the part of the Vietnamese to start massacring people after the U.S. has pulled out,'' Kerry told Cavett.

To this day, Kerry has never disavowed or apologized for those statements. Kerry has never admitted how dead wrong he was.

As in 3 million dead.

After the U.S. withdrew from Saigon on April 30, 1975, 750,000 Vietnamese were forced into re-education camps. Many did not survive. Some 130,000 took to boats and 1 million more fled overland. Next door, the Khmer Rouge claimed 2 million lives in the Killing Fields. The plight of the boat people was an unspeakable nightmare.

Lac Nguyen, director of the nonprofit Vietnamese Community of Southern California, is typical of many Orange County refugees. He served in the South Vietnamese government and as an officer in the army. After the fall of Saigon, he spent three years in jail and labor camps, as did others in his family. His father and five uncles were all killed by the communists.

``I am one of the boat people,'' Nguyen says. ``We don't feel happy with Mr. John Kerry. The majority of Vietnamese refugees here are survivors of communist oppression. We all have family members who were killed or spent years in prison. If John Kerry comes here, he will see our reaction. And he will see it elsewhere, in New York, Boston, Florida as well.''

Van Tran, another refugee, is a Garden Grove councilman and GOP candidate for a California Assembly seat in this fall's election. He is expected to win that post, largely due to support from the Vietnamese community. ``As far as the Vietnamese are concerned,'' says Tran, ``John Kerry is in the same league with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Actually, he's more dangerous because he's running for president. There is more than an attitude of nonsupport for Kerry. It's personal for them.''

Kerry has never attempted to speak to a group of Vietnamese-Americans, says Tran. Nor has he ever apologized for the untrue statements he made during the war. Jane Fonda at least made a half-hearted apology, but not the new JFK. ``He's too arrogant for that,'' says Tran. ``Lobbyists have told me that talking to Kerry's staff on issues related to Vietnam, you might as well talk to ... the Vietnamese embassy.''

Another refugee, Dan Tran (no relation to Van), is a NASA engineer and president of the Vietnam Human Rights Project and spokesman for Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry. ``We (Vietnamese-Americans) are all against the communists,'' says Tran, ``while Mr. Kerry seems like he loves them for some reason.''

VAAJK is planning numerous demonstrations against Kerry during the upcoming election campaign. Back in July, during the Democratic convention in Boston, it joined with the Vietnam Veterans Against Kerry and the Boston Vietnamese community in hosting a four-day conference on Vietnam, with seminars by experts in all areas of the conflict. It was, perhaps, the ultimate ``Vietnam teach-in.''

Dan Tran believes Kerry has underestimated the impact Vietnamese- Americans will have on the election. Half of our nation's 1.2 million Vietnamese-Americans live in California, a state widely considered not to be in play.

``Kerry doesn't believe there are enough in California to sway the vote,'' says Tran, who thinks differently, especially if Bush gets a boost in California from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. ``I think Kerry and his campaign manager have made a very wrong assumption. Kerry went after the Cubans in Miami but he thinks the Vietnamese won't make a difference there. He's wrong. In 2000, only 500 votes made the difference. So the 20,000 Vietnamese-Americans in Florida can make the difference, as well as in other states like Arizona and New Mexico, where it's a very tight race.''