Why aren't we in Vietnam; an open letter to the president.

The Honorable William Clinton President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The statement released by the White House in September regarding your latest action in connection with the embargo on Vietnam said, "In evaluating how best to achieve the fullest possible accounting, the president looks forward to the continued counsel and advice from the families whose loved ones are missing and the veterans whose fellow soldiers did not come home." Given that invitation, I set aside years of cynicism first forged by my own experience in Vietnam during the war and shall attempt, as a veteran whose fellow soldiers did not come home, to offer you the counsel that you seek.

Heeding the call to idealism that President John F. Kennedy issued to our generation, at the age of twenty-one I enlisted in the United States Army and went to Vietnam in August 1969, as an infantry platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. While in Vietnam, I struggled with and resolved the moral issues of that war based upon the facts then known to me and concluded that the United States was attempting to do the right thing for the Vietnamese people and for global stability. Many of us who served in combat in Vietnam entertained the notion that, if we survived our tours of duty, we would have much to offer America as a result of our experience. We were soon disabused of that illusion. In the face of the unreceptive and sometimes hostile environment of the political Left, which considered us killers, and the political Right, which blamed us for losing the war, we chose simply to blend quietly into the fabric of America, complete our education, raise families, and share in the American dream. However, unlike most of the American population, we cannot pretend that the whole thing just never happened.

For many of us, watching the fall of Saigon on television was heartrending. We knew full well what was to come for our allies, the soldiers, the civil servants, the teachers, and the people at large who, at our insistence, had thrown in their lot with the United States. The shooting war was over, but the worst suffering was yet to come. After the fall of Saigon, our allies in the South were imprisoned and tortured, and the remains of some of our own soldiers were abandoned in Southeast Asia. Our government and our population chose to turn their backs on a situation that was a constant reminder of the failure of American power.

The United States then proceeded to embargo all of Vietnam. Perhaps the philosophy of an embargo is that it will so isolate an "enemy" nation that its government will cooperate with the embargoing party or that that government will fall from within as a result of social upheaval. What is overlooked is that the impact of the embargo is felt primarily by the common people, those least equipped to bear that burden and totally without power to effect the ends the embargo is supposed to achieve. In the case of Vietnam, what was also overlooked was that the Vietnamese people endure and make do, no matter what. They proved that throughout their war with the French and then their war with us. Despite overwhelming superiority in fire power and technology, we were unable to obtain our objectives in Vietnam. The same determination has allowed Vietnam to endure during the years of the U.S. embargo.

I make these observations based upon first-hand knowledge.

In January 1991, at the invitation of Holt International Children's Services of Eugene, Oregon, a pro bono client of my law firm, I returned to Vietnam for the first time since 1970. I traveled there, with a great deal of trepidation, to visit Holt's orphanages and programs in Vietnam and the hospital facilities that provided medical care for the children of these programs. I went first to Saigon, then traveled all along Highway 1, north to Danang and on to Hanoi. What I saw shocked me. There was no more shooting, but the devastation in human terms was every bit as real as during the war. Throughout the country, I saw orphaned children, crippled children, blind children, children suffering from malnutrition and totally inadequate medical facilities. I met doctors - many of whom had served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and spent years in re-education camps - trying desperately to provide fundamental care to their people, yet isolated by our embargo from the world community, education, technology, and medical supplies.

To my surprise, everywhere I went, when I was identified as an American veteran, I was warmly received, not just by governmental officials engaged in diplomacy, but by the people waiting and hoping for the Americans to return to help them build a life for themselves in their country.

On that trip, I visited the area where I had fought during the war. It was dusk as I climbed a hill in Binh Dinh Province to survey a landing zone that had served as a base area for my battalion. When I got to the top of that hill, I saw a monument, built by the Vietnamese to celebrate their victory. It was a large, triumphant memorial that depicted the VC coming out of the hills, rescuing the women and children and killing us. It was quite graphic, quite disturbing.

As I stood on that hilltop, I reflected on my fourteen friends who did not come home from Vietnam - for me, their souls still dwell in those mountains - and I wondered again what they and so many others had died for. I then thought of what I had seen in the orphanages, hospitals, and streets of Vietnam. I thought of the homeless, disabled, sick kids, of the wretched hospitals, of the malnutrition and suffering. I concluded that, whatever my friends had died for, whatever so many of us had fought and were wounded for, it was not for this.

I realized that the war was not over. It is still being waged by us, but this time it is an economic war. The victims are not our enemy but the very people Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon had sent us there to save. Worse, the victims of this economic war were not even born during the time of the conflict. They are paying the price for our defeat in Vietnam.

I have returned two more times to Vietnam; in February 1992, and July/August 1993. I have been working with Holt International Children's Services and other U.S. Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) who are trying to provide aid to the children and hospitals of Vietnam. I have been able to help establish a national burn project in Vietnam for the treatment of severely burned and handicapped children. The work of the NGOs in Vietnam under the humanitarian exception to the embargo is laudable, but it is a mere drop in the bucket. There are now 71 million people in Vietnam, half of them born after the war. The Communist party, although maintaining control, is a small minority of the population. Further, as a result of the inadequacies of socialism (and not because of the U.S. embargo), the Vietnamese government has been forced to turn to the free enterprise system and to loosen its once oppressive hold on the freedoms of the Vietnamese people.

Not one Vietnamese that I have encountered, whether in the United States or in Vietnam, whether from the North or the South, has ever suggested that the U.S. embargo was having a salutary effect, politically or otherwise, in Vietnam. All of them see the lifting of the U.S. embargo as a panacea for their social and economic ills.

As a result of the modification of the embargo constraints by the Bush administration in December 1992, and the end of opposition by your administration in July to the Franco-Japanese loan to Vietnam in connection with its delinquent IMF loans, foreign governments and entrepreneurs are investing heavily in Vietnam. Today, only the U.S. is isolating itself from Southeast Asia. As desirable as most Vietnamese believe it would be to have a U.S. presence in Vietnam as a balance to the Chinese, Japanese, and others who seek to dominate their economy, soon the United States will be irrelevant to the future development of Vietnam. The Vietnamese will turn, reluctantly, to economic partnerships with our competitors, and we shall have again lost the opportunity to be a constructive presence in Southeast Asia.

The changes I have seen on the ground in Vietnam in the years I have been returning there since the war have been dramatic. The terms communism and socialism have become meaningless. Throughout the country, people are attempting to become involved in a free enterprise system to better the quality of their lives. The economic growth of Vietnam in the last several years has been astounding and all without foreign aid. The Communists have permitted this to happen, not out of a burst of enlightened enthusiasm for democracy, but rather in an attempt to survive and maintain their dominance.

Mr. President, there is no logical, economic, geopolitical, or moral basis for continuing the embargo. Indeed if it ever had any value under any analysis, it is worthless now and the only victims of it are the people of Vietnam (as opposed to the government of Vietnam) and the people of the United States.

While we isolate ourselves from Vietnam, Japan, France, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and others have already replaced the former Soviet bloc nations as Vietnam's trading partners. As a result of the July 2 announcement that the United States would not block the bridge loan from France and Japan, private investment capital from our trade competitors has already started flowing into Vietnam. This clearly means a loss of U.S. business opportunities and U.S. jobs.

Until the formation of the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting in 1992, eighteen years of isolation imposed by the embargo yielded little cooperation from Vietnam in accounting for our MIA's. The best way to obtain as full an accounting as possible of our MIA's is to change our strategy and to engage the Vietnamese. Instead of continuing to isolate ourselves from them, we should engage them in a true quid pro quo. Such cooperation as has been given by Vietnam on the MIA issue has not been reciprocated by the U.S., except with regard to the IMF. More importantly, the continuation of the embargo endangers the mission of the Joint Task Force, reducing the credibility of those in the Vietnamese government who have encouraged cooperation with the United States.

It has been said in editorial pages and elsewhere that, because of your personal history regarding the Vietnam War, politically, you cannot simply lift the embargo, even though it is damaging U.S. interests. You and I made different decisions as how best to respond to the leadership President Kennedy offered our generation and we both live with the consequences of those decisions. However, it is ironic that, as a young man, you were so opposed to the war and now that you are in a position to bring finality to that war, domestic political considerations inhibit you from doing so. As a Senator, Kennedy authored Profiles in Courage, chronicling great Americans who took the course of their conscience, despite the political risks. Mr. President, you are now faced with a similar choice.

Make no mistake about it, I am not an apologist for the Vietnamese government. They were my enemy and their soldiers did their best to make sure that I did not return from Vietnam. Rather, I am an American, advocating fidelity to those principles that America believes it stands for and for which so many Americans fought and died. I simply, but strongly, believe that our policy toward Vietnam is wrong and not in the best interests of the United States, the Vietnamese people, and the families of the MIA's. I urge you to lift the embargo and to provide the leadership to at long last end the Vietnam War.

                                    Very truly yours,
                                    James F. O'Brien

JAMES F. O'BRIEN is a partner in the Boston-based law firm of Goulston & Storrs. He served in Vietnam as an infantry officer with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.