Shedding Old Passions Against the Homeland Reflections by Vietnamese American Andrew Lam
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Vietnam’s ‘Big Welcome’ to Americans

A Vietnamese Communist flag unfurls behind President Clinton as he addresses a gathering in Ho Chi Minh City on Nov. 19. Clinton arrived in the city once known as Saigon to cheers of thousands of people who lined the streets. Photo by Associated Press.

By Terence Hunt/AP

Returning from a historic trip to Vietnam, President Clinton said Sunday that “a big welcome” awaits Americans in this struggling communist nation as it looks with hope to the future without bitterness about the wartime past.

“The years of animosity are past,” Clinton said, a quarter century after the Vietnam War ended with a communist takeover of U.S.-backed South Vietnam. “Today we have a shared interest in your well-being and your prosperity.”

Clinton urged Vietnam to open its economy and allow greater individual freedoms. Despite Clinton’s optimism, Vietnam’s powerful Communist Party chief, Le Kha Phieu, expressed wariness about economic reforms and America’s involvement in Vietnam.

Phieu emphatically stated that while the former Soviet Union has crumbled, the socialist system in Vietnam still stands, Clinton’s economic adviser Gene Sperling said, recounting the talks Saturday in Hanoi.

“What was the cause of our resistance against foreign aggression,” the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan quoted Phieu as telling Clinton. “The root cause was because imperialism colonized other countries.”

In an interview with CNN, Clinton said he had “a nice little debate” with Phieu about the United States and “stoutly disputed that we were an imperialist country. We had never had any imperialist designs here.”

Clinton said the trend toward freedom in Vietnam “is virtually irreversible ... And as you can see in the streets, there is a lot of goodwill toward America here.”

Departing Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday, Air Force One was loaded with silks, purses, paintings, lacquer ware and other gifts purchased by the presidential entourage on a 22,192-mile, weeklong trip to an Asian summit in Brunei and the groundbreaking stop in Vietnam. Clinton’s arrived back in Washington on Monday.

“I am … determined to continue the partnership we have for a better future for the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States and all those whom we can reach together,” Clinton told a group of business leaders just before his departure.

Clinton was the first president to visit this country since 1969 and the first ever to stop in Hanoi. While he spoke hopefully of the future, there were reminders of the painful past.

During his stay he visited an excavation site near Hanoi, where searchers probed the mud for the remains of a U.S. pilot shot down 33 years ago. He met with children disfigured by forgotten land mines. And he watched silently as the remains of three MIAs began the journey home.

In a gesture for religious freedom, Clinton met Sunday with Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City. White House officials said they spoke of problems the archbishop faces in a country where international human rights groups and the State Department cite a pattern of harassment and imprisonment of Buddhist and other religious leaders.

Earlier Sunday, he plunged into crowds in a narrow shopping street, shaking hands and stopping at open-front markets to buy last-minute gifts. To a generation of American GIs, this bustling city of five million people was known as Saigon before its surrender to communist forces in America’s most humiliating military defeat.

Ho Chi Minh City is the commercial hub of Vietnam. Clinton visited a container port on the Saigon River and assured Vietnam that it will benefit by embracing the global economy.

“Already in the last decade Vietnam’s exports to the world have increased by six times over,” the president said. “You will grow even more as your economy becomes more open and the rule of law develops.”

In July, the United States and Vietnam signed a major trade agreement this year that will force major economic reforms and allow normal commerce. Clinton said it would bring more investors here. Clinton promised that the United States would establish a $200 million line of credit to support U.S. investment in Vietnam.

“It will also help to develop a more open, sophisticated free market based on international rules of law,” Clinton said. “And that will bring more rewards for the creativity and initiative of the remarkable Vietnamese people. Both our nations should ratify this agreement and implement it. The changes it will bring should be embraced, not feared.”

The president was upbeat about his visit.

“I think it says a lot about what the people of Vietnam would like their relationship to America to be,” he said. “It’s basically been a big welcome for America, for the United States.”