Why aren't we in Vietnam'?:
O'Brien, James F.
WHY AREN'T WE JAMES F. O'BRIEN IN VIETNAM? AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT The Honorable...
...in February that throughout their war with the French and then their war 1992, and July/August 1993...
...similar choice...
...He served in Vietnam cis an infantry officer with the / 73rd Airborne Brigade...
...be to have a U.S...
...20500 ple at large who, at our insistence, had thrown in their lot with the United States...
...dangers the mission of the Joint Task Force, reducing the cred- Very truly yours, ibility of those in the Vietnamese government who have James F. O'Brien Ph.D...
...presence in Vietnam as a balance to the Chinese, On that trip, I visited the area where I had fought during the Japanese, and others who seek to dominate their economy, soon war...
...Until the formation of the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting Make no mistake about it, I am not an apologist for the in 1992, eighteen years of isolation imposed by the embargo Vietnamese government...
...I then thought of what I had several years has been astounding and all without foreign aid...
...President, you are now faced with a U.S...
...seen in the orphanages, hospitals, and streets of Vietnam...
...The Communist party, 1970...
...counsel and advice from the families whose loved ones are miss- The United States then proceeded to embargo all of Vietnam...
...interests...
...I thought The Communists have permitted this to happen, not out of a of the homeless, disabled, sick kids, of the wretched hospitals, burst of enlightened enthusiasm for democracy, but rather in of the malnutrition and suffering...
...Vietnam...
...or moral basis for continuing the embargo...
...The Vietnamese will turn, reluctantly, to economic talion...
...However, it is ironic that, as a ers have already replaced the former Soviet bloc nations as young man, you were so opposed to the war and now that you Vietnam's trading partners...
...There are now 71 million people in my law firm, I returned to Vietnam for the first time since Vietnam, half of them born after the war...
...impact of the embargo is felt primarily by the common people, Heeding the call to idealism that President John F. Kennedy those least equipped to bear that burden and totally without power issued to our generation, at the age of twenty-one I enlisted to effect the ends the embargo is supposed to achieve...
...They proved have returned two more times to Vietnam...
...Perhaps the philosophy of an embargo is that it will so isolate Given that invitation, I set aside years of cynicism first forged an "enemy" nation that its government will cooperate with the by my own experience in Vietnam during the war and shall at- embargoing party or that that government will fall from withtempt, as a veteran whose fellow soldiers did not come home, in as a result of social upheaval...
...Not one Vietnamese that I have encountered, whether in the Throughout the country, I saw orphaned children, crippled chil- United States or in Vietnam, whether from the North or the South, dren, blind children, children suffering from malnutrition and has ever suggested that the U.S...
...In the in the United States Army and went to Vietnam in August case of Vietnam, what was also overlooked was that the Viet1969, as an infantry platoon leader with the 173rd Airborne Brigade...
...I have been able to help establish a national burn projI make these observations based upon first-hand knowl- ect in Vietnam for the treatment of severely burned and handedge...
...Application deadline February Ist...
...10: 3 December 1993 Commonweal Mr...
...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...
...All of them whom had served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam see the lifting of the U.S...
...President of the United States For many of us, watching the fall of Saigon on television The White House was heartrending...
...Worse, the vicCommonweal Associates tims of this economic war were not even born during the time 15 Dutch Street, N.Y., N.Y...
...tion in human terms was every bit as real as during the war...
...As desirable as most Vietnamese believe it would build a life for themselves in their country...
...The economic growth of Vietnam in the last and so many others had died for...
...We were soon disabused of that illusion...
...Indeed if it ever It has been said in editorial pages and elsewhere that, behad any value under any analysis, it is worthless now and the cause of your personal history regarding the Vietnam War, only victims of it are the people of Vietnam (as opposed to politically, you cannot simply lift the embargo, even though the government of Vietnam) and the people of the United it is damaging U.S...
...I traveled there, with a great deal of trepidation, to visit although maintaining control, is a small minority of the popuHolt's orphanages and programs in Vietnam and the hospital lation...
...triumphant memorial that depicted the VC coming out of the The changes I have seen on the ground in Vietnam in the hills, rescuing the women and children and killing us...
...The shooting war was over, but the worst ear Mr...
...technology, we were unable to obtain our objectives in Vietnam...
...Commonweal 3 December 1993: 9 my friends had died for, whatever so many of us had fought Have you renewed and were wounded for, it was not for this...
...It was dusk as I climbed a hill in Binh Dinh Province to the United States will be irrelevant to the future development survey a landing zone that had served as a base area for my bat- of Vietnam...
...provide fundamental care to their people, yet isolated by our As a result of the modification of the embargo constraints embargo from the world community, education, technology, by the Bush administration in December 1992, and the end of and medical supplies...
...Further, as a result of the inadequacies of socialism (and facilities that provided medical care for the children of these not because of the U.S...
...embargo), the Vietnamese government programs...
...Americans who took the course of their conscience, despite This clearly means a loss of U.S...
...We knew full well what was to come for our D1600 Pennsylvania Avenue allies, the soldiers, the civil servants, the teachers, and the peoWashington, D.C...
...embargo was having a salutotally inadequate medical facilities...
...I urge you to lift the embargo and to provide IMF...
...As a result of the July 2 an- are in a position to bring finality to that war, domestic politnouncement that the United States would not block the bridge ical considerations inhibit you from doing so...
...The terms communism and socialism have become As I stood on that hilltop, I reflected on my fourteen friends meaningless...
...It was a large, the opportunity to be a constructive presence in Southeast Asia...
...ing and the veterans whose fellow soldiers did not come home...
...Throughout the country, people are attempting to who did not come home from Vietnam-for me, their souls become involved in a free enterprise system to better the qualstill dwell in those mountains-and I wondered again what they ity of their lives...
...President, there is no logical, economic, geopolitical, encouraged cooperation with the United States...
...What is overlooked is that the to offer you the counsel that you seek...
...10038 of the conflict...
...business opportunities and the political risks...
...The best way to obtain as full an accounting as possi- Rather, I am an American, advocating fidelity to those princible of our MIA's is to change our strategy and to engage the ples that America believes it stands for and for which so many Vietnamese...
...They were my enemy and their solyielded little cooperation from Vietnam in accounting for our diers did their best to make sure that I did not return from Vietnam...
...They are paying the price for our defeat in Vietnam...
...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...
...I met doctors-many of tary effect, politically or otherwise, in Vietnam...
...I went first to Saigon, then traveled all along has been forced to turn to the free enterprise system and to loosen Highway 1, north to Danang and on to Hanoi...
...icapped children...
...President: suffering was yet to come...
...I realized that the war was not over...
...Instead of continuing to isolate ourselves from Americans fought and died...
...What I saw its once oppressive hold on the freedoms of the Vietnamese shocked me...
...is isolating itself from waiting and hoping for the Americans to return to help them Southeast Asia...
...embargo as a panacea for their social and spent years in re-education camps-trying desperately to and economic ills...
...AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT The Honorable William Clinton that the whole thing just never happened...
...The victims are Benefactors $1.000 Supporters $500 Patrons $250 not our enemy but the very people Presidents Kennedy, Charter $125 Sustaining $50 Johnson, and Nixon had sent us there to save...
...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...
...The work of the NGOs in Vietnam under the In January 1991, at the invitation of Holt International humanitarian exception to the embargo is laudable, but it is a Children's Services of Eugene, Oregon, a pro bono client of mere drop in the bucket...
...Despite overwhelming superiority in fire power and Holt International Children's Services and other U.S...
...sions as how best to respond to the leadership President While we isolate ourselves from Vietnam, Japan, France, Kennedy offered our generation and we both live with the conAustralia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and oth- sequences of those decisions...
...You and I made different deciStates...
...As a Senator, loan from France and Japan, private investment capital from Kennedy authored Profiles in Courage, chronicling great our trade competitors has already started flowing into Vietnam...
...Today, only the U.S...
...namese people endure and make do, no matter what...
...programs in Christian Ethics and New Testament & Early Christianity Two programs for full-time students which draw on the distinctive resources of the Roman Catholic theological tradition...
...I simply, but strongly, believe that them, we should engage them in a true quid pro quo...
...opposition by your administration in July to the Franco-Japanese To my surprise, everywhere I went, when I was identified loan to Vietnam in connection with its delinquent IMF loans, as an American veteran, I was warmly received, not just by gov- foreign governments and entrepreneurs are investing heavily ernmental officials engaged in diplomacy, but by the people in Vietnam...
...There was no more shooting, but the devasta- people...
...matic...
...It was years I have been returning there since the war have been draquite graphic, quite disturbing...
...However, unlike most of the American population, we cannot pretend JAMES F. O'BRIEN is a partner in the Boston-based law fine cqf Goulston & Storrs...
...Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) who are tryThe same determination has allowed Vietnam to endure dur- ing to provide aid to the children and hospitals of ing the years of the U.S...
...embargo...
...It is still being waged by us, but this time it is an economic war...
...Financial assistance available...
...For more information, write to: Director of Graduate Programs Department of Theology Loyola University Chicago 1870 6525 N. Sheridan Road Awit Chicago, IL 60626 3 12-508-2353 Commonweal 3 December 1993: 11...
...WHY AREN'T WE JAMES F. O'BRIEN IN VIETNAM...
...I concluded that, whatever an attempt to survive and maintain their dominance...
...I have been working with with us...
...your Associate membership...
...When I got to the top of that hill, I saw a monument, partnerships with our competitors, and we shall have again lost built by the Vietnamese to celebrate their victory...
...MIA's...
...nection with the embargo on Vietnam said, "In Our government and our population chose to turn their backs evaluating how best to achieve the fullest pos- on a situation that was a constant reminder of the failure of sible accounting, the president looks forward to the continued American power...
...Such co- our policy toward Vietnam is wrong and not in the best interoperation as has been given by Vietnam on the MIA issue has ests of the United States, the Vietnamese people, and the famnot been reciprocated by the U.S., except with regard to the ilies of the MIA's...
...More importantly, the continuation of the embargo en- the leadership to at long last end the Vietnam War...
...After the fall of Saigon, our allies The statement released by the White House in the South were imprisoned and tortured, and the remains of in September regarding your latest action in con- some of our own soldiers were abandoned in Southeast Asia...
...jobs...
Vol. 120 • December 1993 • No. 21
