More on the 30th anniversary of the fall/liberation of South Vietnam
The BBC has extensive coverage of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the end of the Vietnam War (something I skipped class to watch live on TV in my high school library).
An excerpt:
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If you click through to the story above, it is very link-rich, with more news, features, a photo gallery and links to external sites. |
The New York Times has fairly muted coverage, although if you go to their international page, there's a photo interactive.
Britain's The Guardian has a lengthy feature entitled Thirty years after the fall of Saigon, the celebrations can finally begin.
The theme is how Vietnam is only now starting to truly enjoy a peace dividend. There is an interactive summing up the 20th Century history of Vietnam and some of the Guardian's archival coverage from key moments in the Vietnam conflict.
The Washington Post also had scant coverage when I checked, but the L.A. Times (Los Angeles has a substantial Southeast Asian community) had this story:
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — In the final days of the Vietnam War 30 years ago, a U.S.-trained South Vietnamese pilot named Nguyen Thanh Trung defected to the North mid-mission. Faking engine problems, he peeled off from his squadron and headed back to Saigon to bomb the presidential palace and the international airport.
Today, Trung flies a U.S.-made Boeing 777 for Vietnam Airlines and shuttles passengers from abroad into the same airport he once bombed. His son is studying aviation in Australia.
“My generation was raised to fight the war,” Trung said, “but today's generation is here to capitalize on the peace.”
To them, Saigon's fall to Communist forces on April 30, 1975, is ancient history. Some Americans still might grapple with its legacy, but the Vietnamese have moved on, seldom speaking of what they call the American War. For them, there is only one focus now — national development.
Half the nearly 83 million people in Vietnam were born after Saigon fell and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The other half has forgiven, if not forgotten, following Vietnam's long tradition of repairing relations with former foes and extracting lessons from the past. In 1426, Vietnam, after defeating China, provided it with boats and horses to carry its vanquished army home.
Addenda:
The Globe and Mail's Geoffrey York wrote one of the best stories I could find. It was published on April 30.
… With a pragmatism born from centuries of foreign entanglements, the Vietnamese have decided it is better to love the Americans than to hate them. And the strategy has paid off. Vietnam's economic boom — the world's second-fastest economic growth, behind China — can be traced to a trade-liberalization agreement with the United States in 2001. Ever since the trade deal, Vietnam's exports to the West have soared dramatically, and foreign investment has poured into the country.
Mr. Tung has spent seven years in the United States, where he obtained two university degrees. And his father, the former soldier, is the head of Vietnam operations for a multinational oil company. He often tells his son: “Now we are open for business. If anything benefits our country, we should accept it.” …
Vietnam's willingness to forgive and forget is a sharp contrast to neighbouring China, where as many as 20,000 people have marched through the streets of Shanghai and Beijing in anti-Japanese protests in recent weeks.
The two situations are not identical, but both China and Vietnam suffered massive losses at the hands of foreign troops in the 20th century. In both countries, hundreds of thousands of people were killed by foreign bombs and soldiers. Yet while the vast majority of Chinese openly express their hatred of Japan and demand formal apologies on top of the verbal ones already given, the Vietnamese rarely express anger at the Americans — even though the United States has never apologized for its military intervention here.
“I think the Vietnamese are better at forgiving than the Chinese are,” Mr. Tung said. “For us, the United States is the best place in the world to study and to learn how to do business. Then we come back home to make our country become stronger.”
This from USA Today:
This summer will mark 10 years since the United States and Vietnam re-established diplomatic relations. The United States bought $5 billion in Vietnamese goods last year and American warships have visited its harbors.
Michael Marine, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, says he hopes for even closer ties between the two countries. But he says remaining obstacles include the Communist regime's continued repression of political debate.
“The government of Vietnam continues to be intolerant of political dissent and significantly restricts freedom of speech, the press, assembly and association,” Marine said in a speech at Texas Tech University in advance of the anniversary.