Little Saigon Is Slow to Tap Into New Era

For President Clinton, the recent trip to Vietnam had to be more than a diplomatic mission. It was a personal spiritual journey.

Vietnam today is a country of youth. Three of every four people were born after 1975. They have a vague knowledge of the war and a vast hunger for anything American. And the belief that a man has a right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness has always been America’s most exportable resource.

Indeed, here in America, many hold a dim view of people like Jane Fonda for going to Hanoi and Bill Clinton for dodging the draft. We Americans have every right to feel that way. But do not forget, to other people around the world who are fighting and dying for the right to live with basic human dignity, those individual acts become the shining example of what America is all about--the best advertisement for America’s most precious commodity.

The young people in Vietnam see a great possibility loom large, for they can recognize that their country has come a long way to befriend the superpower. Vietnam is now caught in the new world order to the point of no return. But to older Vietnamese, who spent much of their lives fighting for so-called national independence, the word “interdependence” echoes badly.

For a watcher of the postwar relations between the United States and Vietnam, it is wonderful to witness foreign policy at its best and diplomacy at its finest. Washington and Hanoi met each other halfway.

Unfortunately, while President Clinton was in Vietnam, the anti-Communist figures in Little Saigon seemed to be unprepared in dealing with the new challenge.

American politics moves more swiftly than the ability of anti-Communist factions in Little Saigon to react. These people had more than three months to prepare, but there were no rallies of opposition held at the White House against the president’s trip, or anywhere else for that matter. The fire of their activism that ignited during the massive demonstration against a storekeeper’s hanging of Ho Chi Minh’s portrait has long vanished.

There is a possibility that the next time a Vietnamese Communist flag is displayed in Little Saigon, it might be in a diplomatic capacity, such as for a trade office. If California is the gateway to Asia, then in the future, when the U.S.-Vietnam trade agreement is fully implemented, Southern California would be the threshold to Vietnam.

The anti-Communist factions in Little Saigon met the new development in the United States-Vietnam relations with the same old strategy. They still call for the downfall of the government in Hanoi before all else. Although they do not mind consuming household products from China, these old soldiers still oppose anything to do with Vietnam.

After more than 25 years of living in one of the world’s greatest democracies, these anti-Communist factions are still unwilling to grant liberty to others.

For example, one of the clauses in the constitution of the nonprofit organization Vietnamese Community of Southern California prohibits anyone who has gone back to Vietnam for any reason from running for office.

Artists living in the United States who go back to perform in Vietnam are ostracized. Anyone who utters anything sounding remotely like the word “reconciliation” will promptly be branded as a coward, a turncoat, or an opportunist.

After more than 25 years of living in one of the world’s greatest democracies, these anti-Communist factions are still unwilling to grant liberty to others and unwilling to accept that “time heals all wounds.”

President Clinton’s speech, delivered from the auditorium at Vietnam National University of Hanoi, was a lot for the Vietnamese ego to accept. But there is a Vietnamese adage about “using a small prawn to catch a fat fish.” It is time the anti-Communist factions in Little Saigon tapped into the American spiritual spring of redemption and renewal.