Vietnam should be as lucky as Iraq
Claudia Rosett:
"...Is Vietnam the next Iraq?
"The answer, sadly for the people of Vietnam, is: Fat chance. For all Iraq's many troubles, the Vietnamese should be so lucky as to have the opportunities now before the Iraqis. Vietnam is one place where the great American superpower is entirely unlikely to come clamoring for a rematch in the cause of freedom. For most of the Western world, Vietnam lives on not as a real country inhabited today by 80 million real people, but simply as a sort of eternal shorthand for lost causes, a TV talk show sound bite: 'Pick-yer-debacle: The next Vietnam?'
"...The fall of Saigon in 1975 was followed by brutal moves to collectivize the south. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly relocated, tens of thousands sent to labor camps. Terror and hunger produced an exodus in which ultimately more than 1.5 million people fled Vietnam--many by boat, braving pirates and sharks in the South China Sea.
"Even after Hanoi's communist regime began its doi moi economic reforms in the late 1980s, even after the U.S. lifted the trade embargo in 1994 and normalized relations in 1995, Vietnam remained a political sinkhole. The ruling Communist Party tightly restricts freedom of religion and speech, permits no rival parties or groups, and throws its critics, like Dr. Que, in prison. Out of 192 countries surveyed earlier this year by New York-based Freedom House, Vietnam ranked among the 16 most repressive regimes.
"Compare this with today's Iraq, where, despite the complaints, there has been no stampede for the exits. People are now free to speak as they please, worship as they choose, print independent newspapers, read them, and raise their voices in the debate over the framing of a new constitution.
"...For Saddam to have presided over the slaughter of 300,000 during the course of his rule meant killing, on average, about 34 human beings per day, or more than one an hour, every hour, around the clock, for 24 years. To put that in perspective, note that the terrorist bombing in August of the United Nations compound in Baghdad--an atrocity that killed 22 people--would have qualified in the ledgers of Saddam's regime as a below-average day of murder. Add to this the Iraqis traumatized by state-sanctioned rape, mutilated by torturers, and terrorized for decades into the kind of self-betrayal and submission that sickens the soul."
Claudia Rosett:
"...Is Vietnam the next Iraq?
"The answer, sadly for the people of Vietnam, is: Fat chance. For all Iraq's many troubles, the Vietnamese should be so lucky as to have the opportunities now before the Iraqis. Vietnam is one place where the great American superpower is entirely unlikely to come clamoring for a rematch in the cause of freedom. For most of the Western world, Vietnam lives on not as a real country inhabited today by 80 million real people, but simply as a sort of eternal shorthand for lost causes, a TV talk show sound bite: 'Pick-yer-debacle: The next Vietnam?'
"...The fall of Saigon in 1975 was followed by brutal moves to collectivize the south. Hundreds of thousands were forcibly relocated, tens of thousands sent to labor camps. Terror and hunger produced an exodus in which ultimately more than 1.5 million people fled Vietnam--many by boat, braving pirates and sharks in the South China Sea.
"Even after Hanoi's communist regime began its doi moi economic reforms in the late 1980s, even after the U.S. lifted the trade embargo in 1994 and normalized relations in 1995, Vietnam remained a political sinkhole. The ruling Communist Party tightly restricts freedom of religion and speech, permits no rival parties or groups, and throws its critics, like Dr. Que, in prison. Out of 192 countries surveyed earlier this year by New York-based Freedom House, Vietnam ranked among the 16 most repressive regimes.
"Compare this with today's Iraq, where, despite the complaints, there has been no stampede for the exits. People are now free to speak as they please, worship as they choose, print independent newspapers, read them, and raise their voices in the debate over the framing of a new constitution.
"...For Saddam to have presided over the slaughter of 300,000 during the course of his rule meant killing, on average, about 34 human beings per day, or more than one an hour, every hour, around the clock, for 24 years. To put that in perspective, note that the terrorist bombing in August of the United Nations compound in Baghdad--an atrocity that killed 22 people--would have qualified in the ledgers of Saddam's regime as a below-average day of murder. Add to this the Iraqis traumatized by state-sanctioned rape, mutilated by torturers, and terrorized for decades into the kind of self-betrayal and submission that sickens the soul."
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