Posted on 05/03/2005 4:18:36 PM PDT by corncob
Thirty years after the last helicopter beat a hasty retreat from a Saigon rooftop, U.S. credit card companies American Express and MasterCard were boldly advertised in Vietnam over the weekend on parade floats marking what was once thought to be an ignominious American defeat. If then-President Ford had not possessed the courage and wisdom to order the end of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam, we probably would still be embroiled in combating a never-ending insurgency. advertisement advertisement Instead, the United States is now the biggest marketplace for exports from Vietnam, which began abandoning a failed centralized economy two decades ago in favor of Chinese-style capitalist market reforms. In defeat, the U.S. was able to economically exploit Vietnam without spending U.S. dollars and lives on a hopeless occupation. As reported Saturday in the Los Angeles Times by David Lamb, the newspaper's former Hanoi bureau chief, the main message from Hanoi's still avowedly communist leaders is that their country guarantees a favorable business environment for foreign investors. "Ironically, if you took away the still-ruling Communist Party and discounted the perilous decade after the war, the Vietnam of today is not much different from the country U.S. policymakers wanted to create in the 1960s," Lamb wrote. "It is a peaceful, stable presence in the Pacific Basin, with an army that has been whittled down to 484,000 troops. Its economy, a mix of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, has the highest growth rate in Southeast Asia. Private enterprise is flourishing, a middle class is growing, poverty rates are falling
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
If you've got an iron stomach, look up other articles by the same author.
Yet the Communist Party still stands in Vietnam.
Unfort. communicsm is alive and well in several countries:
Cuba China and now Venezuela
Yeah, with Chavez.
Don't forget Laos and North Korea (kind of communist but more of a dictatorship now)
#$&% Scheer!
Wasn't Nixon the one to withdraw US Troops in 1974 following the Paris Accords? Then-President Ford didn't really order the end of the occupation; he just failed to honor the promise made to South Vietnam to protect them against invasion from the North (although, in Ford's defense, Congress and the American people never would have supported a return of the Armed Forces back into SE Asia at that point).
They could have had all that sooner with out all the deaths had it not been for Jane Fonda, John Kerry and the other communist.
Occupation indeed.
Why any FReeper would post this MORON is beyond me, why?
AAAARRRGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
This needed a barf alert, FRiend.
These apologists for all things communist sicken me.
No thanks. I met Robert Scheer in Santa Monica , back in the early eighties, when he was a reporter for the times and involved at the same time with Tom Hayden's "Economic Democracy" movement. He was a slobbering commie then as now. Scheer is human ipecac.
It needed a barf to the tenth power alert. What tripe!
Well, John Kerry said only a few thousand people would die if Vietnam fell, because those Viet Cong are just benevolent nationalists. So, those things you mentioned must never have happened. Being a leftie means never having to live in reality.
Robert Scheer's face + my backhand(wearing my Mom's huge engagement ring) = happy camper(me).
This guy is excrement. He's one of the reasons that I no longer subscribe to that paper. I do buy it on Sundays for coupons, and it makes good liner for snake boxes...
The sad thing about the Scheer article is that there are plenty of inane leftists in California who will nod their heads in agreement at his wisdom. Of course, their nodding could be drug-induced.
Scheer doesn't address the human costs of the Communist takeover of the South, including the flood of refugees and the "re-education" camps. Nor does he mention the fact that Vietnam is as much a one-party dictatorship as it ever was. Are the unfree people of Vietnam supposed to be satisfied that they can now obtain Mastercard and Visa?
As for Scheer's previous economic predilections, it's ironic that he points to capitalist credit cards as a sign of Vietnam "success".
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