that the United States would begin selling weapons to the Communist nation of Vietnam.
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Posted on 05/22/2016 7:33:00 PM PDT by Nachum
In a move that is raising concerns among some Vietnam War veterans, President Obama will discuss selling more U.S. arms to Hanoi during his visit to Vietnam that began Sunday night.
Top White House advisers said Mr. Obama hasn’t made a decision whether to lift the partial U.S. embargo on sending military equipment to Vietnam, where more than 58,200 U.S. soldiers were killed before the fall of Saigon in 1975. But the administration sees advantages in easing the embargo, both as a warning to expansionist China and as leverage to compel the communist regime in Hanoi to improve its record on human rights.
“We are thinking through how our evolving security cooperation [is] going to look moving forward,” said White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. “They regularly raise this issue with us. We are looking at, of course, how our broader relationship is evolving, including our continued commitment to support human rights in Vietnam.”
The notion of selling more lethal weaponry to Vietnam is a bitter irony to some veterans of the war and to some Vietnamese-Americans who fled the communists.
“They are still a communist country,” said retired Army Maj. Wulf Linden, a Georgia resident who served two tours in Vietnam. “If it’s the cream of our crop [of weapons systems], obviously that would be a bad mistake. It would be nice if we’re not selling to a regime that’s a documented communist regime. That’s my concern.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Wondering why not...after all his time is winding down and they won't get FREE vacation's after Jan. 2017
This dude is a total embarrassment to the USA.
WAKE UP AMERICA..VOTE IN TRUMP TO CLEAN UP THE MESS THIS GUY HAD DONE WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF BOTH CLINTON'S...
PRAY FOR AMERICA.
Vietnam is ruled by the communist part, but it is developing quickly and has a lot of free-market industry.
Also, Vietnam never had the marxist craziness that Russia and china had under Stalin and Mao. I don’t think the communist mentality ever really took root in Vietnam.
Finally, on several trips to S. Vietnam, I see far more people in church on Sundays than in the USA. I’ve seen Catholic masses there where hundreds of attendees stand outside because the church is jam-packed.
Many things seem upside-down in this world now....
Also heard the Fox reporter, that is traveling on this Asian tour with the white house group, announce that NO official person greeted the president when he landed and exited Air Force One...
ANOTHER SNUB TO THE leader????
It pretty much went away after Ho Chi Minh died, the following leaders never developed the "Cult of Personality" that Ho did.
I find it humorous that the leader of the party is trying to send guns to Vietnam while they have been talking themselves blind trying to take ours away,
red
It’s in the best interests of the United States and Vietnam to contain the Chinese.
Is that the new Secretary of the Army ?
I am a Viet Nam veteran-68-69 with TDYs back until summer 70. I feel absolutely zero of this bitterness the NYT is selling. America has no better friend than the Vietnamese people. The government and the nation are up against the Chinese Wall and it is very much in American interests to keep China from making a no-access lake out of the East Sea. It is in all western nations’ interest to prevent that. Viet Nam, because it is a bureaucratic authoritarian system, which we are rapidly becoming in the USA without the Communist label,it maintains a huge army of men. We need that army there and we need that army to be well equipped. We need Cam Ranh which Viet Nam has been trying to lure us back to for 20 years. There is no better port and base from which to oppose China’s ambitions in SEA. The government is nominally Communist and is organized in that way but the Vietnamese, even the Party people are practical people, unlike the Russians a few decades back. They need the USA and the USA needs Viet Nam. They look also to Australia but Australia doesn’t really have the economy to support the role in SEA that is needed. Letting China do its will in the East Sea will make international trade much more expensive because a very large portion of the world’s shipping goes through there or very near there. China could shut all that off or charge exorbitant prices for passage if we let them have it. President Obama doesn’t like VN because VN keeps trying to be a friend of America, a protectorate of sorts even. Obama doesn’t like countries that see anything good in America. He has cut off most of the influence for reform that accomplished a lot in the Clinton and Bush years. Yes Bill Clinton did some good there. I think he thought he was sticking his thumb in Republican eyes but his opening to VN was a good move. He and Bush leaned on Ha Noi to reform and VN back off its heavy handed approaches to a lot of things. There has been some backsliding because those reforms were of a sort that Obama abhors and he has not kept up the pressure at all.
The problem is Odungo and a Congress too busy stuffing their pockets
Don’t leave out Hubble’s daughter
“Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia.”
— 1984
ping
Would someone please impeach this traitor? Every Nam vet should go to the White Hut and demand his ouster.
that the United States would begin selling weapons to the Communist nation of Vietnam.
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Obama is planning to bring in Jane Fonda as Secretary of State to handle the matter...
No way, no way. The Vietnam s and the Chinese have hated each other for centuries. Getting in between them will be a disaster.
I understand what you are saying, but think this issue is a great argument against ever answering a draft call-up. I don’t want myself or a loved one to die in a war against X and a few years later the government that sent us there “makes peace” with the people we were sent to fight. As treacherous as this deal is, it was even worse when we normalized relations with North Vietnam. There were a lot more vets still alive at that point...
They kicked the Khmer Rouge after installing them in power in 1975, and only after the pro-VN faction had enough genocide and wanted more say in Phnom Penh.
They lost many men in the 1979 war, immediately groveled to China afterwards, and have ceded their northern border to the Chinese since that time. All that “heroic” sacrifice for nothing.
Not to mention almost five decades of destroying Vietnam and the lives of at least 2 generations. But they’re not “too bad,” huh?
Well, Ho was Stalinist. The “land reforms” of the 1950s and the vicious VC terror campaigns in the 1960s.
You can make an argument for supplying arms to Hanoi, but please let’s not paper over its past human rights record. I expect this from someone like Chomsky, not a contributor to Free Republic.
Our soldiers have acquitted themselves on the battlefield in every war including those, such as Vietnam, that our politicians subsequently lost. Our cause, which is freedom, will eventually win, even if we fail. We, the Americans, if we embrace our greatness, can be friends and allies of all other nations in the world. If we achieve, through vigilance, economic advantage and diplomacy, a victory that our politicians squandered, it honors those who made the ultimate sacrifices during that war, as we never sought to conquer Vietnam, but to enable the people of that country to be free.
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