Posted on 05/25/2016 2:00:39 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In an address to the people of communist-ruled Vietnam on Tuesday, President Obama made a case for the importance of upholding human rights, prefacing it by saying that the United States, too, “is still striving to live up to our founding ideals.”
“No nation is perfect,” he said at the National Convention Center in Hanoi. “Two centuries on, the United States is still trying to striving to live up to our founding ideals.”
“We still deal with our shortcomings – too much money in politics, and rising economic inequality,” Obama continued. “Racial bias in our criminal justice system. Women still not being paid as much as men doing the same job. We still have problems and we’re not immune from criticism – I promise you, I hear it every day.”
“But that scrutiny, that open debate, confronting our imperfections and allowing everybody to have their say has helped us grow stronger and more prosperous and more just.”
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
He assured his audience that he was not singling out Vietnam, and that the U.S. does not seek to impose its form of government on the country. Ultimately Vietnam would decide its own future, he said, noting that Vietnam and the U.S. have different political systems, traditions and cultures.
Obama went on to argue that rights to unrestricted access to the Internet fuel innovation that economies need to thrive.
He also stressed the importance of freedom of religion, assembly and the press.
“When journalists and bloggers are able to shine a light on injustice or abuse, that holds officials accountable and builds public confidence that the system works,” he said.
“When candidates can run for office and campaign freely, and voters can choose their own leaders in free and fair elections, it makes countries more stable because citizens know that their voices count and that peaceful change is possible, and it brings new people into the system.”
Obama was speaking two days after Vietnamese went to the polls to choose legislative representatives from vetted candidates. Their leaders – the president, prime minister and the holder of the top post, that of general secretary of the Communist Party – were appointed at a party congress last January which also selected the most powerful political bodies, the Politburo and Central Committee.
U.S. lawmakers who called on Obama ahead of his visit to raise human rights concerns included in their appeal a list of more than 100 imprisoned activists, journalists and bloggers.
Obama’s audience, included officials and young people, sat in silence during human rights portion of the speech, applauding just once when Obama mentioned the fact that rights are referred to in the Vietnamese constitution.
In contrast, other parts of the address, such as his veiled criticism of the way China is pursuing its territorial claims in the disputed waters and islands of the South China Sea, drew enthusiastic applause.
According to the State Department’s latest human rights report, Vietnam is “an authoritarian state ruled by a single party.”
During the period covered in the report, 2014, the department recorded instances of “arbitrary and unlawful deprivation of life; police attacks and corporal punishment; arbitrary arrest and detention for political activities; continued police mistreatment of suspects during arrest and detention, including the use of lethal force and austere prison conditions; and denial of the right to a fair and expeditious trial.”
I guess the nation slipped quite far electing this SOB as president.
I bet Putin just had another good laugh at the expense of this chump.
If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all...especially about my country, the one you pretend to represent.
But of course he won’t criticize any Democrats in this mea culpa exercise. Like starting a war over a dubious report of a provocation, and then strangling the war to death to leave the country worse off than if it had just been taken over in relative peace. If Barack took truth serum he would probably tell Vietnam, “Democrats put you through a painful Kabuki dance for American political purposes.”
Yep, fewer guns...
More muslims...
and schlongs in the ladies locker rooms
Double irony... he only cares about the ideals when they are convenient.
Vietnam has no problem living up to their Communist ideals. They’re able to kill, enslave and oppress millions of their own people. Obama is just jealous he can’t live up to the same ideals as efficiently as Vietnam.
Sounds like he gave an American was Never Great speech.
Your statement is not relevant towards Obama. He was born to a white woman and an African man.
That SOB would never have made it to the White House without the black vote and a lot of white guilt.That’s what I meant.
Too bad his round heeled mother didn’t use some of those free rubbers they pass out at college.
She could have saved hundreds of millions from the misery her spawn has visited upon the USA.
>”...striving to live up to our founding ideals.”
The ONLY founding ideal we, IMO, should be striving for is the return to Constitutional principles...if even by the same means of our own Founding.
In fact, D.C., and the States, should be reminded of such, more frequently than every bi-centennial.
He is either malicious or incredibly foolish. This is, after all, a communist nation he is complaining to. What does he expect them to do about it? He is the president, why didn't he fix it, or have it fixed?
Just what does he expect to come of his comments?
Ed
The black people who voted for Obama must really hate this country.
Two centuries on, the United States is still trying to striving to live up to our founding ideals. We still deal with our shortcomings – too much money in politics, and rising economic inequality... Racial bias in our criminal justice system. Women still not being paid as much as men doing the same job. We still have problems and we’re not immune from criticism -- I promise you, I hear it every day. But that scrutiny, that open debate, confronting our imperfections and allowing everybody to have their say has helped us grow stronger and more prosperous and more just.Ladies and gentlemen, mister Constitutional scholar.
Vietnamese Communist Leader Says US Anti-War Activists Helped Their Victory
Richard Pollock
Reporter
In the weeks leading up to Memorial Day and President Barack Obama’s scheduled trip to Vietnam, a prominent Vietcong communist leader privately thanked American anti-war activists for helping defeat the U.S.-allied government in Vietnam in the 1970s, saying protest demonstrations throughout the United States were “extremely important in contributing to Vietnam’s victory.”
For Vietnamese guerrilla leader Madam Nguyen Thi Binh, who sent the private letter from Hanoi dated April 20, “victory” meant the communist takeover of South Vietnam. The letter addressed veteran American anti-war activists who gathered in Washington, D.C., at a May 3 reunion of radical “May Day” anti-war leaders.
The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a copy of the letter at the meeting.
Binh, now age 90, originally served as the highest ranking Vietnamese delegate to the Paris Peace Talks that imposed a ceasefire in the country in 1973.
The “Vietcong” was a ragtag group of communist guerrillas who were allied with the official communist government in North Vietnam. The country was cut in two in 1954, with the south seeking to build a democratic state allied to the West.
Binh’s frank admission highlights a secret side of the communist’s effective lobbying influence in the United States. Rather than live in the southern part of the country, which for decades she represented as a diplomat, it appears after the war Binh was living in Hanoi, the original capital of North Vietnam.
In her letter, she extolled the American anti-war movement, saying it was “a key component” that advanced the communist takeover of South Vietnam.
“The Vietnamese people have great appreciation for the peace and antiwar movements in the United States and view those movements’ contribution as important in shortening the war,” she wrote and which was read to an assembled group of “May Day” anti-war activists in Washington, D.C.
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