| Hearts and Minds Again |
24 November 2003
|
USS Vandegrift Drops Anchor in Vietnam
The first American naval vessel to visit Vietnam in a quarter of a century arrived in Ho Chi Minh City last week. The USS Vandegrift was on a goodwill tour to what was once Saigon. The Pentagon can label it "Mission Accomplished" and mean it.
The kids off the Vandegrift (and looking at the pictures, there is no other word that fits -- the military is a very youthful institution) delivered toys and supplies to an orphanage, spent a few dollars in the marketplace, drank a couple of beers at the "Apocalypse Now" bar, and lost a volleyball game to a local team. There were no arrests, no insults to anyone's sister, and as the small town press might say, "a good time was had by all."
There was much more to this trip than that, however. Vietnam itself has lost whatever geopolitical importance it once had. The mission aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese this time is an attempt to put a human face on the US military that it can't seem to get in Iraq. The Pentagon says the war there is being won, that many locals love the US, and that moral is at solid levels. Those old enough to remember 1969 will recall the same statements about Vietnam.
But in a way, the Vietnam lesson currently being learned is the one the US and its allies will have to apply in the Middle East soon enough -- how to make peace mean more than an end to armed conflict. It has taken a generation for relations between Hanoi and Washington to reach that stage. It would be foolish to think that things will be any faster in the Fertile Crescent.
Mr. Bush said, with Mr. Blair at his side, that the troops would come home when the job is done. If the pace of US-Vietnamese relations is a relevant measure, the job will be complete sometime around 2050. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. It does mean that the west is going to have to learn patience.
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