Kerry and ‘Vietnam factor’ … again

As the South Carolina airwaves are saturated with footage of John Kerry’s jungle combat escapades, and as Wesley Clark counters with assurances of his ability not just as a combat infantryman but as commander of thousands of troops, the “Vietnam factor” emerges again in this election as it has in every American presidential election since 1964.

During the war years themselves, presidential candidates focused on the nature of our involvement and on strategies for withdrawal. Then in two presidential elections, Bill Clinton’s anti-Vietnam War activism while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford became the focus of media attention. Four years ago, it was George W. Bush’s years at Yale (and subsequently in the Air National Guard) vs. Al Gore’s service as an Army journalist in Vietnam. Were they doing patriotic service or enjoying a class-privileged avoidance of combat? In each of the aforementioned cases, presidential candidates glorified or justified what they did during the war rather than focused on substantive postwar issues.

Alone among recent presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., rose above the “what did you do in the war” syndrome. A prisoner of war who was repeatedly tortured during a 5 1/2-year captivity in Vietnam, McCain eschewed personal vindictiveness and emerged as perhaps the major force in the Senate promoting reconciliation with that country.

McCain long ago abandoned his presidential ambitions. There are at least three issues in contemporary Vietnamese-American relations which the presidential candidates should address before the campaign is over:

The first is the ongoing discussion of the residual presence of dioxin in the tissues of Americans and Indochinese who came into contact with the aerial herbicide Agent Orange, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Laotian acres laid waste by that weapon. Since the war ended in 1975 nearly one million Indochinese have come to the United States. Many of these refugees were exposed to the herbicide and will vote in the 2004 presidential election, especially in key swing states like California. What position does each major candidate take on increased subsidies for Agent Orange research, diagnosis and treatment?

The second issue involves American economic relations with postwar Vietnam. As University of Maine historian Ngo Vinh Long pointed out in an important article, “Communist” Vietnam opened many sectors of its economy to foreign investment, as have the neighboring People’s Republics of China and Cambodia. In rapid succession, many Vietnamese, Chinese and Cambodian industries have transformed from socialist enterprises to a free market to a “flea market,” with sweatshop conditions especially in factories under Taiwanese management.

As our postwar trade with Vietnam expands, what positions do our presidential candidates take on Vietnamese sweatshop conditions? Can we rely on assurances from American shoe, textile and other manufacturers that our imports from Vietnam have not been made under horrific labor conditions?

A final issue is the military dimension of U.S.-Vietnamese relations, especially as it relates to America’s ties with China, Vietnam’s powerful neighbor to the north. Vietnam has engaged in an on-again, off-again war with China since 1978 along its heavy forested northern border and in the potentially oil-rich Spratly and Paracel islands, which both nations (and others) claim. A major portion of China’s modernized navy occupies at least one of those islands and its offshore waters. Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia remains a major American foreign policy concern. What are the candidates’ positions on Sino-Vietnamese hostilities and on such specific proposals as Vietnam’s purported offer to lease Camranh Bay, and other deep-water naval facilities, to the U.S. Navy?

Hopefully, our major presidential contenders, like Sen. McCain years ago, can move beyond their personal war experiences and address these and other pressing issues of Indochinese-American relations.

Dr. Jonathan Goldstein is a professor of East Asian History at the State University of West Georgia and a summer resident of Glenburn. His books include “China and Israel” (1999) and “The Jews of China” (2000).