[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 69 (Monday, April 30, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5266-S5267]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                VIETNAM

  Mr. WEBB. Madam President, today is a day that, for Vietnamese around 
the world, is as significant as the distinctions we often make between 
B.C. and A.D. in other cultures. Thirty-two years ago today the 
Communist forces from North Vietnam finished their conquest of the 
south and South Vietnam ceased to exist. Ho Chi Minh would like to say 
the motivation for pursuing this war was independence and freedom. If 
we were to discuss independence, in the sense of removing foreign 
involvement, at that moment they were arguably correct. But if we were 
to discuss true issues of freedom, the aspirations of freedom for 
millions of people in Vietnam ceased on that day.
  Some liked to call the conquest of South Vietnam liberation. For 
millions of Vietnamese around the world it was the loss of everything, 
including their country. A million people were sent into reeducation 
camps, and 240,000 of them stayed in those camps for longer than 4 
years, some as long as 18 years; 56,000 died in those reeducation 
camps; an estimated 1 million people jumped into the sea during some 
periods, with more than a 50-percent chance of dying, and many of them 
ended up in this country. We currently have today in this country 2 
million people of Vietnamese descent.
  I do not want, at this moment, to refight the Vietnam war, nor do I 
want to dwell too much on the differences between the Vietnam war and 
the present war. But I have seen people on both sides talk about the 
Iraq war as if there were some correlation to Vietnam. I want to say 
that, for those who worry about how we withdrew from Vietnam, there is 
not a parallel. For those who worry, frankly, how we went into Vietnam, 
there is not a parallel. There are different continents, different 
governmental systems, different issues with respect to our national 
objectives. In Vietnam we assisted an existing government that had been 
created by international agreement. We fought side by side with an army 
that itself lost 245,000 soldiers dead on the battlefield. We fought 
for a very long time with the support of the American people--a reality 
that is sometimes

[[Page S5267]]

missed today as we look back on the tragic way the Vietnam war ended. A 
1972 Harris poll showed even 8 years after we began our involvement in 
Vietnam, the American people agreed by a margin of 74 percent to 11 
percent that it was important that South Vietnam not fall into the 
hands of the Communists. We rarely hear those statistics today. We 
rarely hear that viewpoint.
  I stand here as someone who still today supports our national 
objectives in Vietnam and who was an early warning voice with respect 
to the strategic inadvisability of going into Iraq. On this special day 
of remembrance for so many Vietnamese around the world, I wish to give 
a salute, first, to our Vietnam veterans who fought with such great 
honor, whose sacrifices are rarely remembered in an affirmative sense. 
We saw 58,000 Americans die on the battlefields of Vietnam and more 
than 300,000 wounded; 3 million people served.
  I also wish to thank the veterans of the South Vietnamese Army who 
also are so frequently wrongly portrayed in history. They fought 
alongside us. Many of them fought very well. As I mentioned earlier, 
245,000 of them died in the battlefield and many more went through 
struggles after the war that are very difficult for Americans to 
digest. Imagine being in a reeducation camp for 13\1/2\ years, where 
you are allowed to see your family for 15 minutes a year. Imagine not 
having veterans status, either in Vietnam or in the United States, 
after having gone through, in some cases, 12 years on a battlefield.
  I wish to thank those Vietnamese, the truly forgotten warriors who 
stood alongside us on the battlefield. I also wish to express my pride 
and appreciation to the Vietnamese who came to this country and showed 
us the strength of their culture, showed us what could have happened if 
South Vietnam had remained free. We now have 2 million Vietnamese 
Americans living in this country and they have done enormously well.
  With respect to the Hanoi Government--I have been dealing with the 
Hanoi Government since 1991 when I first returned to Vietnam. I have 
made many trips back to Vietnam in many different capacities. They have 
made significant strides since those early days when they essentially 
were a Stalinist system. There is a lot to be proud of in terms of the 
transformations that have been going on in Vietnam. Vietnam is growing. 
It is growing economically. We have much work to do. We have much work 
to do in terms of encouraging that political system to open up, to 
allow religious freedom, to allow greater political freedom. We are on 
a pathway where, with the right kind of dialog, I believe that is going 
to occur.
  I think the best legacy for us to have when we look back at that era 
would be to see Vietnam, the Vietnam of today, as a strategic and 
commercial partner but also as a vibrant, open society whose Government 
reflects the strength of the culture itself, a strength that has been 
demonstrated over and over again by the Vietnamese who have come to 
this country and who, I am proud to say, are now Americans.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.

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