By David K. Shipler
Contrary to
Republicans’ false accusation, President Obama has not been traveling the world
apologizing for American misdeeds (although there are plenty to be sorry for).
Nor will he do so during his tour in Asia, neither at Hiroshima as the first
sitting U.S. president to visit the target of the first atomic bomb ever used,
nor in Vietnam, where a misguided war killed 58,000 Americans and up to 2
million Vietnamese, according to Hanoi’s official estimate.
Apologies
aside, it would be healthy for Obama at least to name the colossal errors of
judgment that led to the Vietnam War: the Cold-War assumption that monolithic
communism would spread like a red stain around the globe, that North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong forces were mere tools of Beijing and Moscow, that America could
remake third parts of the world at will, and that American credibility would be
shredded by a loss. In other words, he should call the Vietnam War what it was:
a terrible mistake borne of historical ignorance and a disastrous misreading of
the anti-colonialism that fueled Vietnamese nationalism.
John Kerry, who is at Obama’s side as
Secretary of State, missed his chance to talk about the war in these terms when
he ran for president in 2004. Instead, he snapped a salute at his nominating
convention and announced that he was reporting for duty. The transparent
gesture to exalt his military role as a young Navy swift-boat commander in
Vietnam, rather than embrace his famous conversion into an eloquent opponent of
the war, forfeited the opportunity to advance the country’s perspective on the
tragedy of its error.
