Time to Add Vietnam to Bush's Axis of Evil

Pacific News Service, Commentary, Thi Lam, Posted: Jul 03, 2003

Editor's Note: Vietnamese Americans have noticed that when American presidents declare countries "evil," their regimes soon fall. That's helped fire a movement in the immigrant community to fly the old flag of South Vietnam, build monuments honoring U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers and get President Bush to add Vietnam to his axis of evil.

A year after Iraq was included in President Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Conservatives in the Bush administration now openly call for the "destabilization" of Iran and a "regime change" in North Korea, the remaining countries in the axis of evil.

Will Vietnam be next? As a Vietnamese American who fought against communist Vietnam alongside the United States, I hope so.

For Vietnamese Americans, the "evil" label proclaimed by U.S. presidents carries quasi-magical powers: The Soviet Union disintegrated, for example, just a few years after President Reagan called it an "evil empire." Most of its former members are now pro-Western democracies.

A recent New California Media nationwide poll indicated that 85 percent of Vietnamese Americans supported the war in Iraq. That's not surprising. Vietnamese Americans -- who risked their lives to seek freedom in this country or who suffered communist persecution after the Vietnam War -- understand the humiliation and sufferings of the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein.

Now, we hope a regime change like the one in Iraq can happen in our own homeland.

Indeed, a string of recent political "victories" has empowered Vietnamese American activists to hope that President Bush will add Vietnam in his axis of evil. In a period of just a few months, several U.S. cities (Garden Grove, Westminster, Santa Ana and Milpitas in California; Falls Church in Virginia) have adopted resolutions recognizing the former South Vietnam flag -- a yellow background with three horizontal red stripes -- as the official flag of the free Vietnamese American communities. The resolutions also permit the flag to be ceremonially displayed on public properties.

These are remarkable political and psychological achievements that culminated in the unveiling of a Joint Vietnam War Memorial, the first of its kind in the world, on April 27 in Westminster City, Calif. An 11-foot-high bronze monument portrays a soldier from the former Republic of South Vietnam and an American GI standing side by side with their countries' flags behind them. As one of the guest speakers at the unveiling, I expressed my hope that similar monuments would some day be built in the cities of a free and democratic Vietnam.

Building on this momentum, a group of Vietnamese American intellectuals recently wrote an open letter to President Bush requesting that Vietnam be included in his axis of evil because of its disastrous human rights record and its unfettered support for Saddam Hussein during the Iraq war.

The request may seem far-fetched because the Vietnam communist regime, although autocratic and repressive, has no known weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and apparently has no plans to develop them.

But WMD, the primary justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, has now become largely irrelevant anyway: More than two months after the end of the Iraq War, U.S. troops have not found any "smoking gun" WMD evidence, nor any evidence of Iraq ties to Al Qaeda -- and the American public doesn't seem to care. Some Pentagon officials even cast doubt on whether U.S. government officials were ever convinced that Iraq had secret stocks of WMD.

To preserve his soaring popularity and to divert the attention of the American people from economic problems at home, President Bush, in fact, may decide to expand his axis of evil. Vietnam, a former foe now allied to China, the new Asian threat, may be a good choice. A regime change in Vietnam, under a threat of military intervention or economic sanctions, may eradicate the lingering "Vietnam syndrome" and remove a dark spot in U.S. history. Moreover, a democratized and pro-Western Vietnam would constitute an effective bulwark against Chinese expansion in Southeast Asia.

While Iraq's vast oil reserves can provide the United States with an inexpensive and reliable source of energy, Vietnam's Cam Ranh naval base could allow it to project its power in this strategic area of the world. Further, with the fast-approaching 2004 presidential election, the voting power of 1 million-strong Vietnamese Americans is something that can't be ignored.

After all, President Bush won the 2000 election by only a few hundred votes, due largely to another group of former refugees: Cuban Americans in Florida.

Vietnam, on the other hand, is now facing an insoluble dilemma both political and economic: In today's global economy, emerging nations need to provide an environment of fair competition and safe investment if they want to attract the foreign capital necessary for economic growth. This requires the institution of the rule of law, the eradication of corruption and bureaucracy, and, most of all, the dissolution of government-subsidized state enterprises.

In other words, in an age where innovation and pluralism have become interdependent, economic reform, to succeed, must be implemented concurrently with political reform. But for authoritarian regimes, political reform means the erosion of the government's grip on power, and its ultimate demise.

It is hard to predict what the future holds in a fast-changing, post-9/11 world. But with a global, irreversible move toward free market economy and political pluralism, and given President Bush's aggressive and unpredictable foreign policy and his professed aversion for autocratic regimes, don't be surprised if a free and democratic Vietnam is on the horizon.

PNS contributor Thi Q. Lam is the author of the memoir "The 25 Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Vietnam War." He resides in Milpitas, Calif., where he teaches high school.

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