Clinton's Viet Visit

Obama's visit to Malaysia this Nov 2015 reminded me of Clinton's to Vietnam in Nov 2000. This was 15 years ago to the dot.

This story is to illustrate the adroitness of the US in orchestrating the Global Conversation (GC) on a macro level. No malice to the players in the story. I am a great fan of Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton is the modern day John Wayne as portrayed in the context of my earlier post, John Wayne/James Bond.

This is the story of Vietnam that in the 60s/70s was so heavily bombed by the US that a special termed was coined for it - Carpet Bombing. Each time after a bombing raid, the targeted area looked like as if a carpet had been laid over it.

The viciousness of the US at the start of of their air campaign "Operation Flaming Darts" and the more prolonged "Operation Rolling Thunder" could be summed up by the assertion of the then Chief of Staff of the US Air Force: "We're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age".

This gave rise to the Heaviest Aerial Bombardment in history. The bombs dropped on Vietnam was 3 times in tonnage to that of the entire World War 2 from all sides.

The horrors of this bombing campaign could be summed up by an iconic Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken in 1972 of a 9 year old Vietnamese girl running naked and crying on the street after being badly burnt by napalm bombing. The ghastliness of napalm is that it sticks to the skin and continues with the severe burnings until the napalm is spent. 

A large part of Vietnam's vegetation was also defoliated using the highly toxic herbicide Agent Orange. The intention was to clear the jungles and the thick undergrowth so that the Vietcongs (Vietnamese Resistance Fighters) had no place to hide in the strategic areas of the War Zones as designated by the US Military. The ecology of the vegetation and human genomes in those areas have been seriously harmed for generations. 

Yet, when President Clinton visited Vietnam in 2000, he was welcomed with great fanfare. A sample of the press reports were as follows:

"..surrounded by an enthusiastic and noisy crowd".

"It was like a festival".

"Everyone was applauding him and trying to get his autograph".

As if to rub salt into the Vietnamese wounds, Clinton brought along the 2 sons of a lieutenant colonel bomber pilot to Viet Tri, a village 100 km from Hanoi. Apparently the pilot was bombing a railway station there and was shot down.

Clinton and the sons were visiting an excavation site in a rice paddy field to look for the missing remains of the bomber pilot. I remembered watching the scene on TV news then.

Clinton and his whole party were welcomed by about 300+ villagers at the site who were smiling and beaming with joy at Clinton's presence. Some might have lost loved ones in the bombings.

If I had not known better watching the buoyant gathering, I would have thought the villagers were there showing their gratitude for the past US droppings of food parcels or Christmas presents. And poured the country-side with honey instead of the poisonous Agent Orange.

This is one of the many glowing examples where I gasp in awe of the US dominance of the GC that allows them to reap profits even in the face of severe adversity.

Can anyone imagine a future Russian President visiting Syria one day, and like a parallel in this case is embraced and so adorably mobbed by Syrian villagers, after they have been so brutally devastated by Russian weapons?  

Only the Americans know how to do it. China can and must learn the art of this political charm as a new Superpower.