For two reasons -
First, "a John McCain Memorial?" in HANOI?
Did not compute. Further info assisted with this one. A marker plaque. Initially snarky. Updated by VN government to 'neutral' which is actually about as good as it gets, given the circumstances. We were the aggressors, remember? We were stickybeaking in Cold War proxy conflicts, convinced of our own righteous might, smacking down the country's attempt to decolonize and build its own destiny. Short version: There were many good people fighting on "our side" (including Senator McCain) but we were not the good guys.
War is always more complicated than our narratives would like it to be.
Anyway, so. A marker plaque. Simple identification of a place where something happened. No commentary either way in the current configuration of the plaque. That in itself is actually a conciliatory gesture from the WINNING SIDE in that conflict.
Second: The NVA were not nice people, and they did a lot of shitty things. To Americans they captured. Against all the rules of civilized warfare, etc. (Let's not look too closely at our own treatment of prisoners, though....) Is it appropriate for a US President to acknowledge a former adversary who did such awful things, in any kind of neutral or friendly way, without explicitly making the point that they did shitty things?
My gut, that lived through that time and still has a POW bracelet in my Memory Box, howls "HELL NO!! THOSE BASTARDS! Tell them off! Make them apologize! Remind them of how terrible they were and the crimes they committed! Get some of our own back from them SOMEHOW for all that suffering!"
Thank you, gut. Those are strong feelings, there's a truth in there you are right to feel that way about. It was terrible, you haven't forgotten, those lives mattered then and still matter now.
BUT
My head goes back to other realities - not emotional truths, but historical records, larger viewpoints, and facts, past and present.
We may have thought we were doing the right thing in Vietnam, to a greater extent in the beginning, anyway. We sold ourselves a narrative about 'saving the world from Communism' that had a minimal seed of geopolitical truth in it, but was overlaid by so many quids-pro-quo, military-industrial complex balance sheets, and contemporary culture war issues that in the end that tiny seed died unsprouted. Let us not go into how many ways were were wrong, back then, and acknowledge only that the people we sent to fight and die there were our sacrifices, and we should never lose sight of the price they paid, or the courage with which they paid it.
But that is also true of our quondam adversaries. They tortured prisoners, they used propaganda. We massacred civilians, we used propaganda. If we are going to stand upon a strict accounting for all the evil deeds done in their names or in ours, we will learn the truth of the old saying that "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."
And so Joe Biden, in today's world, plays the long game to offer our former adversaries an alternative to the threat of Chinese hegemony, and maintain a balance of interests in the region. And in so doing, he takes a moment to acknowledge a particular moment in that terrible past. A moment that involved a personal friend of his, a man he knew and worked with for many years, and respected deeply. In so doing, he also acknowledges that those same former adversaries have marked that moment, with a simple factual marker. There is some symbolism there that can be read in many ways.
Joe Biden, I think, chooses to read that symbolism as an open door.
I will try to see it through your eyes, Joe. You've been not only correct and smart, but compassionate and trustworthy, so far.
Carry on, Sir.
thoughtfully,
Bright
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