Fed: Ghost of Vietnam hangs over Iraq as veterans remember

AAP General News (Australia)
04-28-2005
Fed: Ghost of Vietnam hangs over Iraq as veterans remember

By Doug Conway, Senior Correspondent

SYDNEY, April 28 AAP - Iraq is the new Vietnam in the eyes of many veterans who this
week are commemorating the deeply divisive and notoriously unwinnable war in Indo-China.

Parallels with Vietnam have proved inescapable to veterans observing two key dates
- the 40th anniversary of Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies' 1965 decision to commit Australian
troops (Eds: on Friday April 29) and the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon (Saturday
April 30) in 1975, when North Vietnamese tanks ended the futility by crashing through
the gates of the south's presidential palace.

"Vietnam exposed the limits of American power and revealed that military solutions
can't always solve what are fundamentally political problems," said Dr Chris Dixon of
Newcastle University, organiser of a recent conference on the Vietnam legacy.

"So many comparisons are being made with the current war in Iraq.

"People are asking about Iraqi resistance to the US. How will the US find an exit strategy?

Will the American public continue to support the war? What if the US can't 'impose' a
solution on Iraq? And why is Australia involved again?"

Australian troops in Iraq, fortunately, have not suffered battle casualties like they
did in Vietnam, where 520 died and almost 2,400 were wounded among a total of 50,000 who
went, or were sent, "all the way with LBJ".

But the ghost of Vietnam still hangs over the political scene, especially in Australia's
Iraq coalition big brother, the United States, where it was a key factor in last November's
presidential election.

"Senator John Kerry, the decorated veteran who experienced the Vietnam War first hand,
had his war record slandered and was castigated as unpatriotic and self-serving because
of his involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against The War," said American Professor James
Westheider, a keynote speaker at the Newcastle University conference.

"President George Bush, who never got any closer to Vietnam than a fraternity house
at Yale University, and apparently learned little from the war, was cast as the patriot,
the darling of the Pentagon, the warrior - all summed up in the image of Bush landing
on an aircraft carrier to announce 'mission accomplished' in Iraq."

That mission still has not been accomplished, and many more Americans have died since
Bush's dramatic pronouncement than before it.

Professor Westheider, from Cincinnati University, said the presidential election was
decided by many factors, especially moral issues like gay marriage and abortion.

The vote, however, highlighted the continuing influence of Vietnam on US politics and
was an "indirect referendum" on Iraq, he said.

Men and women who have served in Iraq return today to heartfelt welcomes and parades,
and are treated like heroes.

But their Vietnam era counterparts were shunned - an experience all too familiar to
vets such as West Australian federal Labor MP Graham Edwards, who lost both legs as a
20-year-old in Vietnam when he stood on a landmine.

"What we have learnt is that regardless of whether or not there is total political
support for a particular conflict, that it's imperative that total support be given to
the troops involved," said Mr Edwards.

"But have we learnt? I am not sure that we have.

"As a member of parliament and a Vietnam vet, I couldn't help but hear echoes of Vietnam
in the Iraq conflict."

Another who vividly remembers the treatment handed out to Australian soldiers returning
from the highly unpopular war is Sydney woman Therase Huong-Dai Tran, daughter of Charles
Tran Van Lam, South Vietnam's last foreign minister and the country's first Ambassador
to Australia.

Ms Tran, who moved from the US to Canberra in 1973 and now lives in Sydney with her
Australian husband and two children, said: "You move into a new culture and you have to
bury (the past) as new migrants."

But images of Australian troops being spat on still disgust her.

"I just thought my God, what a lack of understanding," she said.

"These poor people went in just obeying orders."

Similarly, Professor Westheider said Hawks in the US had attempted to make questioning
the war in Iraq "tantamount to letting the troops down".

"But many of us did not want to send them into harm's way based on non-existent evidence
in the first place," he said.

"It is also a false analogy. As many of the Vietnam veterans I have interviewed and
become friends with have told me, you can hate the war but love the warrior."

Ms Tran's story is the subject of an upcoming ABC documentary, whose producer Judy
Rymer said the project made her realise her ignorance about the conflict.

"What we actually did is we went in uninvited and retreated very disgustingly and left
South Vietnam in a vulnerable position," said Ms Rymer, who took part in street protests
during the war.

"We are utterly responsible for the failure of South Vietnam."

Supporters of Australia's participation in George Bush's coalition in Iraq may be dismayed
by another echo of Vietnam pointed out by Professor Westheider.

President Richard Nixon, writing in 1985 in No More Vietnams, said the US had fought
in Vietnam for important strategic reasons as well as for the sake of the South Vietnamese
people.

"If not for the United States," Nixon asked, "what nation would have helped defend
South Vietnam?"

Professor Westheider has a question of his own: "Forgetting, perhaps, Australia?"

AAP dc/jt/sd

KEYWORD: VIETNAM ANNIVERSARIES (AAP NEWSFEATURE)

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