It is supremely ironic.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta flew half way around the globe to visit Vietnam last Sunday. THAT Vietnam, the one where more than 50,000 American G.I.’s died during the heat of the Cold War. The one where thousands more, including the physically wounded and the psychologically impaired, came home to a groundswell of indifference and dishonor. The one that fomented anti-war riots, undermined American foreign policy credibility and alienated a generation. THAT Vietnam.
Now Secretary Panetta is underscoring the real-world, contemporary U.S.-Vietnam relationship. Yesteryear’s Cold War policies remain interred with that regrettable era. Let geopolitical bygones be bygones. Our relations have been normalized for nearly two decades. Common sense and enlightened self interest have prevailed.
We trade and invest with Vietnam. We even see them as a partner of sorts in countering the ever-increasing influence and military assertiveness of China. THAT China. The one previously known as Red. The one that was up to no good in befriending Ho Chi Minh.
But that was then–and this is not even close. “We’ve come a long way, particularly with regards to our defense relationship,” understated Panetta after being saluted by his Vietnamese counterpart at Cam Ranh Bay International Airport. “A great deal of blood was spilled in this war on all sides–by Americans and by Vietnamese.” Indeed.
And yet.
It is obscenely ironic.
How preposterous is it that America, after understandably moving on from a country that claimed so many American casualties, is still maintaining its Cold War status with Caribbean neighbor Cuba? A half century after the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis, we are still geopolitically freeze framed in time as if John Kennedy were still learning the presidency and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara still yielding to the Joint Chiefs, the CIA and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.
Any wonder no one but Israel stands with the U.S. at the United Nations when voting on the resolution to condemn the “economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”? Last fall the vote was 186-2. When the U.N. is right, it is overwhelmingly so.
Imagine, in a world of proven, blood-on-their-hands, we-hate-infidels villains, we are still treating Cuba as an enemy. The state-sponsor-of-terrorism type. Hell, Mexico, for all of its democratic trappings and capitalist ways, is our biggest hemispheric threat.
Cuba is one of myriad authoritarian states worldwide with human-rights issues. A lot of them are U.S. allies. But all the wrong parties have been hurt by Cuba’s schizoid ideology, a half-baked economy and America’s intransigence.
No need to revisit the machinations of the vendetta-agenda, exile crowd and the cowed politicians they continue to control. This is still personal, the way Vietnam could never be. And this is still–a half century and counting–counterproductive to America’s best interests. And it’s still an embargo on common sense and enlightened self interest.
Meanwhile, Panetta is hoping to further broaden the ratcheting cooperation with Vietnam, which is now allowing U.S. Navy supply ships to dock for repairs and maintenance.