War’s legacy shrouds Mattis’ trip to Vietnam
Defense secretary sees deep impact of conflict
HANOI, Vietnam — It’s been over for 40-plus years, the war that Americans simply call Vietnam but the Vietnamese refer to as their Resistance War Against America.
Yet it lingers in so many ways, as was apparent this week when Defense Secretary Jim Mattis dropped in for a couple of days of defense diplomacy with a former enemy. Although he never served in Vietnam and had not previously visited the country, Mattis has said he learned from a lot of Marines who did.
In his meeting with Vietnamese government leaders, Mattis’ focus was on a peaceful future. Not the bloody past.
Still, the legacy of the conflict that divided America and ultimately unified Vietnam confronted Mattis almost immediately after his arrival Wednesday as he visited a U.S. office that oversees the search for remains of American servicemen still missing from the war.
More than 1,200 Americans are unaccounted for in Vietnam and 350 more are missing in Laos, Cambodia and China, according to the Pentagon’s POW-MIA Accounting Agency. That accounting effort, decades in the making and dependent on cooperation from Hanoi, is likely to continue for decades.
Later, while talking to his Vietnamese counterpart, Mattis was presented with photo identification cards of two U.S. servicemen from the war. Details weren’t made public.
More than 58,000 U.S. service members were killed in the war, including more than 1,200 in Cambodia and Laos.
Among Vietnam’s other reminders of the war: environmental damage and unexploded mines. Vietnamese still suffer from the effects of herbicides, including Agent Orange, sprayed by U.S. forces to defoliate the countryside.
“We’re still remediating the effects of the war,” Mattis told reporters Thursday as he flew out of the country. The U.S. government has helped clean up contamination from bases American forces used before completing their withdrawal in 1975.
Remarkably, given this history, Vietnam indicated during Mattis’ visit that it may permit a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to make a port visit in March — something that has never happened in the postwar period.
Just down the street from the hotel where Mattis stayed is Hoa Lo prison, known to the Americans who spent part of the war there as the Hanoi Hilton. Inside are dark reminders of the suffering, the sacrifice and the shackles — not just of the Americans held there but also Vietnamese imprisoned in earlier decades by the French.
One of those American prisoners was John Mccain, shot down on a bombing mission over Hanoi in 1967, before the U.S. anti-war movement was in full swing.
Mattis’ motorcade drove by the Mccain marker as the Pentagon boss made his way to a lakeside pagoda to show his respect for Vietnamese culture. He told the monk there that he enjoyed the serene setting.
“Beautiful. Peaceful. It makes you think more deeply,” Mattis said.
Even with past hostilities in mind, Mattis said his visit made clear that Americans and Vietnamese have shared interests that in some cases predate the Vietnam War.
“Neither of us liked being colonized,” he said.