RConversation

Vietnam: departing thoughts

Like many people now in their mid-to-late 30’s, I grew up hearing a lot about “Vietnam,” the war. I was practically born in the middle of anti-war protests in Berkeley, California. Family legend has it I came close to being trampled by a mounted policeman at some anti-Vietnam war demonstration. (Probably the first of several reasons I don’t like being at demonstrations.)  The first news story I can remember was Walter Cronkite with news from the Vietnam war. I went to high school and college with children of Vietnam war veterans and children of Vietnamese refugees. One of my good friends in college left Vietnam with her family as a six-year old when Saigon fell in 1975. Her parents had worked for the South Vietnamese regime. She and her two sisters – all three of whom went to Harvard – are brilliant and beautiful and strong-willed.  “Vietnam,” has shaped the lives of at least two generations of Americans. The last presidential election was (ridiculously, in my view) dominated by arguments over the candidates’ Vietnam war service records. “Vietnam” keyword searches on news websites these days tend to turn up large numbers of stories on Iraq and U.S. politics. We know a lot about “Vietnam,” the war and the era. We Americans know very little about “Vietnam” in 2005, a place where more than 82 million people now live.

Here are some of the things I learned about Vietnam:

The Vietnamese communist party is considering changing its name to the "Labor Party,"  or something along those lines. Several people told me this. They’re thinking about doing this for several reasons: First, the change would make relations with other countries (especially the United States) less ideologiclly loaded. In other words, Vietnam could do much to solve its “branding” problem if it stopped calling itself “Communist” – when it is in fact better described as some kind of socialist-capitalist hybrid nationalist-authoritarian thing. (A description that fits China better than “communism” too… some reformers in China have also raised the idea of changing the party’s name, but nobody seriously thinks that will happen any time soon.) Second, the reasoning goes, the leader of Vietnam’s revolution, Ho Chi Minh, was primarily a nationalist anyway: communism turned out to be the most expeditious vehicle by which to rid his country of foreign occupation. Vietnamese who support the name change idea hope it will happen within the next year or so. How likely is it really? Hard to say. There are plenty of old-time war veterans in the party who don’t like the idea. And foreign diplomats and businesspeople point out that re-branding Vietnam won’t change its diplomatic and trade relations all that much as long as the Vietnam’s political system remains the same and trade regulations remain too murky for foreign companies to feel confident they’ll make money in Vietnam. But still, people I spoke with seemed to think there’s a much greater chance of the Vietnamese Communist Party changing its name than the Chinese. So that’s interesting.

The Generation gap is tremendous, and could cause the country to change quickly. More than half the population is under 30. They know nothing of war. They like Americans. You can get around speaking in English in Hanoi in Saigon much better than in Beijing and Tokyo. At Vietnamnet, the online newspaper I visited, most of the employees are in their 20’s. I’m told this is common in many Vietnamese companies. Keeping this generation under ideological control strikes me as pretty tough. At the same time, given the amount of war and trauma the country has been through, we can expect the country’s leaders to keep Vietnam a one-party authoritarian state for a while. They may pull it off if they can keep the economy growing fast enough that the young people can get enough job opportunities and standards of living can continue to rise. (Sounds like the Chinese government’s main challenge too…)  Which is why Vietnam is trying to get into the World Trade Organization, so it can make itself more attractive to foreign investment. The scuttlebutt is that China wants to delay Vietnam’s entry because that would mean more competition for investment. Which leads us to point number three…

Many Vietnamese really don’t trust the Chinese, and see the U.S. as an important counter-weight to Chinese power in Southeast Asia.   China occupied Vietnam in ancient times. (Many Vietnamese still revere the Chinese sage Confucius, and burn incense to his statue in Hanoi.) The Chinese and Vietnamese fought a border war in the early 80’s. As one Vietnamese friend put it: “The Chinese want all their neighbors to be weak.”  But the relationship is complicated. There are factions within the Vietnamese government and party who prefer to be close to China, and others who prefer to improve relations with the United States. The net effect will probably be that Vietnam will play China and the U.S. off against each other, since it certainly can’t afford to be on bad terms with either great power.
 

vietnam

North Korean nukes? What's up with that?

Want to know what's going on with North Korea's latest announcement that it has nuclear weapons?

Head on over to North Korea zone.  The best place to go for info and discussion about the Hermit Kingdom.

Rony's conversation with Hugh

Rony Abovitz has answered a bunch of Hugh Hewitt's questions about the circumstances under which CNN's Eason Jordan made his remarks at Davos about U.S. troops targeting journalists. His account is consistent with what I witnessed (though as I've said, I don't have verbatim notes). Rony points out that there was a video camera there. I saw the camera too. It definitely belonged to the World Economic Forum, not any media organization, because the cameraperson had a WEF staff badge. I saw no other video cameras.  I've also checked on the ground rules for sessions held in that particular room, and they were indeed considered to be "on the record" (not all WEF events are). So releasing the recording and transcript would not violate any prior understanding with the panelists.

At the end of his e-mail discussion with Hugh, Rony concludes by saying he is not out to be part of a right-wing "lynch mob," he's just interested in the truth:

Last comment. This issue is turning into a right vs. left agenda issue, a lynch mob against Eason Jordan issue, and feeding into many different agendas. I hope that any news media (bloggers, print, major, minor) covering this can respect my original intent which was to not leave this kind of allegation hanging in the air, but to carry it through to the point where the truth is known, and known to all sides.

The WEF video would resolve the "what Eason said" component of the story. As to the other components, there must be hundreds of people around the world (soldiers, journalists in Iraq, and friends and family of journalists in Iraq) who can weigh in as to what is actually happening on the ground.

Yes indeed, it would be nice to hear from more people on the ground.

Another view on the U.S. military, journalists, and Iraq

Amid controversy over whether U.S. troops did or didn't target journalists in Iraq and what CNN's Eason Jordan did or didn't say, and as the right-wing blogs are storming against what many of them believe to be MSM (mainstream media)'s anti-military bias, comes a documentary assailing MSM from the left: Weapons of Mass Deception.  I have not yet seen it. Just the trailer and this interview on AlterNet, in which Amy Goodman interviews media critic and filmaker Danny Schechter about "fishy deaths of unembedded reporters."  The interview includes the following excerpt from the film's transcript:

Narrator: Journalists and media workers were targeted in Iraq. Was it deliberate? To keep the story on message by intimidating un-embedded journalists. How did the media in the street challenge these killings? Some were killed by so-called friendly fire. Others victims of calculated attacks, missiles, tank shells, and bombs dropped on or near journalists. Some media critics concluded it was intentional, although the Pentagon denied it. Before the war, the BBC's Kate Adey reported she was told by the Pentagon that independent journalists could be targeted.

Reporter:: The 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel was the target. A U.S. tank shelled the Palestine Hotel, which was crowded with journalists, killing two cameramen. One works for a Spanish network, and the other one works for Reuters.

Narrator: Now another incident. Look at this. An American tank on the bridge across from the Palestine hotel in Baghdad. A soldier claimed his tank was fired on. Listen carefully. There are no sounds.

Samia Nakhoul: We moved to the Palestine Hotel because the Pentagon asked our organizations to let us leave because it was a target and when we moved to the Palestine Hotel our organization told the Pentagon we were at the Palestine Hotel. So did every news organization.

Narrator: Again, minutes later no sounds were heard, no one firing at U.S. soldiers. Suddenly without provocation  –

Samia Nakhoul: We saw an orange glow, and this was the tank shell that hit our office. And you can imagine the panic, the wounded – it was me and another photographer. I can't imagine that they would target journalists. You know, I couldn't believe why would they target us? What have we done to them?

Narrator: After the war press freedom groups were still demanding a real investigation. The Pentagon's Victoria Clark told me there was a report that showed that the soldiers were acting in self-defense.

Narrator: Was there any attempt to find out the facts independently or a thorough investigation?

Samia Nakhoul: No  –  the Pentagon never interviewed me personally on it. I don't think any of my colleagues were interviewed by the Pentagon.

Narrator: Samia's organization, Reuters, demanded an independent investigation, but most media companies didn't even press on this issue. No one was held accountable. It was all passed off as an accident, the fog of war and all that.

In the interview Schechter says: "What's also outrageous is that the American media companies did not demand an investigation of this, did not join Reuters in demanding an investigation. So it just wasn't just complicity and collusion in the coverage of the war but a refusal to get involved in an effort to try to find out what really happened, what the facts were. To try to get at the truth of what happened to their own people. That to me compounds the shock of the way in which the media played the role it did." 

The film is apparently opening in New York and a few other places this weekend. Info is here.

Again, it would be useful if we could hear from more journalists on the ground in Iraq about this...

State of the Union backchannel

Personaldemocracy.com is organizing a backchannel chat for tonight's State of the Union. They'll have spaces for "Republican leaning," "Democratic leaning," and "free for all." I'll probably hang out in the "free for all."  Click here for details on how to join. I lean Democrat, but not on all issues, and I don't think public policy discussions benefit when reasonable Democrats and Republicans ghettoize themselves.

Journalist blogs Iraq election

Freelance journalist Brian Palmer (full disclosure: an old friend from my China reporting days) recently started blogging from Iraq while embedded with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Forward Operating Base Iskandariyah.

His latest post describes voting around Iskandariyah and "Musayyib, a predominantly Shia city about 40 km south of Baghdad." Then he goes on to analyze the election's overall meaning:

There seems to be an assumption in the US -- and here among US military folk -- that the election was a transparent exercise in organic democracy when in fact it was something far from that. The vote was orchestrated by the United States, from conception to execution. Washington called the elections and dictated the timetable. On the ground here in Musayyib and throughout Babil province, US Marines were the logistical backbone for the vote. They liaised with US-backed interim government and IECI officials; planned and coordinated security operations; launched pre-election raids on homes of suspected insurgents; arranged transport for officials and voting materials; acted as polling station inspectors before and after the vote.

He concludes:

The election, such as it was, clearly meant a lot to Iraqis who participated. It may provide the foundation for a more equitable society. But it may not. We need answers to certain questions from our own government and the Iraqi interim administration before congratulating ourselves for our beneficence and before heading toward the exit strategy. What was the US role, from soup to nuts? Were voters coerced to vote for particular candidates? How were ballots gathered and processed at the grassroots? If proper ballot-handling procedures weren't followed, does anything happen? Will nonvoters across the country, presumed to be largely Sunni, let the election results stand? The subjects and implementers of Washington's Iraq policy -- the living, the wounded, the dead, and the soon-to-be dead, Iraqi and American -- deserve answers.

Jeff Jarvis, following events via the blogs from New York writes: "It's not about George Bush, pro or con. It's not about America, pro or con. It's not even about the war, pro or con. It's about the Iraqi people and democracy and their future, for which there is only a pro, not a con."  Iraqi bloggers like Mohammed and Omar, Zeyad, Alaa and many others are certainly jubilant, with much gratitude to the U.S. for making it happen. It would be interesting to know their views on some of Brian's questions. The fact that the election was engineered by the U.S. doesn't seem to make it any less "theirs," in their view, judging from what they write. Hoder, the Iranian uber-blogger, is happy for them but asks whether events of the past few days will "embolden neoconservatives" to carry out regime change elsehwere. This has sparked some lively debate in his comments section about the election's legitimacy.

Heading to Davos

If the snowstorm stops and my plane is able to take off, I’ll be heading to Davos, Switzerland on Monday for the World Economic Forum.

I’ll be moderating a panel on China and speaking on another panel on blogging.

Mainly, though, I’ll be blogging on the Forum Blog. Davos bloggers will include some other blogger/journalist hybrids like myself, some people from the tech community, and at least one celebrity (stay tuned for who). This is the first year that the World Econ Forum will have a blog for its annual meeting. It’s an experiment in greater openness, and an effort by the WEF to have a more direct conversation with the world at large.  So please visit often, link to it, comment, and let us know in the comments if you agree with what people are saying, disagree, have questions, or think it’s total bunk.

Quite a lot of sessions will be webcast this year. Webcast information is here, though the times have not yet been posted.  Also check out the full Davos program, plus more detailed information about the Open Forum sessions – sessions you can just show up for without a Davos invitation, if you can get yourself there…

Turns out there’s already a Davos del.icio.us tag for articles and blog posts on the Davos meeting. Please feel free to tag anything you see being written about the Davos goings-on that you’d like everybody else in cyberspace to know about. I’ll do a Technorati tag too, as soon as I sort that out (haven’t had time to play with Technorati tags yet).

It will be interesting to see if Whiskey Bar blogs Davos anonymously again this year. He did some rather razor-sharp blogging from there last year.