By LOU MARANO
ARLINGTON, Va., June 18 (UPI) -- Rising from a defensive crouch, former Sen. Bob Kerrey challenged the communist government of Vietnam to alleviate poverty by lifting the political and economic repression of its people. Kerrey's remarks before an audience of Vietnamese-Americans on Sunday, departed from the diffident posture the Medal of Honor winner has assumed since the news broke in April that gunfire from his commando team killed civilians during a raid on a Mekong Delta village in 1969. "I never led a mission designed to kill innocent civilians," he said.
Without apology, Kerrey put his Vietnam service in historical perspective. North Vietnam had invaded the Republic of Vietnam with the aim of overthrowing the Saigon government, he recalled, and an "incredible difference" in vision divided the two systems of government.
"Political freedom is the pathway to order," Kerrey said. "If 70 million people in Vietnam are given their freedom, they will provide the order the communists insist is needed."
The former senator from Nebraska, now president of New School University in New York, said the answer to Vietnam's problems is not aid or reparations but to give the Vietnamese people the chance to generate the wealth that comes from the free-enterprise system. Kerrey said that nothing has moved him more than witnessing Vietnamese refugees becoming U.S. citizens. "You do not have to be taught that being free matters," he said, "and 70 million Vietnamese are still not given that freedom."
The Nebraskan said that Vietnamese-Americans "have made our country stronger and better." Through respect for the institution of marriage and for elders, Vietnamese-Americans "have taught us things that we have forgotten," he said.
Dallas physician Dr. Truong Ngoc Tich, chairman of the U.S. Vietnamese community, presented Kerrey with a plaque inscribed with words of appreciation for his efforts on behalf of democracy and human rights in Vietnam.
The presentation was made at George Mason University Law School during a program titled "Side by Side for Freedom," sponsored by a coalition of veterans who fought for the Saigon government and the International Committee for Freedom to Support the Nonviolent Movement for Human Rights in Vietnam.
Screenwriter and novelist James H. Webb Jr. also was awarded with a plaque. Webb, a Vietnam War hero and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, praised Kerrey for using the power of his office as senator to secure equal treatment in Vietnam for those who fought alongside the United States.
Those assembled needed no explanation. Later in the program, Virginia state Sen. Linda "Toddy" Puller, D-Mount Vernon, said she had been "appalled" in the early 1990s to learn that the Hanoi government had done nothing to help veterans of the former South Vietnamese Army with missing limbs get prostheses.
Kerrey lost part of his lower leg in combat. Webb said that the war is still debated because U.S. media and academic elites have been aligned with Vietnam's communist rulers in the interpretation of history. U.S. elites urged the abandonment of South Vietnam on the battlefield, Webb said. To avoid the judgment of history, they must continue to portray the war as immoral and anyone involved in it as misguided or stupid.
For this reason, the former Marine rifle company commander said, they linger over isolated American errors while ignoring the strategy of atrocities the communists used to terrorize Vietnamese villagers.
Quang X. Pham spoke from the perspective of a younger generation of Vietnamese Americans. His father was a South Vietnamese Air force pilot who spent 13 years in detention camps after the war. The California business executive was a U.S. Marine Corps pilot in the Persian Gulf War and in Somalia.
Pham said that in the absence of military conscription, there has been a growing indifference about the dilemmas those who wear the uniform must face. Referring to Kerrey, Pham asked who today would risk his life only to be second-guessed about his decisions 30 years later.
"They have fought for our freedom; let them have their peace of mind," Pham said.