Word: viet
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...been more than 14 years since the last Americans were lifted off the embassy roof in Saigon, a televised vignette of ignominy that is still replayed in the U.S.'s memory. Now Viet Nam has suffered its own setback: after more than a decade of trying to defeat a rural insurgency in Cambodia, a Vietnamese expeditionary force has given up and gone home...
...years the U.S. has demanded just such a withdrawal as a precondition for the normalization of relations between Washington and Hanoi. Viet Nam hopes that diplomatic recognition by the U.S. and removal of the trade embargo will end its isolation and lead to an influx of Western aid, trade, credits and technology. Many Vietnamese recognize that their political and economic system is a shambles. Some officials admit privately that they can run wars but not countries...
...Bush Administration is upping the ante. In addition to pulling out of Cambodia, Viet Nam must contribute to what Washington calls a comprehensive settlement of the civil war the departing occupiers leave behind. By the Administration's definition, that requires the inclusion of the murderous Khmer Rouge in a coalition, along with two non-Communist Cambodian factions and the current Vietnamese-backed rulers in Phnom Penh...
Diplomatic recognition means just what it says, recognizing a government as a fact of life. Yet the Bush Administration seems determined to treat Viet Nam as something different, an object of permanent hostility...
...Vietnamese think they know why. A joke is making the rounds in Hanoi: Viet Nam has done everything it can to lure the Americans to open an embassy there, and nothing has worked; the only option left is to declare war on the U.S., then immediately surrender and count on the beneficence that Americans show those they have defeated...