Oh man… do I love the premise of this or what? I’m so sick of hearing that every American military campaign is “the new Vietnam” so this take on the spread of democracy is priceless! Hat tip, The Corner.
Saigon’s Sharansky – Will Vietnam be the next Iraq? – OpinionJournal.com
So it happens that a message reached me last weekend from within one of the world’s most repressive states: Vietnam. Word came that the Sharansky of Saigon, democratic dissident Nguyen Dan Que, had been released from his latest stretch in Vietnam’s prisons.
Given that Vietnam’s secret police almost certainly eavesdrop on any contact he has with the wider world, I was prepared for a discreet and carefully phrased conversation, meant to minimize his risk. Dr. Que was not. He got straight to the point: “What I want is liberty for my people.” The question now, he said, “is how to make regime change in Vietnam.” For democratization of his country, he added, “support from the rest of the world is important.” Specifically, he wants Hanoi’s decaying communist party to “put forward a timetable for free and fair elections.”
Thank goodness we elected a President who stands up to tyrannical regimes as a plank of the War on Terror. And not the alternative candidate who coddled the North Vietnamese repressive regime when he was wearing the uniform of the United States military at the time.