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Jewish World Review April 11, 2001 / 18 Nissan, 5761
Chris Matthews
This capital, located just across the Tonkin Gulf,
maintains a regular vigil to the same anti-colonial
legacy as that ignited by the U.S. spy plane incident
off China's Hainan Island.
I refer to the old French prison in Hanoi that once
housed the patriotic heroes of Ho Chi Minh's Viet
Minh.
Here you see the torture chambers, the iron
shackles and the guillotine that would be
transported province to province - all remnants of a
colonial government willing to do what was
necessary to maintain its grip on Indochina.
A one-room exhibit, which could be easily
overlooked, notes the presence within these same
walls of the notorious Hanoi Hilton where U.S. fliers
were forced to endure years of torture and
ill-treatment. What the Vietnamese learned from the
French, they practiced on men like John McCain.
What grabs the visitor is not the cover-up of the
bad treatment endured by the Americans but the
celebration, a half-century later, of the punishment
perpetrated by the French colonialists.
The people of Vietnam do not want to forget,
either, the price the West made them pay for their
independence.
We in the West make no such effort, of course. We
recall the era of European colonialism with
nostalgia. Those fortunate enough to travel through
Asia or Africa see the old hotels and sense the
charm and elegance of the colonial lifestyle. Over a
poolside drink at the quaint old Metropol here, we
see nothing and think even less of the brutal politics
that supported these French, British and Dutch
empires.
Yet beneath the seductive surface of all the old
colonial worlds was the willingness of the colonial
power to enforce its rule, to torture and execute the
colonized.
This is what we Americans need to keep in our
minds in every dispute with the formerly colonized.
Nationalism, the key to overthrowing Soviet
hegemony in Eastern Europe, is the key to
understanding why Asians retain their prickly
sensitivity to the West. They want to trade with us,
want our tourist dollars, are willing to drive us
around on their three-wheel bicycles. What they
demand in return is recognition of their sovereignty.
When it comes to China or Vietnam or any other
country that once felt the humiliation of colonialism,
we must remember the scolding a North
Vietnamese army officer once gave a complaining
U.S. prisoner:
"This is not your country."
We don't have to like that sentiment, but as we
work our way through situations like Hainan Island,
we darn well have to know
it.
03/23/01: The thrill of Schwarzenegger
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