Therefore, it's worth noting the presence in Ho Chi Minh City this week of the guided missile frigate USS Vandegrift, the first port call in Vietnam by an American warship in 30 years. Earlier, there was another first. Vietnam's defense minister visited the Pentagon to discuss establishing military relations between the two former adversaries.
The 200 crew members received an official welcome, visited an orphanage, dug a foundation for a kindergarten, played -- and lost -- a volleyball tournament with Vietnamese sailors and participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at a monument to Ho Chi Minh. The crew relaxed at a bar, improbably called Apocalypse Now, said to be popular with visiting Americans.
All of this was inconceivable in the aftermath of April 30, 1975, when the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North as the remaining Americans made a humiliating rooftop evacuation by helicopter.
The United States and Vietnam resumed diplomatic relations in 1995. Since then, trade between the two has grown to $3 billion a year, and the United States is now Vietnam's largest export market. Vietnam wants to expand its ties to the United States, and there will be more U.S. warships paying a friendly call.
It is a truism that wars always have unanticipated outcomes. In Vietnam, we have come finally to the light at the end of the tunnel.
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Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
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