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In an unlikely place, rooting for McCain
By Hans Nichols
Bloomberg News
Aug 22, 2008
HANOI, Vietnam - Le Van Lua, the first North Vietnamese that Lt. Cmdr. John McCain encountered in 1967, says he greeted the American aviator with the biggest kitchen knife he could find. He would like to welcome McCain back as president of the United States. McCain, a former prisoner of war here, has some unlikely supporters in Vietnam, a country he bombed 23 times. Like Le, many Vietnamese are cheering for the self-confessed "air pirate," absolving McCain-the-bomber and embracing the senator who pushed to normalize diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995.
"They love the man who looks to the future," said Nguyen Dai Phuong, an editor at Tien Phong, a Hanoi daily. "They don't love the pilot who came to kill their family."
McCain's role as a "frontrunner" in the normalization process has convinced Vietnam's ruling class that his White House would increase bilateral trade, which was about $11 billion last year.
Some hold even higher hopes. Tran Trong Duyet, 75, former warden of Hoa Lo prison, better known as the "Hanoi Hilton," where McCain spent 51/2 years, dreams of a free-trade agreement with his country's old capitalist enemy.
"I would vote for John McCain," Duyet, speaking with government permission, said at his home in Haiphong.
Many are also convinced that the Arizona Republican would repay them for having shown him "mercy" after his mission ended prematurely Oct. 26, 1967, low in Hanoi's flak-filled skies.
After the right wing of McCain's A-4 Skyhawk met with a surface-to-air-missile, he parachuted into a Hanoi lake. Le said he swam toward the Navy pilot and shouted "Hands up!" in French. He grabbed McCain by his hair and hoisted him atop two bamboo pontoons, his knife held to McCain's throat, he said.
"We were once face to face in a very difficult moment, between life and death," said Le, then 18 and a mechanic. "We would be good friends if he were sitting in front of me now," he said, citing McCain's push for normal ties.
Le, joined by a crowd, paddled McCain to the shore. There, "aggrieved citizens" were waiting for him, as McCain wrote in his memoir, Faith of My Fathers . Moments earlier, he had released his bombs on the capital's Yen Phu power plant.
The mob stripped him to his underwear, bayoneted him in the groin, and smashed his shoulder with a rifle butt, shattering his bone. He already had sustained a busted knee and arm fractures when he ejected from the aircraft.
McCain credits "a woman, who may have been a nurse," with yelling at the crowd and taming their anger. She offered him herbal tea and put splints on his broken bones.
Today, that woman, Nguyen Thi Thanh, 81, says her "first feeling was to look at him as a patient" and not the enemy.
She is also hoping for a McCain victory, because of the prospect of greater trade, she said in an interview granted with the government's permission. McCain will remember that "he has enjoyed the government's mercy" and repay Vietnam in kind, she said.
McCain has a less charitable view of his years in Hanoi. In his memoir and on the campaign trail, he describes the torture as regular and routine.
Still, he says he bears no grudge against the Vietnamese and led the way, with Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), to restoring relations 13 years ago. He has returned to Vietnam almost a dozen times.
Still, some older Vietnamese hold grudges against the American pilots, said Phuong, the newspaper editor. He said they join with another group among whom Democrat Barack Obama has strong support.
"The young people, especially the ladies, prefer Obama," he said.
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