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Article: Good morning, Vietnam: on the long road to freedom and prosperity, Vietnam is taking the first halting steps.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- May 15, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ON THE leafy corner joining Mac Dinh Chi Street and Le Duan Boulevard, the former American Embassy squats against the morning sun. Twenty years ago, with Communist forces rapidly advancing on Saigon, young Marines on the other side of these bars did their best to hold back the crush of Vietnamese wanting to be let inside. Even at that late stage, they could not believe America would abandon them.
At the time I was a junior in high school, too young to remember in much detail the course of the war but vividly aware of its impact around me: the older boys suddenly in uniform; the prayers for the fallen at the end of the Memorial Day parades; the frenzy of TV images ...