HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — In the final days of the Vietnam War 30 years ago, a U.S.-trained South Vietnamese pilot named Nguyen Thanh Trung defected to the North mid-mission. Faking engine problems, he peeled off from his squadron and headed back to Saigon to bomb the presidential palace and the international airport.
Today, Trung flies a U.S.-made Boeing 777 for Vietnam Airlines and shuttles passengers from abroad to the airport he once bombed. His son is studying aviation in Australia.
"My generation was raised to fight the war," Trung said, "but today's generation is here to capitalize on the peace."
To them, Saigon's fall to communist forces on April 30, 1975, is ancient history. Some Americans may still grapple with its legacy, but the Vietnamese have moved on, seldom speaking of what they call the American War. For them, there is only one focus now: national development.
Half the nearly 83 million people in Vietnam were born after Saigon fell and was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, after the North's iconic leader. The other half has forgiven, if not forgotten, following Vietnam's long tradition of repairing relations with former foes and extracting lessons from the past. After defeating China in 1426, Vietnam provided it with boats and horses to carry its vanquished army home.
So what have the decades since brought to a country that Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay once suggested the United States should bomb "back to the Stone Age"? Ironically, if you took away the still-ruling Communist Party and discounted the perilous decade after the war, the Vietnam of today is not much different from the country U.S. policymakers wanted to create in the 1960s.
It is a peaceful, stable presence in the Pacific Basin, with an army that has been whittled down to 484,000 troops. Its economy, a mix of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, has the highest growth rate in Southeast Asia. Private enterprise is flourishing, a middle class is growing, poverty rates are falling. The United States is a major trading partner, and Americans are welcomed with a warmth that belies the two countries' history.
Urban youth have opportunities undreamed of in their parents' time. Many are studying English -- their grandparents learned French and their parents Russian or German -- and flocking to colleges, generally indifferent to the Communist Party unless they want a government job.
