Long arc of reconciliation between U.S. and Vietnam falters under Trump
QUANG TRI PROVINCE, Vietnam - The Vietnamese deminers who find and destroy the deadly remnants of America’s war here were on break for Lunar New Year when they received word an executive order by President Donald Trump had suspended funding for their work.
For a month, they hung up the khaki uniforms stitched with American flag patches, left their metal detectors in storage, and rerouted reports of grenades, cluster munitions and mortars to the Vietnamese authorities.
“People were calling us every day,” remembered Tran Binh Phuong, who leads several hundred personnel in the largest demining operation in central Vietnam’s Quang Tri province - an effort that relies wholly on U.S. funding. “They asked why, when this land still has so many explosives that continue to go off, why the funding was halted.”
Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, decades of progress in redressing the conflict’s legacy, fostering reconciliation between the United States and its former enemy, and forging ties between surviving soldiers, are coming undone under Trump, say current and former U.S. officials, Vietnamese analysts and independent aid groups.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/long-arc-reconciliation-between-u-130940177.html
Thanks Cadet Bonespurs.