Remarks by Gerald R. Ford
Ann Arbor, Miichigan
April 7, 2000
Thank you very much, Richard. Let me begin by expressing my
gratitude to you and everyone responsible for organizing today's program.
In many ways it is a harbinger of what the Ford Library and the University
can achieve together. For sharing this vision, and for placing my name on
the School of Public Policy, I am deeply grateful to President Lee Bollinger
and the University's Trustees.
A university, of course, is a somewhat paradoxical
institution. Here the wisdom of the ages co-exists with the latest scientific
and technological innovations. Here, too, we are reminded of the essential
truth of liberal education - that so long as books are kept open, then minds
can never be closed. Twenty-five years after the end of American military
involvement in Indochina, there is no end to the books being written about
this country's longest war. Indeed, the Ford Library proposes to spur the
process along ... for today, it is releasing nearly 25,000 pages of newly
declassified material, covering everything from the Paris peace talks to
the tumultuous final hours inside our Saigon Embassy.
These records, made
available under the terms of President Clinton's Executive Order speeding
up the declassification process, contain rich veins of information for future
scholars to mine. A special word of thanks to those at the State Department
and the CIA who have helped expedite their release - consistent with my personal
view that history is best served by providing the widest, earliest possible
access to official documentation.
A year ago this week I stood in the lobby
of the Museum in Grand Rapids that bears my name for a bittersweet ceremony
involving hundreds of Vietnamese-Americans. We had gathered to dedicate a
symbol of the war, and of their own unquenchable desire to be free. Today
visitors to the Ford Museum can see the original stairway that led to the
roof of the U.S. Embassy. Eighteen steps that afforded the only way out for
over 6,000 Vietnamese and American personnel in South Vietnam's beleaguered
capital.
For me, April 1975 was indeed the cruelest month. The passage of
time has not dulled the ache of those days, the saddest of my public life.
I pray that no future American President is ever faced with the grim options
that confronted me as the military situation on the ground deteriorated ...
mediating between those who wanted an early exit from Saigon, and others
who would go down with all flags flying ... running a desperate race against
the clock to rescue as many people as we could before enemy shelling destroyed
airport runways ... followed by the heartbreaking realization that, as refugees
streamed out on to those runways, we were left with only one alternative
- a final evacuation by helicopter from the embassy roof.
A quarter century
after Operation Frequent Wind concluded, I still grieve over those we were
unable to rescue. I still mourn for 2500 American soldiers who to this day
remain unaccounted for. Yet along with the pain there is pride. In the face
of overwhelming pressure to shut our doors, we were able to resettle a first
wave of over 130,000 Vietnamese refugees. To do anything less would, in my
opinion, only add moral shame to military humiliation. It would have repudiated
the values we cherish as a nation of immigrants, and our longstanding tradition
of providing refuge for the victims of religious, ethnic and political persecution.
Age
has its privileges. Certainly old men are entitled to their memories. I will
never forget a visit to Vietnam in 1953, where I listened, in Saigon, to
French generals confidently predict victory at Dien Bien Phu. But there is
such a thing as collective memory too. Writing recently in the New York Times
magazine, Ward Just noted that the Cold War that gave rise to American involvement
in Indochina is long since over. "Yet the ghosts remain
at the table," he added, "rising whenever Washington contemplates
a military venture. Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia
and Kosovo were all seen through the shadow of Vietnam. For American statecraft,
the legacy is as profound as that of World War II.”
It is to examine
that legacy, along with the enduring impact of the Vietnam War upon this
country's political institutions, its politics and its journalism that we
have gathered at the Michigan League. To help in our examination we have
assembled a remarkable group of diplomats and other public servants, together
with historians, biographers, journalists, and academic experts. Many are
no doubt familiar to you. One, however, I'd like to single out. We arrived
in Congress on the same day in 1949. He was a liberal Democrat from Minnesota,
one of the most eloquent and principled members of his party. I was an Arthur
Vandenberg Republican from Grand Rapids, who didn't object, then or later,
when people called me charismatically challenged.
In 1968 his convictions
led him to challenge an incumbent President with whose Vietnam policies he
profoundly disagreed. On countless campuses across America, including this
one, he was and remains a true hero. I'm delighted to welcome him back to
Ann Arbor. I'm honored to call Gene McCarthy my friend.
And now it's time
for this morning's first panel, which will examine the legacy of Vietnam
on America and the World. To moderate this and the following panel, I'm happy
to introduce one of this country's most distinguished, if youthful, historians,
a student of the Presidency who is as thoughtful as he is prolific. He is
the author of definitive biographies of Jimmy Carter and Dean Acheson, as
well as an epic history of the United States and a forthcoming life of the
great civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. Will you please join me in welcoming
Douglas Brinkley.