President Joe Biden closed a visit to Vietnam on Monday by spotlighting new business deals and partnerships between the two countries and paying respects at a memorial honoring his late friend and colleague Sen. John McCain, who endured a lengthy imprisonment in Hanoi during the Vietnam War.
Biden met with Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, who also accompanied Biden to a quick drop by at a meeting of business leaders. Biden also sat down with President Võ Văn Thưởng, who hosted the U.S. president for a formal state luncheon. The two sides are looking to strengthen their partnership amid shared concerns about China’s assertiveness in the Pacific.
Both leaders spoke about strengthening Vietnam’s semiconductor industry. Biden made clear his administration’s commitment to an open Pacific.
I’m not 80, but US > India > Vietnam > US would pretty much fry me.
That was my first thought as well. But my second thought is, why the fuck do we have these super old ppl in office??
Let’s see. They want to serve the public. They gather the ingredients necessary to run for public office. They win. They get experience and become subject matter policy experts. They get re-elected. Basicly, they do things. But, they don’t sit around and bitch about age.
More accurately: they’re power hungry parasites who refuse to let go.
All things considered, the guy is actually incredible for his age.
Just shouldn’t be in a situation where the US president is 80 ffs…
He was saying some pretty weird stuff at his last press conference. Even he said he needed sleep.
I watched that press conference and when it’s not taken out of context it wasn’t actually that weird.
I’m pretty curious about the content of the John McCain memorial tbh, that’s kind of wild
Content of the memorial:
The inscription on the memorial read and was translated to: “On 26 October 1967 near Trúc Bạch Lake, the citizens and military of the capital, Hanoi, captured Pilot John Sidney McCain. The US Navy Air Force Aviator was flying an A4 aircraft, which crashed near Yên Phụ power station. This was one of the ten aircraft shot down that day.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trúc_Bạch_Lake#Trúc_Bạch_war_monument
And why Vietnam respects McCain:
“For both the government of Vietnam and its people, Senator McCain was a symbol of his generation of senators, and of the veterans of the Vietnam war,” Vietnam’s foreign minister Pham Binh Minh wrote in a condolence book at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi on Monday.
“It was he who took the lead in significantly healing the wounds of war, and normalizing and promoting the comprehensive Vietnam-U.S. partnership,” Minh said.
McCain had been one of the most vocal proponents in Washington in favor of normalizing ties with Communist-led Vietnam, a former enemy of the United States.
Why tf is there a John McCain memorial in Vietnam?? Seems kinda fucked
McCain was captured by the Vietcong, held as prisoner there for a longer than average time. Then came back to the US, became a senator, and advocated for close US and Vietnam relations. McCain was an early adopter of the “If you can’t beat them, crush them economically until the become a capitalist country” approach to Vietnam. In honor of his commitment to close ties between the US and Vietnam despite his long capture, McCain is revered in the country.
Because despite being a pow he was a proponent of healing ties between the two nations when he got into office. He could have had a lifelong hatred and political crusade against Vietnam and few would have blamed him, but he chose to be better than that and chose to help the two countries work together to improve both and prevent future wars
