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Obama Tells Vietnam: U.S. 'Still Striving to Live Up to Our Founding Ideals'
CNS News ^ | May 24, 2016 | Patrick Goodenough

Posted on 05/25/2016 2:00:39 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

In an address to the people of communist-ruled Vietnam on Tuesday, President Obama made a case for the importance of upholding human rights, prefacing it by saying that the United States, too, “is still striving to live up to our founding ideals.”

“No nation is perfect,” he said at the National Convention Center in Hanoi. “Two centuries on, the United States is still trying to striving to live up to our founding ideals.”

“We still deal with our shortcomings – too much money in politics, and rising economic inequality,” Obama continued. “Racial bias in our criminal justice system. Women still not being paid as much as men doing the same job. We still have problems and we’re not immune from criticism – I promise you, I hear it every day.”

“But that scrutiny, that open debate, confronting our imperfections and allowing everybody to have their say has helped us grow stronger and more prosperous and more just.”

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)

He assured his audience that he was not singling out Vietnam, and that the U.S. does not seek to impose its form of government on the country. Ultimately Vietnam would decide its own future, he said, noting that Vietnam and the U.S. have different political systems, traditions and cultures.

Obama went on to argue that rights to unrestricted access to the Internet fuel innovation that economies need to thrive.

He also stressed the importance of freedom of religion, assembly and the press.

“When journalists and bloggers are able to shine a light on injustice or abuse, that holds officials accountable and builds public confidence that the system works,” he said.

“When candidates can run for office and campaign freely, and voters can choose their own leaders in free and fair elections, it makes countries more stable because citizens know that their voices count and that peaceful change is possible, and it brings new people into the system.”

Obama was speaking two days after Vietnamese went to the polls to choose legislative representatives from vetted candidates. Their leaders – the president, prime minister and the holder of the top post, that of general secretary of the Communist Party – were appointed at a party congress last January which also selected the most powerful political bodies, the Politburo and Central Committee.

U.S. lawmakers who called on Obama ahead of his visit to raise human rights concerns included in their appeal a list of more than 100 imprisoned activists, journalists and bloggers.

Obama’s audience, included officials and young people, sat in silence during human rights portion of the speech, applauding just once when Obama mentioned the fact that rights are referred to in the Vietnamese constitution.

In contrast, other parts of the address, such as his veiled criticism of the way China is pursuing its territorial claims in the disputed waters and islands of the South China Sea, drew enthusiastic applause.

According to the State Department’s latest human rights report, Vietnam is “an authoritarian state ruled by a single party.”

During the period covered in the report, 2014, the department recorded instances of “arbitrary and unlawful deprivation of life; police attacks and corporal punishment; arbitrary arrest and detention for political activities; continued police mistreatment of suspects during arrest and detention, including the use of lethal force and austere prison conditions; and denial of the right to a fair and expeditious trial.”


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: obama; vietnam
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To: The_Media_never_lie

I guess the nation slipped quite far electing this SOB as president.


21 posted on 05/25/2016 2:40:58 PM PDT by Mouton (The insurrection laws maintain the status quo now.)
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To: The_Media_never_lie

I bet Putin just had another good laugh at the expense of this chump.


22 posted on 05/25/2016 2:41:37 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Apparently, most people are fine with what Obama is doing, while he ignores our problems.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all...especially about my country, the one you pretend to represent.


23 posted on 05/25/2016 2:45:47 PM PDT by Pearls Before Swine
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

But of course he won’t criticize any Democrats in this mea culpa exercise. Like starting a war over a dubious report of a provocation, and then strangling the war to death to leave the country worse off than if it had just been taken over in relative peace. If Barack took truth serum he would probably tell Vietnam, “Democrats put you through a painful Kabuki dance for American political purposes.”


24 posted on 05/25/2016 2:47:49 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
striving to live up to our founding ideals...

Yep, fewer guns...

More muslims...

and schlongs in the ladies locker rooms

25 posted on 05/25/2016 2:52:21 PM PDT by DeFault User
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To: DeFault User

Double irony... he only cares about the ideals when they are convenient.


26 posted on 05/25/2016 2:55:56 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Vietnam has no problem living up to their Communist ideals. They’re able to kill, enslave and oppress millions of their own people. Obama is just jealous he can’t live up to the same ideals as efficiently as Vietnam.


27 posted on 05/25/2016 2:57:26 PM PDT by \/\/ayne (I regret that I have but one subscription cancellation notice to give to my local newspaper.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Was he wearing his "America Was Never Great" hat?

Sounds like he gave an American was Never Great speech.

28 posted on 05/25/2016 2:58:53 PM PDT by Repealthe17thAmendment
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To: EEGator
Obama is a true POS.

Here's a guy who gives Iran nukes, Hands the No. 1 sponsor of terror 300 BILLION dollars, threatens Israel, attacks small business, bows to foreign leaders, and apologizes to Ho Chi Minh and every other enemy of humanity while his race riots burn at home. He is almost an impossibly - unbelievably - bad President.
29 posted on 05/25/2016 3:03:24 PM PDT by golux
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To: Farmer Dean

Your statement is not relevant towards Obama. He was born to a white woman and an African man.


30 posted on 05/25/2016 3:31:20 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist (MAGA! Make America Great Again)
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To: Extremely Extreme Extremist

That SOB would never have made it to the White House without the black vote and a lot of white guilt.That’s what I meant.


31 posted on 05/25/2016 4:02:29 PM PDT by Farmer Dean (Never be more than two steps away from your weapon.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Too bad his round heeled mother didn’t use some of those free rubbers they pass out at college.

She could have saved hundreds of millions from the misery her spawn has visited upon the USA.


32 posted on 05/25/2016 4:05:14 PM PDT by Iron Munro (If Illegals Were Rebublicans 50 Million Democrats Would Be Screaming "Build The Wall!")
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

>”...striving to live up to our founding ideals.”

The ONLY founding ideal we, IMO, should be striving for is the return to Constitutional principles...if even by the same means of our own Founding.

In fact, D.C., and the States, should be reminded of such, more frequently than every bi-centennial.


33 posted on 05/25/2016 4:27:07 PM PDT by i_robot73 ("A man chooses. A slave obeys." - Andrew Ryan)
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To: Mouton
I guess the nation slipped quite far electing this SOB as president.

He is either malicious or incredibly foolish. This is, after all, a communist nation he is complaining to. What does he expect them to do about it? He is the president, why didn't he fix it, or have it fixed?

Just what does he expect to come of his comments?

34 posted on 05/25/2016 6:35:29 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Apparently, most people are fine with what Obama is doing, while he ignores our problems.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
It's a good thing they don't let the average Joe walk through the WH anymore. Can you imagine the 24/7 bitch secession that Obozzo would have to put up with? ;-)

Ed

35 posted on 05/25/2016 6:46:56 PM PDT by husky ed (FOX NEWS ALERT "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" THIS HAS BEEN A FOX NEWS ALERT)
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To: Farmer Dean

The black people who voted for Obama must really hate this country.


36 posted on 05/25/2016 6:51:40 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Apparently, most people are fine with what Obama is doing, while he ignores our problems.)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...
Two centuries on, the United States is still trying to striving to live up to our founding ideals. We still deal with our shortcomings – too much money in politics, and rising economic inequality... Racial bias in our criminal justice system. Women still not being paid as much as men doing the same job. We still have problems and we’re not immune from criticism -- I promise you, I hear it every day. But that scrutiny, that open debate, confronting our imperfections and allowing everybody to have their say has helped us grow stronger and more prosperous and more just.
Ladies and gentlemen, mister Constitutional scholar.


37 posted on 05/26/2016 6:11:17 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (I'll tell you what's wrong with society -- no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.)
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To: EEGator

Vietnamese Communist Leader Says US Anti-War Activists Helped Their Victory

Richard Pollock
Reporter

In the weeks leading up to Memorial Day and President Barack Obama’s scheduled trip to Vietnam, a prominent Vietcong communist leader privately thanked American anti-war activists for helping defeat the U.S.-allied government in Vietnam in the 1970s, saying protest demonstrations throughout the United States were “extremely important in contributing to Vietnam’s victory.”

For Vietnamese guerrilla leader Madam Nguyen Thi Binh, who sent the private letter from Hanoi dated April 20, “victory” meant the communist takeover of South Vietnam. The letter addressed veteran American anti-war activists who gathered in Washington, D.C., at a May 3 reunion of radical “May Day” anti-war leaders.

The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a copy of the letter at the meeting.

Binh, now age 90, originally served as the highest ranking Vietnamese delegate to the Paris Peace Talks that imposed a ceasefire in the country in 1973.

The “Vietcong” was a ragtag group of communist guerrillas who were allied with the official communist government in North Vietnam. The country was cut in two in 1954, with the south seeking to build a democratic state allied to the West.

Binh’s frank admission highlights a secret side of the communist’s effective lobbying influence in the United States. Rather than live in the southern part of the country, which for decades she represented as a diplomat, it appears after the war Binh was living in Hanoi, the original capital of North Vietnam.

In her letter, she extolled the American anti-war movement, saying it was “a key component” that advanced the communist takeover of South Vietnam.

“The Vietnamese people have great appreciation for the peace and antiwar movements in the United States and view those movements’ contribution as important in shortening the war,” she wrote and which was read to an assembled group of “May Day” anti-war activists in Washington, D.C.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/29/vietnamese-communist-leader-says-us-anti-war-activists-helped-their-victory/


38 posted on 05/30/2016 10:20:52 AM PDT by KeyLargo
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