Interesting note on that topic: only 20 years after Bill Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam it's now "one of the most pro-American countries in Southeast Asia, with 78% of Vietnamese people viewing the U.S. favorably in 2015" according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States–Vietnam_relation...
1. Half of the country was on the side of the Americans in the American War. The people that were on the losing side had a bad time after the end of the war. The Vietnamese refugees who went to the US had a much better time. Almost everyone in South Vietnam has a friend or relative who moved to the US.
2. An unusually large percentage of the population is young. They were born after the war and have been consuming American movies and pop stars since they were kids.
3. The Vietnamese don't seem to hold grudges for very long. For whatever reason, they seem to be a lot less traumatized by the war than the US was. This is despite the fact that they lost millions of people in the war.
4. China is currently the only real existential threat to Vietnam. It has been periodically invading Vietnam for thousands of years. The only ally powerful enough to curb a belligerent China is the US.
The other thing I would say is that I think the current economic growth is more a consequence of changes in economic policy in the 80s than anything that Bill Clinton did - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doi_Moi
I do agree however with you that the current US policy towards Cuba is silly.
Did people in the US hold a grudge against Japan forty years later? By then all the people who were actually making decisions are long dead. In any event Vietnam was involved in a dozen wars during the 20th century. We were just one of a long line of enemies. Also, it's easier to be gracious in victory.
Well, actually, some of the ones left alive still do. At least among the few remaining veterans. It's not just the people old enough to have been making decisions, but people who joined to fight in their teens and were on the Pacific front of that war. Sad, but I've seen it first hand. Admittedly that's less and less true all the time as there are fewer and fewer of that generation left each year.
Being pro-American (whatever that means) is not the holy grail or something like that. Besides, the notion that Cubans hate the US is just wrong.
Vietnam has more than 80 million people, in 54 major ethnic groups with more than 50 distinct languages spoken.
So, like Vietnam? [1]
1: http://www.ibtimes.com/vietnam-police-state-where-one-six-wo...
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/07/02/cuba-a...
Economically, $6,000 GDP per capita isn't much to be proud of, compared to the US aligned Puerto Rico which is at $27,000.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
Still 2x Cuba and with usually less fingernail pulling. Communism is a worldwide failure both political, human rights-wise, and economically. Lets stop being "edgy" and defend it for easily garnered anti-US upvotes.
We can have a sober criticism of all forms of states and capitalism without insisting on one hand that there are only two possibilities and on the other hand that we must choose one as morally superior.
The imperialist nationalist history of capitalism is more than bloody, blood is what makes the world fertile for capitalism.
I will only briefly mention that leftists have attacked states like the USSR as a form of state capitalism since the days Lenin was still alive. I see little potential in developing this line of thought here.
By historical standards the most accurate appellation would probably be "colony".
The dude who died, Breitbart, framed an Obama nominee for secretary of arigculture. He heavily edited a video to make it seems like she was racist.
She ended up suing him.
Just fyi, there are better sources to source.
Plus China is being a bad neighbor right now to everybody. Enemy of my enemy is my friend. USA is currently at least to them is not an enemy, an enemy of the past yes.
Cuban still hates us and they got no other enemy other than us, USA. Plus their population still remember us and what we did, cause the embargo is on going and we are occupying Guantanamo which they wants back.