“I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.”Landon Schmitt, my first contact in Vietnam, was separated from me by three degrees -- one of his Brown classmates went to boarding school with one of my college mates. Landon had moved here as a Fulbright scholar after graduation and never left. His career here in Vietnam was one to marvel, and I had contacted him about work while planning my move.- Jack Kerouac
Once we finally met, we became fast friends, and he taught me many things: how to strawpedo a bottled beer; dance like an idiot and make it look like Michael Jackson; but most importantly, he made me believe in the fact that we, the next generation of leaders, can make a difference by not yielding to trends and fads.
Unfortunately (and I use this word in the gravest of senses), Landon is no longer with us. He passed away on June 4th. The details of his death, suicide, are just too depressing to dissect. The void that has been created in his absence will never be filled.
I don't think anyone will argue with me when I say that he was one of the most intelligent, witty and charming individuals. He had amazing presence and reminds me of Dean Moriarty, the character in Kerouac's grand opus; the one that inspires his spiel on "the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
One of the stories about Landon that will remain with me is of his confrontation with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When she gave a keynote speech at the APEC conference in 2006 held in Hanoi, Landon got the last question of the day. The question that he posed shows not only his charisma, winning over the crowd of 4,000+ by making a joke about Vietnam's staple product (rice), but his brilliance and nerve.
Landon, you will be forever missed.
QUESTION: Welcome, Dr. Rice. My name is Landon Schmitt. I'm from McLean, Virginia, but I live here in Hanoi and I work here. I know you've had a very warm reception here because we love rice so much. (Laughter.) As you may know, Vietnam is the second larger exporter of rice in the world. As a student of international relations and history, as I know you are also, I can't help but draw comparisons between our recent misadventures in Iraq and the tragedy of the Vietnam War some 30 years ago. How can we resolve this quagmire?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think I would first of all question the word "quagmire." This is difficult going in Iraq. Whenever you start on a path that tries to undo a tragic history of a people that were ruled by a tyrant for decades, a tyrant who left 300,000 people in mass graves, who attacked his neighbors twice, used weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors and against his own people, is finally by the way being held to account for those crimes by the Iraqi people themselves, and by the way was in a state of war, continuous war, with the United States for a period of 12 years, it's not easy to undo it.
And the Iraqi people are struggling, but they're struggling in a new environment where they have a chance with new democratic institutions that they themselves created when 12.5 million of them voted last year. We're talking about a people that are struggling, we believe, toward a better future.
Now, change is really hard and historic change is especially hard. But whenever you think, well, you know, we should just give up on change of this magnitude, or perhaps the Iraqis just can't do it, you know, maybe it's just not somehow in their DNA to be able to get a democratic outcome and a democratic future, whenever you look at their day-to-day struggles against terrorists and against violent extremists who would try and undo their very small seeds of democracy, I would ask you to think back on how many times in human history what seemed impossible one day seemed several years later to have been inevitable.
Let me just give you a few examples. I spent last summer reading the biographies of America's founding fathers. By all rights, the United States of America should never have come into being. George Washington lost more than a third of his army to smallpox. We were fighting the greatest empire in history. And yet somehow, stumbling along and managing day by day, the United States of America did come into being. We in the United States then survived a civil war that was catastrophic for our country, but we came out on the other side. In my lifetime, I was born, as Mike said, in Birmingham, Alabama -- in my lifetime, I went to segregated schools, I couldn't stay in a hotel until we got to Washington, D.C., I couldn't go to a restaurant, I barely ever saw a white person. And yet I stand here as Secretary of State of the United States some 40 years later. (Applause.)
Towards the end of World War II, when the great men who inhabited the building that I now inhabit, Marshall and Kennan and Nitze and others, what did they face very day after World War II? In 1946, large communist victories in Italy and in France. In 1947, a civil war in Greece and civil conflict in Turkey. In 1948, the Berlin crisis which permanently divided Germany. In 1948, the coup in Czechoslovakia that ended the last free society in Eastern Europe. In 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon five years ahead of schedule, the Chinese communists won the civil war. And in 1950, the Korean War broke out.
And yet, when you look at Europe and Asia, you look at a Europe where no one can imagine war between France and Germany ever again, and where we have overcome the division of Europe with the collapse, the peaceful collapse, of a country with 30,000 nuclear weapons, 5 million men under arms, that stretched 12 time zones, and it collapsed in favor of freedom without (inaudible).
Think about Japan, prostrate at the end of World War II. Now, the vibrant, second most important economy in the world. Think, too, about Korea, South Korea. After years of military dictatorship, finally a vibrant democracy. And think also about where we're standing. Thirty years ago, what American would have thought that you would be standing in Vietnam at a conference of the Asia Pacific Economic Council talking about free markets and open trade and the need to better integrate our economies. Who would have thought it? (Applause.)
So I don't mean to diminish the difficulties that we have in Iraq and that the Iraqi people have in Iraq. They've got a tough road. There are people so violent and so ruthless that I can't even imagine how they can be thought to be human. But you know, the Iraqis, they do make good decisions, like Vietnam has made good decisions. If they'll take tough decisions, if they will face up to their differences and realize that they only have one future and that's a future together, they don't have a future if they try and stay apart; if they do that, and if we support them and if we remain committed to them, and if we realize that the stakes in Iraq are literally the stakes for a different kind of Middle East that can form the center of a more peaceful world, they've got a chance and we'll have a better chance.
And I'll just make you following wager. At some point in time, if we do our work well, and if they do their work well, and if we are as committed to them as we were to that long list that I just went through over all of those years, some Secretary of State will stand someplace in the world and say, "How could it ever have been thought that the Iraqi people weren't capable of democracy? How could anyone have ever questioned that freedom and liberty would reign in the Middle East?" Because after all, the desire to be free, the desire to live a better life, the desire to live in prosperity, is a universal desire. And that's why throughout history, things that one day seemed impossible, several years later seem to have been inevitable.
