What Made Viet Dinh Turn to the Dark Side? How could this happen?

[KoKo]

From Boat Person to Terror War Point Man
Viet Dinh, a key backer of tough steps by the Justice Department, leaves a controversial legacy.

By Seth Stern | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor


WASHINGTON - As a young boy, Viet Dinh fled war-ravaged Vietnam with his mother and siblings aboard a 15-foot boat.

So no one could send them back, his mother chopped their boat up with an ax when they reached the Malaysian coast after 12 days at sea. Eventually, he said, they made their way to the US as refugees.

In the years since, Mr. Dinh rose to Assistant Attorney General, the highest government post ever held by a Vietnamese-American - and has used that post to wage a legal war on terrorism that includes controversial scrutiny of immigrants.

As head of the Office of Legal Policy, traditionally a Justice Department backwater, Dinh played a key role crafting and defending Attorney General John Ashcroft's strategy for pursuing Al Qaeda. He wrote legislation expanding police surveillance powers. He contributed to proposals to watch foreign students, fingerprint thousands of Middle Eastern visitors, and allow greater collaboration between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. And he has no regrets.

Since Sept. 11, "our nation's ability to defend itself against terror has been not only my vocation but my obsession," Dinh said during his final interview last month, before stepping down from his post.

That resolve, and its controversial legacy, was echoed last week as Mr. Ashcroft faced heavy criticism for some of those Justice Department policies, even as he urged Congress to bolster his ability to hunt down terrorists. Ashcroft spoke for five hours before the House Judiciary Committee, responding to the department Inspector General's critical report on the detention of 762 foreigners.

Dinh's achievements haven't won him many fans among civil libertarians and liberal politicians. Local governments are openly challenging what Dinh describes as his office's most significant accomplishment, the USA Patriot Act. Enacted within six weeks of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the act makes it easier for the Justice Department to require libraries to document patrons' reading habits and track e-mail addresses.

At least 117 cities and towns - including Baltimore, Philadelphia and Detroit - have passed resolutions against the act, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Northampton, Mass.

"Dinh's very much done the administration's bidding in a way that poses serious threats to constitutional and civil rights and liberties," said Elliot Mincberg, of the People for the American Way.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0609/p02s02-uspo.htm

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Simple..many Viet Namese are staunchly anti-communist

So the red baiting GOP appeals to them

[On the Road]

2. The Chinese Were the Business Owners

who got their money confiscated by the communists before being exiled. The terrorists are the new Viet Cong.

[G_j]

3. it's hard to say

perhaps he was always that way.
Pretty scary dude, for sure.

[KoKo]

4. Kick. I still can't understand what makes him turn against his own

experience. He should be an advocate for prisoner rights and American's rights since he had to flee to this country. He's enjoyed great privilege attending Harvard and being Assistant Attorney General and now a Professor at Georgetown. Millions of American children have not been so privileged. Why would he think that others should be denied what he has achieved by harming folks liberties.

It really is a puzzle to me. There must be something else about him, but this was all I could find which talked about his background. The rest that showed up on Google were articles about his views.

[Cheswick2.0]

5. people who have been victimized by one authoritarian system

will often to to exactly the other extreme. He is just as willing to use totalitarian methods, but at the other end of the spectrum. Think of the Miami Cubans or the people coming out of coutries like Poland or the Ukrain. The immigrants from those countries are most often right wing in their political leanings.

[KoKo]

8. But, Why? What would make someone who escaped from that want to

return to it? Especially recently..or is this a "repeat thing" that goes on in the human experience where we are always fighting oppression and that even those who've suffered under it can't be trusted to be fair once they've escaped it?

Do people who escape oppression really have a need to inforce it as some underlying human dynamic sort of like the "battered wife syndrome?" Actually, "battered wife" is NOT the analogy...but some syndrome where people constantly look to replicate a bad experience and keep creating the conditions for it to occur, because it gives them "control."

I can't think of what that is...but there's a name for it..

[G_j]

7. think of Kissinger

who lost a number of family members in the Holocaust.

[tom_paine]

9. I don't know what makes those kinds of people, but they are VERY

prevalent among the human species.

Look at any arbitrary grouping, or race, creed, religion, etc., and you will always find some Quislings.

[KoKo]

6. Kick. For psychological profiles or how people become "powerful."

:kick:

[KoKo]

10. Doesn't this deserve more exploration for the "dark side" of Immigrants?

Speaking as one whose family has been in America for a long, long time?

:shrug:

[KoKo]

11. kick

:kick:

[not systems]

12. To get even with hippies...

for losing Vietnam.

I'm not saying this is true.

I am saying this is the type of thinking many have.

[KoKo]

13. Aren't there any DU'ers who could identify with him? Who are immigrants

who went through terrible times but didn't Cave and go to the Dark Side like him?

There must be some folks...at least I hope so. :shrug:

[dogman]

14. It isn't just immigrants.

Explain Clarence Thomas. Some people reach the top and can't wait to close the door behind them.

[KoKo]

16. Well, Clarence was a total opportunist who was "run by" folks who saw

him as the "conservative RW answer to Thurgood Marshall."

But Viet came to America under really terrible circumstances that must have made a strong impression on him about freedom.

Now Clarence could say he was a great grandson of slaves who came here under terrible circumstances, but it isn't the same since he's twice removed from the actual pain of things. imho, anyway.

[KoKo]

15. Kick........more about what turns people?

:shrug:

[Moderator]

17. Koko01

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DU Moderator