With the wounds of the Vietnam War not yet quite healed back home, it was perhaps unrealistic to expect President Clinton to apologise for the American role in the bloody conflict during his historic visit to Vietnam.
But in the dying days of his presidency, the former Arkansas student who supported the peace movement and avoided the draft felt able to depict the war to the Vietnamese people in terms of moral equivalence.
Standing before a white bust of Ho Chi Minh in a lecture hall at Vietnam National University in Hanoi, Mr Clinton said both sides had suffered much and both had to put the past to rest to ensure a prosperous future.
He spoke of a history of two distinct cultures "talking past each other". Let those days be gone for good, he told the audience of 600 honours students, in an address that was televised nationwide in an unprecedented gesture by the Vietnamese leadership.
"Let us continue to help each other heal the wounds of war, not by forgetting the bravery shown and the tragedy suffered by all sides, but by embracing the spirit of reconciliation."
In contrast to the comment of Republican Senator and Vietnam veteran John McCain in Hanoi earlier this year that "the wrong side won", Mr Clinton concentrated on the shared suffering of the war and the need to "honour those who fought without refighting the battles".
Referring to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington inscribed with the names of the 58,183 Americans who died, he said there was another side to the wall. This was the "staggering sacrifice of the Vietnamese people on both sides of that conflict, more than three million brave soldiers and civilians."
Not every American would agree with the tone of Mr Clinton's remarks, which students interviewed later said helped bring closure to the gulf separating the two nations. Some resident US citizens were seen ordering T-shirts in Hanoi this week with the slogan: "Welcome President Clinton to Vietnam - 30 years late", a caustic reference to Mr Clinton's avoidance of service in Vietnam.
Yet there were echoes in Mr Clinton's carefully crafted speech of Mr McCain's sentiment that "The wrong side won". Much of the address amounted to a cajoling lecture to Communist Vietnam on how it should adopt American values and embrace freedoms and globalism.
"Now, let me say emphatically we do not seek to impose these ideals, nor could we," he said. "Only you can decide if you will continue to open your markets, open your society and strengthen the rule of law. Only you can decide how to weave individual liberties and human rights into the rich and strong fabric of Vietnamese national identity."
This gentle rebuke on human rights was, however, garbled in the Vietnamese version heard by television viewers. It came out as ". . . only you can decide [pause] on how to live with the issue, um, [pause] in the issue that human rights in Vietnam and in the society then you make a decision on your own . . ."
The same happened when Mr Clinton touched on religious freedom. "In our experience, guaranteeing the right to religious worship and the right to political dissent does not threaten the stability of the society; instead it builds people's confidence in the fairness of the institution . . ." he said. This became: "According to our experience, the issue of allowing worshiping, allowing, [pause] that does not affect the regime but to improve our regime . . ."
The US National Security Council spokesman, Mr P.J. Crowley, said later: "It was our translator, so there was no attempt to deliberately distort what the President was saying."
Mr Clinton also said: "In our experience young people are much more likely to have confidence in their future if they have a say in shaping it, in choosing their governmental leaders and having a government that is accountable to those it serves."
Earlier in the day Mr Clinton was given an honour guard at the presidential palace, a mustard coloured colonial French building, when he arrived to meet Vietnam's president, Mr Pran Duc Luong. He later had talks with the Prime Minister, Mr Phan Van Khai, at the government guest house.