Tag: Vietnam

Rebelling Against the War: Endless Tragedy of Vietnam, Part 5

Posted on by kathiemm

Myra MacPherson, adapted from an article published in Consortium News February 16, 2015:  https://consortiumnews.com/tag/myra-macpherson/

A U.S. riverboat (Zippo monitor) deploying napalm during the Vietnam War<br>This image is in the public domain.
A U.S. riverboat (Zippo monitor) deploying napalm during the Vietnam War
This image is in the public domain.

According to Don Blackburn, “I thought I could serve my country without sacrificing my morality — a very naïve notion. But I fought harder to keep my morality/humanity than I fought the ‘enemy’. It cost me. I was under near constant harassment — two article 15’s, the threat of imprisonment, many restrictions and odious (literally, burning shit,) details, guard duty, K.P. When I returned from Viet Nam, I was a private E-1, the lowest rank possible. But I never tried to get out of the service, and this, I think, pissed the army off even more.”

After the war, Blackburn became a teacher in Oregon and, while battling PTSD, wrote searing poetry, now in a book called All You Have Given: Meditations on War, Peace & Reconciliation. Like many veterans who came back troubled from a war fought in and around civilians, this aspect was the most disturbing. Two of his disorderly conduct actions were for refusing to go on “search and destroy” missions.

Napalm was dropped from planes and shot from guns for no other use than to incinerate; bright orange walls of intense fire that spared no one and stuck to skin, impossible to shuck off. Victims were embodied in the 1972 Pulitzer Prize iconic picture of a nine-year-old girl running naked in terror, her body still burning, having torn off her clothes to escape the pain.

Like many Vietnamese, Kim Phuc astounds Americans by saying she has forgiven those who caused her excruciating pain: “It was the hardest work of my life, but I did it.” In the end, “I learned that forgiveness is more powerful than any weapon of war.”

Don Blackburn’s desire to save civilians was shatteringly personal. “There was a lot of napalm used where I was.” He recalls in poetry a still haunting incident:

Fire in the Village near Ben Cat, 1967

With all my strength I hold onto you.

I will not, cannot, let you go.

Together we tremble in fear and sorrow.

Our eyes bitten blind by swirling smoke.

Our faces stung by wind-blown, fried sand.

The conical hat, ripped off your head,

bursts into flame a few feet in front of us.

In tortured anguish, you scream at the sky:

Why? Why?

With all my strength I hold you.

Your heart pounds fierce through your chest.

You kick, try to bite, strain against my arms,

You try to pry and squirm loose.

You yell at me to let you go.

But I cannot, will not.

You will run back into your fire-engulfed house.

Try to save, or be with, whatever/whoever

Is still inside.,,,

Together, we tremble in fear and sorrow,

And cry, cry, cry until there is no sound.

At first light tomorrow, you will return,

to see what can be found.

Myra MacPherson is the author of the Vietnam classic, Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation. She has continued to lecture and write about Vietnam and veterans.

Where does honor lie?

Posted on by kathiemm
“Peace restraining war” part of the Bolton War Memorial by Walter Marsden
Image by Gordon Lawson and in the public domain.

Today, Memorial Day 2015, I commemorate what the United States could have been and still could be.

The participation of colonists (invaders) from abroad in the near genocide of the native peoples did not make the United States great, let alone honorable.

The bloody subjugation of the Philippines into an American colony did not make the United States great, nor were the invaders honorable.

Were the Americans who fought in WWI and WWII and Korea and Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq and the countless other forgotten little wars that Americans fought in the last two centuries brave? I am sure many but not all of them were. Were they fighting for their country? Most of them probably thought they were doing so. Were they actually fighting on behalf of the military-industrial complex, the powerful elite intent on pursuing its own interests with little concern for the human costs? I believe so.

Is it appropriate to honor members of the military who killed others, including innocent civilians, because they were told to do so and trained to follow orders? I believe sympathy for them and their families is more appropriate; however, I am also moved by the words of Ambrose Bierce, who fought for the Union in the U.S. Civil War, and was distressed by the insistence of northerners and southerners in the post-war decades to have two separate memorial days, honoring only their own dead: “The wretch, whate’er his life and lot/ Who does not love the harmless dead/ With all his heart and all his head— / May God forgive him, I shall not.”

But, I ask you, when will we start honoring the conscientious objectors, the war resisters, the anti-nuke activists, and all those who embrace nonviolence? When will we create a national peace memorial and a Memorial Day transmuted into a day honoring the pursuit of peace, nonviolence, and human rights?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The Endless Tragedy of Vietnam, Part 3

Posted on by kathiemm

Part 3 in a series by Myra MacPherson, adapted from an article published in Consortium News February 16, 2015

A U.S. Air Force Fairchild UC-123B Provider C-123 Ranch Hand aircraft sprays defoliant over the target area of "Operation Pink Rose" in January 1967. During the Pink Rose test program target areas near Tay Ninh and An Loc, South Vietnam were sprayed with defoliation agents twice and with a drying agent once. Ten flights of three Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses each dropped 42 M-35 incendiary incendiary cluster bombs (per aircraft) into the target area setting fires that should burn the heavy growth as well as enemy fortifications hidden there. Image is in the public domain.
A U.S. Air Force Fairchild UC-123B Provider C-123 Ranch Hand aircraft sprays defoliant over the target area of “Operation Pink Rose” in January 1967. During the Pink Rose test program target areas near Tay Ninh and An Loc, South Vietnam were sprayed with defoliation agents twice and with a drying agent once. Ten flights of three Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses each dropped 42 M-35 incendiary cluster bombs (per aircraft) into the target area setting fires that should burn the heavy growth as well as enemy fortifications hidden there.
Image is in the public domain.

Back out of darkness, squinting in the sun, we walked to meet a nearby villager. His family thought him out of harm’s way; he was only four when the war ended in 1975. The man scooted over the ground like a crab, using his strong arms, pads protecting his knees. His legs ended in stumps just below. One hand was missing. He was not wearing his artificial legs, the ones he had to sell a cow to pay for. They were too cumbersome for the work he was doing, dragging pieces of used lumber to build a chicken coop. He was 20 in 1991, out looking for scrap metal, when an unexploded bomb, dropped 25 years before, blew up.

“He knew the risks, but he also knew he could sell the metal for cash income. It was purely economics,” said Chuck Searcy.

Cluster bombs dug six feet circle indentations that can still be seen as dips in the green land. They contained hundreds of small but very lethal bomblets that were supposed to explode on impact, but thousands, about 10 percent, did not do so, Searcy says, citing an old Pentagon estimate. All these years later, they bring the war home again, exploding in fields and villages, killing and maiming curious children, farmers tilling their fields, poor peasants searching for scrap metal to sell. Official estimates put the number of casualties from unexploded bombs in Vietnam at around 100,000, including 34,000 killed. The true numbers are probably higher, says Searcy.

 Myra MacPherson is the author of the Vietnam classic, Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation. She has continued to lecture and write about Vietnam and veterans.

The first casualty of the last war, and the next war, and the next

Posted on by kathiemm

Aeschylus, an Ancient Greek writer of theatrical plays. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Greek writer and poet Aeschylus (525–456 BCE—a very long time ago!) proclaimed that “Truth is the first casualty of war.” Isn’t it just as true in the US as elsewhere that supporters of war try to prove they are in the right, and use lies and distortions to support their position?

And think of the advantages to the military-industrial-media complex of gaining support for a “war on terror” instead of a war only on the selected evil country of the moment.  Given our government’s policies, there are likely always to be a few terrorists around. What a swell way to guarantee a perpetual war with perpetual profits—in money and/or power.

In his Monday post, Dr. Anthony Marsella wrote passionately about how the power structure in the US has used Propaganda, Media Deception and Abuses, and Lies to convince Americans that being dragged along one path of violence after another is not only in their best interests but also the right thing to do.

Once the mainstream corporate media, a strong arm of the power structure, has planted misinformation in people’s minds, it can be a challenge to get those people to rethink their views. (Remember the expression “Don’t confuse me with facts. My mind is made up.”) For example, long after it was well established that Iraq did not have the weapons of mass destruction that were the purported reason for the 2003 US invasion, some people, especially conservatives, continued to insist that the weapons were there.

In order to override misinformation, lies, and propaganda, it is helpful to have the facts  communicated by people who are seen by their audience as having some credibility.  That is why the efforts of anti-war veteran activists to lead us from the path of war to the path of peace are so important.

 Check out the sites for:

Iraq Veterans Against War: http://www.ivaw.org/

Vietnam Veterans Against the War: http://www.vvaw.org/

Veterans for Peace: http://www.veteransforpeace.org/

 And, in particular, listen to this interview with Ross Caputi, a frequent contributor to this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7ZwuizScxw

 

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