Tag Archives: Vietnam

Political Rants

High crimes and missed opportunities.

Congressman Darryl Issa (“Step away from the vehicle!”) had his most excellent Benghazi hearing this week – a real blockbuster for the right. Bigger than Watergate, we’re told. A heinous coverup on the eve of a presidential election. What a scandal! Issa will leave no stone unturned, chasing down those responsible for providing false information about the nature of the attack on our consulate. After all, four people are dead – four! That’s nearly half as many as died on our side this week in Afghanistan. Nearly 1/10 the number killed in one of the more notorious drone strikes in Yemen a few years back. Nearly 0.0001% of the number of civilians likely killed in Iraq based on false testimony and obfuscation.

Sure … if you want to hold someone accountable in high places, that seems fair. Just put the Benghazi culprits in line at the Hague behind Bush and Cheney, whose deceptions led us into two wars, one of which is still raging. That, of course, will never happen. But there’s still no justification in being so selective in your enforcement of high crimes.

If you’re going to call the Obama administration on the carpet, why not do so for the unprecedented number of “signature” strikes they are conducting around the world, some of them on American citizens? Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of radical Islamist Anwar al-Awlaki, was summarily killed in a drone strike that tore up a restaurant in Yemen. Why not ask them about that, Issa? Why not call them out for killing people on the basis of behavioral profiles, not intelligence? Is it perhaps because that doesn’t bother you or your constituents? I thought so.

Sure, Obama’s foreign policy is abusive and murderous, just like all of his predecessors in my lifetime. The difference between them is a question of degree. During the Johnson/Nixon war on Vietnam, the same standard was applied as in the current drone war: if you were outside the wire in rural South Vietnam, you were assumed to be part of the Viet Cong (NLF) and therefore a target. The difference is that we killed hundreds of thousands there – probably in the million range – whereas in the current drone war, they take more of a retail approach.

Does that count for much? I suppose it counts for something. But when you split hairs over the numbers of innocents killed, you sacrifice your humanity on some level.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Truth about King-Father.

My local newspaper (and I’m sure just about everyone else’s as well) contained a minuscule item on the cremation of the body of Norodom Sihanouk, whom the paper described as being revered by his people as the “King-Father” of Cambodia. An AP story by Denis Gray was the source of this tiny item tucked away inside the Utica OD, which opened as follows:

Cambodians bade goodbye Monday with tears, chanting and fireworks to former King Norodom Sihanouk, their revered “King-Father” who led them through half a century of political tumult that took them into the abyss of genocidal Khmer Rouge rule and back out again. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodians thronged the capital for the elaborate royal cremation of the maddeningly mercurial leader whose charm often overshadowed missteps that to most of his countrymen have faded away in a fog of nostalgia for a simpler time.

Bombing Cambodia
Our gift to Sihanouk's subjects

While Gray’s story went into a bit more detail, this was most of what my newspaper carried. However, neither the original piece nor the excerpt bothered to mention the U.S. role in the catastrophe that destroyed Sihanouk’s country in the late 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, reading this, you’d think that their many troubles were the result of a bungling if “charming” monarch who misled his people into genocide. Gray’s piece gives only one vague hint of U.S. influence at any point, mentioning in passing that Sihanouk sided with the Khmer Rouge in opposition to “U.S.-backed government” in the early 1970s.

Talk about burying the lead! That “U.S.-backed government” was a coup regime headed by Lon Nol which we brought to power in the midst of an ever-widening war in Cambodia. Of course, we invaded Cambodia in 1970 – a fact that you’d be hard-pressed to find evidence of on a Google search, apart from a story on the World Socialist Web site. We bombed the living shit out of it from about 1969 until Lon Nol was overthrown in 1975. Then came the reign of terror, as well as countless deaths from starvation, exhaustion, and the usual outcomes of genocidal war. To read these stories, it’s as if before the Khmer Rouge arrived, Cambodia was a nation of happy, smiling people, no complaints whatsoever.

Naturally, I don’t expect them to get all of this into a 3-inch column item. But they could get a piece of the truth in there, couldn’t they?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Memento mori.

Another Memorial Day come and gone. PBS played the annual extravaganza in Washington D.C., replete with stars of stage, screen, and studio, in some respects bizarre beyond description. It always strikes me as odd that a day reserved to commemorate the dead from this nation’s wars should carry such hyper-patriotic overtones. As I watch, I keep wanting to say, “Take it down a notch – that’s the kind of talk that got them all killed.” It’s long been my contention that the very ostentatious hero-ization of our active military and veterans is, at its heart, an effort to make our pointless wars seem somehow noble and just. The laptop bombardiers crowing “hero!” most loudly are the ones who gladly see their heroes shipped off for a fifth tour of duty. Doesn’t bear close inspection.

Perhaps even stranger is the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the American war in Vietnam – like that was something to celebrate. Obama spoke to this point during his Memorial Day address at the Vietnam memorial wall, and I have to say that his central point was one that Reagan might have made twenty years ago.

And one of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam — most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there. You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.

Um… really, Mr. President? We’ve heard this trope before – the insinuation that people opposed to the war blamed the people fighting it, spat on them when they returned, etc. Bullshit. They were our friends, our brothers, our uncles, our fathers. A lie like this assumes that people don’t remember how close every 18-24 year old male was to being press-ganged into that war via the draft. It was not us and them; it was us and us. What’s more, many of them were at the forefront of resistance to the war. I have a local vet to thank for much of what I know about that awful conflict.

And… the “actions of a few”? What few? The people running the administration at the time? This makes it sound as though Vietnam was some noble enterprise sullied by isolated incidents of nastiness. What could be further from the truth? Vietnam was a dirty war of malevolent intent from the very beginning, not a mistake or a tragic chapter – a crime. It is a crime that should not be blamed on those forced to participate in it; but rather on those who formulated that policy that resulted in the destruction of three countries.

That’s where that “hero” jiu-jitsu comes in. Criticize the war and the pro-war pirates claim you’re criticizing the troops, as if the troops are responsible for the conflict. They were not then, and they are not today. That’s down to us … and to the scoundrels heaping praise on our military as they plan yet another pointless war.

luv u,

jp