My participation in the extended debate in the 60’s over why
we were in Viet Nam consisted mostly of attending anti-war demonstrations in
Seattle. I had been lucky enough to
score a relatively high draft lottery score, 256, so I was pretty sure I would
not be getting one of those “Greetings” letters from Uncle Sam, and could live
my life without fear of having to go to basic training and learn how to kill
people, let alone having to go to some far-off land and actually do it.
Of the kids I grew up with, many were not so lucky. I remember one in particular, Steve, who not
only got drafted and sent to Viet Nam as an infantryman, but lived to come back
to his old neighborhood and tell the story.
Another, my future brother-in-law, was assigned to a helicopter
maintenance operation at the air base in Da Nang as a welder/fabricator.
Steve was one of the dominant group in our band of
delinquents who hung out at a park in White Center in the late ‘60s. When he disappeared in ’69, and we heard he
had been drafted, he faded from our consciousness until he reappeared in the
summer of ’71. He had saved much of his
pay for the two years he was on active duty, and rewarded himself after he
mustered out with a brand new Ford Galaxie XL, the one with the hidden
headlights, so when he showed up back at the lake with a fancy brand new ride
he was received as royalty, and we hung on his every word about the wide world
out there and what it was like.
He told us how his platoon would be rounded up in the
morning and remanded to expend a certain amount of ammunition every patrol, and
how important the body count was, so they would hide behind a tree and fire off
their M-16s, even though there was nothing out there, nobody was shooting back,
and report anything that might possibly have been a dead body. He explained that the 2nd
lieutenants were assholes who would bust any grunt caught smoking Thai stick,
and that everyone was high on something as much of the time as possible, and
you could get anything you wanted in the local markets. Remember that our forces were mostly draftees
in those days.
JB confirmed that with his story of the puppy dogs of Da
Nang. It seems that, every so often, a
scrawny, shivering puppy would appear inside the gated secured compound that
housed the maintenance wing of the repair facility attached to the airbase, and
would promptly be adopted by some homesick American GI and soon become the
mascot for the entire barracks. In a few
short weeks the rescued puppy would thrive, and put on weight on a diet based
on the table scraps and orts from the entire company. Then, suddenly, the puppy would disappear,
and within a few days another shivering scrawny waif would take his place,
while at the same time one of the local restaurants featured a dish made with
young dog.
Ramparts magazine back in the day had uncovered a document
showing how all the major oil companies back then had parceled out the entire
offshore of Viet Nam, both north and south, into a series of leased areas for
oil exploration that went a long way towards a reasonable explanation of why
the U.S. was sending troops over there to die in increasing numbers. The official explanation, that we somehow
were “preventing the spread of Communism” throughout Southeast Asia, was the
same kind of bullshit that is used to justify air strikes and boots on the
ground in the Middle East to attack ISIL.
In both cases, the only winners are the multinational arms corporations
and the military-industrial complex in this country and the result of their
profit taking is the same: death and
destruction. There are only two kinds of
people in the countries that are currently being used to expend our ammunition,
those who are making money off us and those who are suffering because of it,
and who hate us in return. I offer you
one simple example that shows exactly what is going on:
Every band of “terrorists”, or “partisans”, or “rebels” or
“freedom fighters” has one thing in common.
In their midst is always an imam, a preacher by any other name, a sky
pilot who is there to exhort them to action, promise them the eternal rewards
they will earn by their actions, and teach them that it is the will of God, or
Allah, or Buddha or whoever that they take those actions. God is on their side, and they cannot lose.
All it would take to put a stop to all of it is to hold the
individual imams responsible for inciting the crowds. If every fatwa declaring Jihad was
immediately followed by an aerial bombardment that destroyed the mosque from
which the fatwa was issued, along with the imam who issued it, the faithful
would soon begin to marvel that God is not responding to this challenge, and
wonder if maybe the imams were lying through their teeth, and sending them off
to die for nothing, which they are. Just
as those politicians who think America has to be the world’s policeman are
lying when they make up bullshit excuses for sending our own men and women off
to die. One thing you will notice is it
is never their own children, always the children of the poor working class, the
expendables, who are chosen to make the ultimate sacrifice.
You’ll notice we don’t do that, hunt down the imams and
destroy their mosques. We don’t have our
Secretary of State stand up and shout, “That story about the 72 virgins if you
die a jihadi is bullshit! And any
preacher that says so is lying!” We
don’t want to disrespect their religion, I guess, or maybe we just want to
expend some more ammunition.
But if you spend any time reading history, you can find the
real stories about what we did in the world as a country to make so many people
hate us. Read up on how we replaced the
elected president of Iran with the Shah, or how we participated in the murder
of the elected president of Chile, or of South Viet Nam, or the many times we
tried to kill Castro, not to mention the Sandinistas, and you will eventually
catch on that, in this world in this year 2015, the United States of America is
no longer the beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Instead, for most of them, we are the bad
guys. It’s pretty clear that for all
those years our foreign policies were designed to result in protection of
private property all over the world and the successful exploitation of other
countries’ resources for the profit of the multinational corporations that
control our government, and many of theirs, as well.
That is why I am continually puzzled by people who proclaim
their pride in being an American, who adopt that old line, “My country, right
or wrong, but My Country”. Those are the
folks who cannot see into the future with enough clarity to realize that we
will be defeated one day, without a shot being fired, other than our lunatic
fringe being executed by the police. We
will be defeated because we no longer will produce anything of value to the
rest of the world at a price they are willing to pay, and our working class
will no longer be able to afford their products.
And that, as they say, is when the shit will hit the fan.
“Ah, but,” you say, “What about all those sharp young people
who are out there making things happen in the world? Are they not also the future?” Why, so they are. But why do you think they can be successful,
ultimately, without your help?
Don’t you
see, this is all about you! You have to
step up, in your community, in your neighborhood, in this society! You have to take the time to attend your
community meetings, your caucuses, your get-togethers and your events. You have to show your face. You have to put your money on the line. You have to look in the mirror, and ask, “Am
I all about me and my family, or am I putting some effort into my community as
well?”
And what are the principals upon which you choose to
operate? Do you believe that all people
are equal, and that all of them deserve a share in the world’s resources? Or are you more of the “All for me, none for
you” persuasion? It doesn’t matter
which, it only matters that you think about such issues, and take a stand one
way or another. When too many of us are
content to sit on the sidelines and let someone else do our suffering for us,
everything falls apart. And the one
thing we all can share, misery, is always waiting out there for us. It’s up to you to make that not happen. :
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