Apr 30 2010
We never came to terms with those years leading up to April 30th 1975, one of the reasons we’ve had the recent past decade, will we come to terms with that, doubt it, but it will just add to what the coming generations will face and their presents and future.
Thanks to the “This week in History” from the Peace Buttons site for the following:
Apr 23 2010
Paul Hardcastle has updated his original song “19” made twenty five years ago, just released a few days back, I’ll let him explain
19/04/10 The Story of 19
25 Years ago, I recorded the song ’19’. The idea came about whilst watching a documentary which highlighted the plight of young men and women who fought in Vietnam. “In World War 2 the average age of the combat soldier was 26, in Vietnam he was 19.” These words really made me stop and think.
When I first approached Chrysalis Records with the Demo of ’19’ most people there didn’t believe it would get any attention as there would be no interest from the media, and I quote “the public don’t want to hear a song about war.”
Two people thought otherwise,
Apr 14 2010
And a fight not worth fighting. The NYT reports that 42 Americans died there, and many more Afghan soldiers, and one would imagine, even more local people (but they don’t bother to even mention that). Why were Americans there?
“Occasionally a Taliban or Al Qaeda member was transiting through that location, but the Korangalis were by no means part of the insurgency,” he said. “Unfortunately, now they are because they were willing to accept any help to get us out.”
– NYT
So, if not Taliban or Al Qaeda, then who are these people we were killing?
Mar 30 2010
They call it missing in action, but those soldiers are missing at home, too, at every wedding and every graduation and every holiday.
Sometimes you meet an old man who has children and grandchildren now, and he never had a father. You meet amputees who had twenty good years ahead of them, playing softball or throwing a football around on Thanksgiving or pushing a stroller and lifting a baby ever so carefully out of it…
No war ever ends.
I remember Mr. Bush in the Press Club video, looking under a table for WMDs and all the elite reporters laughing, Karl Rove and Rumsfeld laughing and all the elite reporters laughing with them. Remember them!
There’s always broken souls and crazy men raging in bare rooms, and women who wake up screaming, and children alone in the dark, listening.
Names and dates of birth on tombstones and monuments, and a mother who remembers every birthday, soldiers buried in consecrated ground and others unburied in jungles and wastelands. This was the father who would have given the bride away. This was the brother who would have been the best man.
No war ever ends.
Feb 05 2010
The first thing to go out the window when an aggressive, warlike nation starts a war (other than the truth) is whatever culture understanding may have existed before.
For instance: what was the American pop culture 1960’s view of middle eastern culture? Belly dance and music, beautiful architecture, snake charming, funny hats. Even children’s story’s like Ali Baba.
Conversely, what was the 1960’s view of Vietnam? Sub human dirty gooks.
Today, there’s a piece in the NYT about the beautiful ancient art of Vietnam, which surely never would have occured in the war years:
see more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02…
Before we blew up all the minarets in Bagdad, it was necessary to remove them as objects of beauty, as expressions of humanity — we had to remove the ME from our cultural radar. How many American children today know about Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves? And how many worry about hook nosed terrorists?
To know a culture –even a Mickey Mouse pale imitation of the real thing — is to understand the humanity, that there are real children, real families there at the other end of the gun-sights; different from us, yes, but real nonetheless.
Jan 10 2010
In surfing the web early this morning, with in-box help, I was led to the following report, US assistance for Vietnamese AO victims ‘insufficient’, say Americans at the Vietnamese Online News: NhanDan on which you will find this link Justice for Vietnamese AO Victims which gives a page of links to other reports about Agent Orange and the Vietnamese casulties of, through these past decades.
From the first report link we get the following:
Dec 20 2009
There are many for if there is an end it doesn’t come for decades later for those invaded and occupied by others. The innocent are the ones who suffer the most and in greater numbers by the destruction and death from the moment of invasion and decades later with what’s left behind by those who are ordered to invade and then occupy in these Wars of Choice based on lies or for reasons of material worth a small country can add to a power that wants to control.
This is just one of many of the long running destructive remnants of our generations War of Choice, an extremely destructive Weapon of Mass Destruction, Dioxin, Agent Orange and the others used as we occupied a small country Vietnam for over a decade. Destructive not only to the Vietnamese Civilians, then and now, but also to many soldiers who served in country and elsewhere, where it was stored and packaged for shipment to Vietnam and stored at bases to be sprayed over the country at the whim of the commanders of war.
Dec 12 2009
Since today is my Father’s birthday, I thought I’d share a brief story about one of his experiences 40 years ago, and how learning about this experience contributed to my perspective today.
On November 15, 1969, my Father was in Washington DC for what is still the single largest anti-war protest in American history to date — the second Moratorium against the Vietnam War, in which it has been estimated that between 250,000 and 750,000 citizens arrived to demonstrate in the nation’s capital. As a lieutenant commander in the United States Public Health Service, my Father was volunteering on site at a medical van as part of an emergency response team. He helped treat several patients who were suffering from burns and injuries when police tear gassed a group of demonstrators who protested violently later on during the day. In fact, he even suffered eye burns of his own from the tear gas, simply by being in the vicinity where police and demonstrators clashed.
Dec 11 2009
A day for intense, personal irony.
The Nobel Prize winner explains how some wars are good and necessary. He’s not old enough to have ever been faced with being drafted. And he hasn’t served. He’s apparently not worried about things like quagmires. He wins an award for peace. The award it turns out was endowed by a maker of explosives who felt guilty about blowing things up. The prize winner explains to people interested in peace how war is sometimes necessary. He is not embarrassed to do so. And the sometimes when war is necessary, he informs us, is now. That does not embarrass him either. Or at least not very much. Has peace ever been so devalued?
Closer to home, well, to my home anyway, number 2 son is in Hanoi traveling and taking photographs. He’s a photographer. Forty years ago, I spent a lot of time and energy on trying not to get to Viet Nam. I could look at that big plane that flew weekly to Pleiku and plan on how I was not going to be on it. No matter what. Now he’s there. Because he wants to be. In of all places, Hanoi.
He sends me a photo of a fish dinner he ate for lunch in Hanoi yesterday. The fish was delicious but, he reports, very bony. What can I say? I tell him the best part of a whole fish cooked like this is the cheeks. You can use a spoon to get to them. How do I know that?
The Hanoi Fish
On docuDharma, a refuge from the craziness of a larger, group blog that is its “blogfather,” there are several essays on the recommended list at this very moment about that particular larger, group blog. And a bazillion comments, including some from me, on what its apparently self inflicted, fatal wounds might mean. And what is happening in that crazy corner of the Internet. A corner from which I am absent and hope to remain so. Except that I keep looking over my shoulder, rubbernecking at the crash. And wondering about the plane to Pleiku.
What can I say? Why is it that I think know I’ve seen these movies before?
Nov 21 2009
Cross-posted at DKos
Tonight on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal will focus on the LBJ telephone and office tapes created during the escalation in Vietnam, in a program called “Hearing History”.
Bill Moyers considers a President’s decision to escalate troop levels in a military conflict. Through LBJ’s taped phone conversations and his own remembrances, Bill Moyers looks at Johnson’s deliberations as he stepped up America’s role in Vietnam.
President Lyndon Johnson’s taped conversations are a treasure-trove for both historians and current policy makers. On the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers explores the tapes to review Johnson’s deliberations as he stepped up America’s role in Vietnam. Some of the names on the tape, such as Robert F. Kennedy, will be familiar to Americans young and old – others less so.
Nov 12 2009
Muslim veterans in Charlotte condemn Fort Hood shooting
The vets said they hope not all Muslims would be blamed for the actions of one man. The suspected shooter who killed 13 people is Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who is said to be a devout Muslim.
“I’m not a terrorist. I love America,” said Salahuddin Hasan, a veteran of the Vietnam War.
Hasan and the other vets gathered at the Masjid Ash-Shaheed mosque on West Sugar Creek Road in Charlotte where Khalil Akbar is the Imam…>>>>>Rest Found Here