THE NAM
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I was in Brooklyn last night but my mind was in Vietnam and on Vietnam. It’s funny how formative experiences and passions never leave you and, as a special anniversary approaches, my memory was working overtime as I tried to explain to a table of younger people what the war meant for my generation and what it did to our country. I teared up at points flashing back to that era.

I tried to explain that many of us cheered the war’s end 30 years ago, an anniversary that the Vietnamese will commemorate tomorrow with celebrations all over their country. Meanwhile, the significance is likely to be lost on many Americans, who may have heard about the war but know so little about it because it is not taught in most of our schools or discussed in our media.

You can’t really be surprised that the cruel and bloody conflict which many Americans who lived through and didn’t really get, would be forgotten by successive generations. We are a country in denial, where amnesia fights memory. The Christian Science Monitor told us a story yesterday about the war’s “lingering effects:”

“Anybody younger than about 45 today had no direct connection to the Vietnam War — either as combatants, potential draftees, or protesters. Forty percent of Americans weren’t even born yet when the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy in what was then Saigon.

“Still, many Americans in their 30s or 40s (or even younger) still feel the war’s effects as children of one of the more than 58,000 US soldiers killed in Vietnam or of the thousands more vets diagnosed with ailments related to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange or with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/0428/p01s04-ussc.html

REPORT FROM HO CHI MINH CITY

The filmmaker Tiana, born in Vietnam but an American citizen, writes:

“30 YEARS OF PEACE CELEBRATIONS. WOW. BIGGER AND BETTER THAN HOLLYWOOD HOOPLA AND HANOI GOVT IS OUTDOING CANNES FILM FEST HERE IN HCMC.THE VIETNAMESE LOVE A PARTY, THEY DO VALENTINE’S BETTER THAN NEW YEAR AND THIS TAKES THE CAKE!

“I AM AT EPIC CTR AT CARAVELLE HOTEL FOR NEXT 4 DAYS BY THE OPERA HOUSE AMID THOUSANDS OF MOPEDS. THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE ARE AT AN ALL TIME HIGH. BEARDED AMERICANS, MOSTLY WAR VETERANS AND MEDIA WANDER AROUND LIKE IN A SURREAL DALI PAINTING WITH THEIR MOUTHS OPEN AT SCOPE OF OSCAR TYPE OUTDOOR SHOWS REHEARSING NIGHTLY AND OTHER CULTURE AND HEROIC RE-ENACTMENTS PLANNED ALL OVER VN FOR 4 DAYS.

THE PEOPLE JUST HAVE ONE QUESTION: WHY DO WE AMERICANS AS A NATION CONTINUE TO REFUSE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONSEQUENCES OF AGENT ORANGE IN VIET NAM? THEIR CHILDREN BORN AFTER THE WAR IN THAT REGION TEST VERY HIGH IN TIOXIN…”

VIETNAM VETERAN

I am a Vietnam veteran, too, even though I didn’t fight in the war but against it. I did go there on a reporting assignment, and saw what were three Vietnams… the North; the “liberated areas” in the South; and Saigon, our “green zone” then, which was run by a corrupt government with a million soldiers, who provided a formidable force that believed it could hold on indefinitely. And so did its patrons in Washington.

You will see reports about the “fall of Saigon” this weekend, but that’s not the way the Vietnamese “insurgents” saw it. They saw it as the fall of Washington and its comprador neo-colonial project. They saw it as the only road to peace. They saw it as a triumph of resistance, or “people’s war” and “revolutionary power.” Their directives to their own troops included instruction not to pillage or loot — “not to lay hands on even a needle or a thread of the people.” They lost millions as they fought to reunify their country in the name of Ho Chi Minh, whose earlier appeal, for U.S. support at the end of World War II, been rebuffed. So many died. Too many Vietnamese. Too many Americans. It seemed to go on forever.

HISTORY

Back then, I published an article in a Boston paper and in a pamphlet. “There will be many post mortems to come on how and why the U.S. ‘lost’ Indochina. It might be more interesting to think about how the people won Indochina, and how the anti-war movement helped them do it.”

The historian Howard Zinn described this, and just what happened 30 years ago this week, in his must-read (if you haven’t) book, “Peoples’ History of the United States:”

“The United States withdrew its forces, continuing to give aid to the Saigon government, but when the North Vietnamese launched at tacks in early 1975 against the major cities in South Vietnam, the government collapsed. In late April 1975, North Vietnamese troops entered Saigon. The American embassy staff fled, along with many Vietnamese who feared Communist rule, and the long war in Vietnam was over. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City, and both parts of Vietnam were unified as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

“Traditional history portrays the ends of wars as coming from the initiatives of leaders –negotiations in Paris or Brussels or Geneva or Versailles — just as it often finds the coming of war a response to the demand of ‘the people.’ The Vietnam war gave clear evidence that at least for that war (making one wonder about the others) the political leaders were the last to take steps to end the war — ‘the people’ were far ahead. The President was always far behind. The Supreme Court silently turned away from cases challenging the Constitutionality of the war. Congress was years behind public opinion.”

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Vietnam_PeoplesHx.html

MEDIA ON THE MIND

I recall that media was on my mind then, too, as I wrote: “The American press was never much help in our efforts to find out more about those remarkable Vietnamese people who have now managed to out-organize, out-fight and defeat a succession of U.S.-backed regimes, they did so with disdain, distortion and denigration.”

I won’t apologize for what I felt and wrote then. I was naïve about what would happen next, or how the U.S. would remain so hostile to Vietnam for so long. I didn’t like how some of the Vietnamese leaders imposed their will at war’s end, or the way many people on the wrong side were “punished” (brutalized) in “re-education camps” and forced to flee as boat people. Human rights were violated but, after all the crimes and killing, we were not in any position to lecture the Vietnamese leaders. Look at out own history: how the Tories who backed the British had their lands confiscated and were driven out of the country at the end of our Revolution. The feared “blood bath”in Vietnam was not on the scale that was predicted, and it was the Vietnamese who later ended the far more despotic Khmer Rouge rule next door in Cambodia.

THE POST-WAR WAR

I certainly also was also sensitive to what Vietnam veterans went through and are still going through. Just visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial — The Wall — in Washington. We saw how the emotions of the war can still be manipulated all these years later when John Kerry ran for office. The Vietnam war is still with us in the post-war psychosis that affects our culture and infects many who are living with its ghosts.

But let’s not forget the soldiers and activists who fought against the war and often went to jail for their resistance. Zinn remembers Ron Kovic:

“One of those who stayed, fought, but then turned against the war was Ron Kovic. His father worked in a supermarket on Long Island. In 1963, at the age of seventeen, he enlisted in the marines. Two years later, in Vietnam, at the age of nineteen, his spine was shattered by shellfire. Paralyzed from the waist down, he was put in a wheelchair. Back in the States, he observed the brutal treatment of wounded veterans in the veterans’ hospitals, thought more and more about the war, and joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He tells a story of being arrested in ‘Born on the Fourth of July’:

“‘They help me back into the chair and take me to another part of the prison building to be booked. “What’s your name?” the officer behind the desk says.

“‘”Ron Kovic,” I say. “Occupation, Vietnam veteran against the war.”

“‘”What?” he says sarcastically, looking down at me.

“‘”I’m a Vietnam veteran against the war,” I almost shout back.

“‘”You should have died over there,” he says. He turns to his assistant. “I’d like to take this guy and throw him off the roof.”

“‘They fingerprint me and take my picture and put me in a cell. I have begun to wet my pants like a little baby. The tube has slipped out during my examination by the doctor. I try to fall asleep but even though I am exhausted, the anger is alive in me like a huge hot stone in my chest. I lean my head up against the wall and listen to the toilets flush again and again.’

“Kovic and the other veterans drove to Miami to the Republican National Convention in 1972, went into the Convention Hall, wheeled themselves down the aisles, and as Nixon began his acceptance speech shouted, ‘Stop the bombing! Stop the war!” Delegates cursed them: ‘Traitor!’ and Secret Service men hustled them out of the hall.”

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn/Vietnam_PeoplesHx.html

VIETNAM/IRAQ

We can’t forget Vietnam. We can’t let the same thing happen again.

The Christian Science Monitor again:

“While the war in Iraq has not seen nearly the level of protests that Vietnam did, public support remains tenuous. Asked if ‘it was worth going to war in Iraq,’ the latest Gallup poll finds 45 percent saying ‘yes’ and 53 percent answering ‘no.’ Put another way, 46 percent of those polled say sending U.S. troops to Iraq was ‘a mistake.’

“What does this bode for President Bush? He’s now running at his lowest approval rate (45 percent) yet, according to Gallup. But that’s still higher than the low points of most postwar presidents, and significantly higher than Harry Truman’s low point during the Korean War (23 percent) or Lyndon Johnson’s low point during Vietnam (35 percent).

“On April 30, 1975, U.S. involvement in what Vietnamese called ‘the American War’ ended symbolically when that last helicopter departed what now is called Ho Chi Minh City, panicked Vietnamese dangling from the skids. In an historical coincidence, it was exactly 30 years before that (April 30, 1945), that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, ending World War II in Europe.

“Such linking of wars and generations can be highly personal for many Americans.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0428/p01s04-ussc.html

“HIGHLY PERSONAL,” YOU BET.

I won’t be surprised if the same “payback” will not stalk Iraq or our troops there when they come home, or “back to the world,” as they eventually will. We who don’t learn from the past are condemned to relive it, or so the saying goes,

As I have been reporting, I am speaking at special commemorative program on these issues on Saturday at 5 PM in Tribeca’s Vietcafé and Gallery Viet Nam, which is running a “remember the past and envision the future” event: “A tribute to turn an era of grief into a powerful action for peace.” There will be films shown, including WMD, and a photo exhibit and more. (The event starts tonight at 6 PM; 345 Greenwich Street, Tribeca. Films screen Saturday at 3 PM and 5 PM.

HEARTS AND MINDS

The last line in that article I wrote so many years ago was about an influential film called “Hearts and Minds” that won an Oscar and inspired many, including myself, into the passion. “In a recent interview,” I wrote, “the producer of ‘Hearts and Minds’ said he made the film because he was concerned about the liberation of America.”

Ironically, I heard from that producer, actually the director, Peter Davis, last night. He sent along a piece which is up on TheNation.com website. He was thinking about Vietnam, too. And about an American he met there and is still in touch with:

“Mike Sulsona, a former Marine, called the other day, just back from Vietnam for the first time since the war. He was excited because he surprised himself by liking it there this time and because he was pleased with the research he did for a play he wants to write about an Army tank driver. The tank driver, whom Mike Sulsona did not know, was caught in an ambush between Kontum and Dak To just before the Tet offensive of 1968.

“Mike himself was in a Tet battle three years later, but it was the 1968 Tet that interested him now. Tet proved the Viet Cong could attack anytime anywhere. Tet gave the Viet Cong control of the U. S. Embassy in Saigon for a few precious hours. Tet, like a flash of lightning, illuminated the American peace movement and brought on demonstrations in city streets and on many college campuses. Tet drove Lyndon Johnson from the White House. Tet, paradoxically, was also a Viet Cong failure because their fighters were soon routed and because the attack did not spur the spontaneous uprising against the South Vietnamese government and the Americans that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had hoped for. It took them seven more years to win the war.

“Whether it is viewed as a country, an era, or a war, Vietnam does not engage Mike Sulsona politically, only personally. Was it a war for independence, a civil war, a Communist aggression, an insurrection against French colonialism in the first part and American imperialism in the second? Sulsona, originally a boy from Brooklyn and now a burly family man living on Staten Island, still isn’t sure which it was and doesn’t much care. What he does know is that, as the thirtieth anniversary of the war’s end is marked - celebrated in Vietnam, briefly noted here in the losing country - the Vietnamese people embraced him. Like most of the more than 200,000 American visitors each year, he found the Vietnamese genuinely friendly and determined to emulate the United States economically if not politically.”

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050509&s=davis

I also heard from a colleague of Walter Cronkite, the news anchor who went to Vietnam and reported that the war could not be won. When that happened, aides told President Lyndon Johnson that if he had lost Cronkite, he had lost the country. What is Cronkite doing now? He will be moderating a panel on nuclear proliferation at the UN next week. He is still worried about the dangers of war and trying to do something about it. (See note below.)

IN TODAY’S NEWS

Putin Urges U.S. to Draw Up a Withdrawal Calendar

Broken Chain Of Command
by Perry Jefferies, TomPaine.com

An Iraq veteran explains how Abu Ghraib was symptomatic of the wide-ranging problems in the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
http://www.tompaine.com/20050428/articles/broken_chain_of_command.php

Pentagon releases photos of flag-draped coffins

KRON in San Francisco reports:

“PENTAGON — Under pressure from advocates of open-government, the Pentagon is releasing hundreds of photos of flag-draped coffins of American soldiers. The military had resisted releasing such images, and has barred news coverage of the arrival of soldiers’ coffins from Iraq.

“It says it is enforcing a 1991 policy aimed at protecting the privacy of the soldiers’ families. Critics contend it’s trying to hide the human cost of the war.

“The photos were released without context, so it’s unclear where and when most were taken.

“They were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Ralph Begleiter (BEHG’-ly-tur), a former C-N-N correspondent who now teaches at the University of Delaware.”

http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=3275753&nav=5D7lZF28

Note that it is Ralph, now a journalism professor, who is suing as an individual, not his former employer.