The G-D War...Again!
I was listening to the public radio program To The Best of Our Knowledge this past weekend. The program was called "Rethinking the Sixties" (you can listen to the program if you want at this location http://www.wpr.org/book/080824a.html.
It was, as usual, a thoughtfully produced program about certain aspects of the theme. And it really set me off to hear Tom Hayden rejustifying himself 40 years later. And there was another piece right after that on the My Lai Massacre. That one got me angry. (Well, okay, maybe Tom Hayden started it, but the second piece was no walk in the park either.)
It really annoys me that all the Vietnam War is remembered for are a few atrocities and the "fact" that we lost. I'll leave the won/lost debate for another time. I mean does anybody ever really win a war? In my opinion, we're still paying the price of winning WWII. (again, another topic for another time)
Yes, people, there were atrocities in Vietnam. There are atrocities in every war. In fact, I'll give you this fact to chew on: ALL WAR IS ATROCITY, period full stop. The whole damn thing about a war is atrocious. War is a war crime. There is no good war.
If you don't believe me, then go back and look closely at WWII. Here are a few random examples. When the Japanese Navy attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, they were so conscious of trying to avoid civilian casualties (not on the naval base itself) that they did not hit the fuel storage tanks that would have crippled the Navy's ability to respond to anything in the Pacific because they chose not to risk creating civilian casualties. (The off-base casualties that did occur came from American antiaircraft fire shells that fell back to explode in Honolulu.)
The US responded with unrestricted submarine warfare, in contravention of the Geneva Conventions and an act for which we justified fighting Germany in WWI. By any reasonable measure, we were more guilty of a war crime in that than the Japanese were in the attack at Pearl. And we followed it up with loads and loads of aircraft bombings of purely civilian targets in both the Pacifc and European theatres of WWII. War crimes all. Atrocities all.
But then what is done to a human body on the field of battle is an atrocity, too. All war is a crime, but we only prosecute the losers and the unlucky. The rest of us have to live with what we saw, heard, did, or even didn't do.
What I'm really tired of is hearing only from those who haven't been there and don't know what it's like to even be in the area but who think they have the right to judge the actions of others who were there.
Thanks for letting me vent. This whole business just riles me up so I can't hardly think, let alone write, sometimes.
Nothing is ever as simple as the willfully ignorant would have us believe.
It was, as usual, a thoughtfully produced program about certain aspects of the theme. And it really set me off to hear Tom Hayden rejustifying himself 40 years later. And there was another piece right after that on the My Lai Massacre. That one got me angry. (Well, okay, maybe Tom Hayden started it, but the second piece was no walk in the park either.)
It really annoys me that all the Vietnam War is remembered for are a few atrocities and the "fact" that we lost. I'll leave the won/lost debate for another time. I mean does anybody ever really win a war? In my opinion, we're still paying the price of winning WWII. (again, another topic for another time)
Yes, people, there were atrocities in Vietnam. There are atrocities in every war. In fact, I'll give you this fact to chew on: ALL WAR IS ATROCITY, period full stop. The whole damn thing about a war is atrocious. War is a war crime. There is no good war.
If you don't believe me, then go back and look closely at WWII. Here are a few random examples. When the Japanese Navy attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, they were so conscious of trying to avoid civilian casualties (not on the naval base itself) that they did not hit the fuel storage tanks that would have crippled the Navy's ability to respond to anything in the Pacific because they chose not to risk creating civilian casualties. (The off-base casualties that did occur came from American antiaircraft fire shells that fell back to explode in Honolulu.)
The US responded with unrestricted submarine warfare, in contravention of the Geneva Conventions and an act for which we justified fighting Germany in WWI. By any reasonable measure, we were more guilty of a war crime in that than the Japanese were in the attack at Pearl. And we followed it up with loads and loads of aircraft bombings of purely civilian targets in both the Pacifc and European theatres of WWII. War crimes all. Atrocities all.
But then what is done to a human body on the field of battle is an atrocity, too. All war is a crime, but we only prosecute the losers and the unlucky. The rest of us have to live with what we saw, heard, did, or even didn't do.
What I'm really tired of is hearing only from those who haven't been there and don't know what it's like to even be in the area but who think they have the right to judge the actions of others who were there.
Thanks for letting me vent. This whole business just riles me up so I can't hardly think, let alone write, sometimes.
Nothing is ever as simple as the willfully ignorant would have us believe.
posted by Tom | 6:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home