Re: [sixties-l] Re: sixties-l-digest -Vietnam Memorial

From: Jerry West (record@island.net)
Date: Thu Jun 22 2000 - 06:28:35 CUT

  • Next message: William Mandel: "Re: [sixties-l] Re: sixties-l-Vietnam War Memorial"

    Jeffrey Blankfort wrote:

    There is a point where an individual must take some kind of
    responsibility. When an invader lands on your beaches or knocks in your
    door is not the same thing as traveling across the world to land on
    someone else's beaches, and knock down their doors, their homes and
    their entire villages. There is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING honorable
    about doing that or being in an military that is doing that no matter
    what nonsense you may believe or what you have been taught to believe.

    JW reply:

    Ergo the British and Americans that landed on Normandy beaches and
    Sicily beaches and other places were war criminals since they were
    invading someone else's country. I think that things are a little bit
    more complicated than your simplistic black and white universe, Jeff.

    JB wrote:

    There is something fundamentally wrong and criminal about going into a
    country that has not harmed you and shooting and killing the people of
    that country who are defending from you, no matter what you have been
    told about them. Ignorance is no excuse in our courts of law and it
    should be the no different for an invading army.

    JW reply:

    Ah, now you suppose that soldiers know the real reasons that they are
    fighting wars as opposed to the official reasons which I guess are never
    to be believed. And of course, if they have been mislead and sincerely
    believe in what they are doing it doesn't matter. Sounds kind of like
    something out of the Inquisition to me. As a matter of fact ignorance
    is an excuse in our courts of law. Diminished capacity and insanity can
    be classed as forms of ignorance in the legal sense for one, and the
    degree of a crime often depends upon one's intent at the time of
    committing it.

    JB wrote:

    Anyone who actively participated in the massacres such as My-Lai was
    commiting a war crime (and remember, the only reason we know about
    My-Lai was because one gutsy war photog took photos of the dead. No
    photos, no massacre, so we don't hear about the other villanies.

    JW reply:

    Any one participating in events such as My-Lai were in fact committing
    war crimes, and I think that they all go off too lightly. Even for the
    most ingnorant in our society there is no defence for shooting down
    unarmed people, even enemy soldiers. You may want to think that Vietnam
    was one My-Lai after another, Jeff, but it was not. I spent a lot of
    time in the field and never saw anything of the nature of My-Lai. In
    fact, the units that I worked with would have refused to do something
    like that. No doubt there were other atrocities, and as far as I am
    concerned I wish that they would come to light and those responsible be
    punished, as do soldiers like Col. David Hackworth and LtCol. Anthony
    Herbert who both lost careers because of their opposition to the war and
    to atrocities. However, I will not condemn young soldiers who did not
    commit My-Lai like atrocities but did risk their lives (some times for
    Vietnamese civilians) to do their duty, even though I disagree in the
    bigger picture about what they were being ordered to do.

    JB wrote:
     
    Anyone who dropped or participated in the dropping of napalm, white
    phosphorous or cluster bombs on civilians or soldiers is, in my mind, a
    war criminal.

    JW reply:

    So now attacking opposing soldiers is a war crime? I would have more
    respect for your position if you would just say that war is wrong and
    that we shouldn't kill other people. Your above statement makes it
    sound like there are some nice and acceptable ways to kill and maim.
    There are not, they are all atrocious.

    Now, a question. Where do you stand on the fire bombing of Tokyo and
    Dresden by the Allies, or the whole bombing campaign of WWII for that
    matter? Shall we start rounding up the serviving members from those
    campaigns and proceed with war crimes trials?

    JB wrote:

    I actually find myself gagging on your question "what constitutes an
    atrocity?" since I have seen children who have been victims of US-made,
    Israeli-dropped cluster bombs, in Israel, and children in Vietnam and
    Laos are still being blown to bits by ordinance dropped by those US war
    criminals more than three decades ago.

    JW reply:

    No doubt, and by Russian made ordnance, and Chinese, and French, and
    German, and on and on and on. People all over the world are being
    maimed and killed daily by all sorts of lethal toys and countries and
    factions on all sides of these conflicts are to blame for the
    proliferation. Around here we still have Japanese mines coming ashore
    from WWII.

    What exactly is your point? Are napalm and cluster bombs war crimes in
    themselves, not matter who uses them or why, or does the situation make
    their use a war crime?

    JB wrote:

    My definition of war crimes is not loose as I have previously indicated
    and I am sure that most veterans did not commit them, although many of
    those saw them committed.

    JW reply:

    Well, in your case maybe broad is a better term. I also question how
    many are the many as a percentage of the whole who saw them committed. I
    am of the opinion that if anyone saw something on the order of My-Lai
    and did not report it they are accessory to a war crime and should be
    rooted out and prosecuted too.

    JB wrote:

    But again, the discussion was whether Vietnam vets should be honored for
    their participation in that war, not how many of them committed criminal
    acts in that war. Honor should not be confused with heroism, which one
    sees in every war and on every side.

    JW reply:

    I think that they should be recognized for their sacrifice, which is not
    the same as honoring the war, and those who refused on principle and had
    the guts to go to prison for their beliefs should be recognized too, as
    should others in the anti-war movement who put themseleves at
    considerable risk and took their lumps for it. Those who hid out in the
    National Guard, student deferments and what not, they did not make any
    hard decisions nor give up much, for them, live and let live.

    JB wrote:

    The Marines had a history of ruthlessness in suppressing indigenous
    peoples from Mexico to the Phillipines to Nicargua to Panama, without
    even mentioning Vietnam, and the killing was not done by the officers,
    but by rank-and-file Marines, who were inflamed and imbued with racism
    and contempt against darker skinned peoples which has made this country,
    literally, what it is today. Yeah, I am condemning any rank-and-file
    Marine who did SS like work in those countries.

    JW reply:

    Just for your info, today's Marine, as well as the Vietnam Era one, is
    just as likely to be darker skinned as not.

    Now for your point. Those Marines you hate for being "inflamed and
    imbued with racism" came from a society that was likewise. Who are they
    to know any different? It was also a society where the Army was busily
    eliminating Native Americans in the west (having already done it in the
    east in the centuries before). It was also a society that inherited
    centuries of racism from almost every ethnic portion of its make-up. In
    fact we still have a world where Moslems oppress Jews and other
    infidels, Jews oppress Palestinians, Japanese look down on everyone who
    is not only not Japanese but not the right kind of Japanese, and the
    list could go on for pages. What is new? I will argue on your side if
    you want to take on US foreign policy over the last 200 years, but let's
    put the blame where it is due, at the top, not on the peons.

    JB wrote:

    This all reminds me of the demand by the US government that no American
    be tried for war crimes by an international war crimes tribunal. It is
    the highest form of imperial arrogance.

    JW reply:

    I agree. All war criminals, whether they be American, IRA, Palistinian
    or Isarali, Iranian or Iraqi, and so on belong in the docket at the
    Hague, including the architects of our terror bombing of Serbia and any
    others back through the decades that can be identified and evidence
    brought forward against.

    But, the question remains, which acts are war crimes and who qualifies
    as a war criminal and who doesn't. A true pacifist might tell you that
    all wars are crimes and it is just as criminal to resist as a defender
    as it is to be an oppressor.

    One could make a logical case for everyone who voted either Republican
    or Democrat as a war criminal since they were partly responsible for
    placing the people in power who odered these acts on their behalf.
     

    -- 
    Jerry West
    Editor/publisher/janitor
    ----------------------------------------------------
    THE RECORD
    On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast
    An independent, progressive regional publication
    http://www.island.net/~record/
    



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