A Journalist/1
1. The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. –Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 2. She had first traveled to Vietnam in 1955, glad to see that…
Category: Vietnam
A Prayer
1. The following prayer was composed by Dr. Gordon Livingston, who graduated from West Point and did three tours in Vietnam as a surgeon with the 11th Armored Calvary Regiment. At a 1968 ceremony for…
Bodhisattva Training
To me, the Five Mindfulness Trainings are the substance of a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is a living being animated by the strong desire to help awaken other people, relieve their suffering, and bring them happiness….
A Poem by Dorothee Sölle: hospital in haiphong
doan is three years old in his head a fragment of that handy bomb that leaves buildings undamaged never puts a factory out of production doesn’t even harm bridges
Coming to Clarity during the Vietnam War
At first I would not believe that our allies, our liberators, the Americans, would plan and carry out programs which were total annihilation sweeps. I felt as did so many good Germans during the Nazi…
On Seeing and Solidarity: Jimmy Carter, Palestine, Vietnam
1. In his 2007 book Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had this to say: “When we arrived there in January 1996, it was obvious that the Israelis had almost complete control…
The American Mind/The Asian Mind
1. “I don’t really see that we’re the bad boy.” “Why should I feel responsible?” “But the thing which I think I will remember about Vietnam when I am a hundred years old and will…
The Asian Mind/The American Mind
1. The following remarks are from Captain Ted Shipman, a U.S. intelligence officer in South Vietnam: “You see, they do have some–well, methods and practices that we are not accustomed to, that we wouldn’t use…
“Why did the Americans come here to destroy everything?”
1. In War without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam, German historian Bernd Greiner explains his focus: “At the heart of this book are the wartime atrocities and war crimes committed by the ground troops. To…
A Brief Consideration of Napalm
1. American Heritage Dictionary Napalm, incendiary material used in bombs and flame throwers. Developed during World War II, napalm is a mixture of gasoline (sometimes mixed with other petroleum fuels) and a thickening agent. The…