Through information provided by Virgina, who works with Veterans for Peace, I have been examining more closely the on-going effect of Agent Orange and came across this recent testimony from the Guardian. Mark During the…
April 6 marks another anniversary in the U.S. selective remembrance of the Vietnam War: 35 years ago, at the last minute, the U.S. initiated Operation Babylift, out of Saigon. According to a story today in…
Review of Mark Philip Bradley, Vietnam At War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 1. In our history books we refer to “the Vietnam War,” which fixated American attention for a decade, if not more….
This was written in 2005 and I am sharing it here for friends who may be headed this weekend to Fort Benning. For some of us, the story of Father Roy Bourgeois is familiar. We…
Among themselves GIs were able to rationalize their own brutal behavior by dismissing their victims as mere “gooks” or “dinks.” “They were only VC,” they said as a woman was raped or an old man…
Under reviewDeborah Nelson, The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes—Inside the Army’s Secret Archive of Investigations (New York: Basic Books, 2008) and Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian, Collateral Damage:…
“Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose…
Imagine reaction in the United States to the following scenario: An ambitious, tough-talking Russian politician is vying for greater political power and influence. Twenty years ago, he served his country as a pilot in the…
A Reflection on Claude Anshin Thomas, At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace. Shambhala Publications, 2004. In one of the most fascinating pieces I’ve read on the U.S. war in Iraq, the litany-esque,…
This year there has been a lot of reflection and retrospection, 40 years after the pivotal 1968, which included the Tet Offensive, assassinations (King and Kennedy), student uprisings, and protest and police violence outside the…