Weekend Meditation
A recent conversation with Sharifa led me to look again at one of Said’s many penetrating studies… 1. In fact, there is no way that I know of apprehending the world from within American culture…
Category: Vietnam
To Be Radical Is Habitually To Do Things Which Society at Large Despises
1. I have seen the victims. And this sight of the mutilated dead has exerted such inward change upon me That the words of corrupt diplomacy appear to me more and more in their true…
“Agent Orange Has Given Me a Death Sentence”
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…
American Values/4
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…
Vietnam’s Wars
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….
An Appreciation of Roy Bourgeois
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…
“Gooks”
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…
The Mere Gook and Haji Rule
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:…
I Don’t Expect Obama Will Be Quoting This Any Time Soon
“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…
On War Heroes, Pilots, and Civilians (American Values/1)
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…