Remembrancers
Just Another Night at Café Illumination After the talk on Operation Cast LeadCarla Nguyen and I headed over to Café IlluminationWhere we began processing what we heard We sat outside as it was a balmy…
Tag: Martha Hess
Back from the Soulless Void
Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian, Collateral Damage: America’s War against Iraqi Civilians Campbell: But you have this: I remember my unit was coming along this elevated overpass. And this kid is in the trash pile below, pulls…
She Should Have Won the National Book Award
But then I think What do these awards mean They gotta serve somebody I’ve checked the libraries It’s her only book On this—or any— subject Why should the luminaries and guardians honor her Which is…
After Reading Levertov’s Poem on the 1972 Christmas Bombing
For Suzanne Renard & Andrew Wimmer Haven’t you had such a fantasy Sure, a different decade A different civilization being destroyed Different men The same crimes Getting away with mass murder Mind movies of…
An Unpayable Debt
Upon beginning Martha Hess’s book, Then the Americans Came: Voices from Vietnam, I was immediately reminded of my late wife Mev Puleo who embarked on a similar project at about the same time as Hess….
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…
“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…
Impossible Debt?
1. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps…