Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Monday, October 30, 2023
Vietnam, Lessons learned,
1
Back in 1969, just as I was
finishing my internship, I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam. My experience
there made a painful and indelible impression on me. It exposed me to the
horrors of war, the death, suffering and destruction it causes, both immediate
and lasting. For years I was unable to talk about Vietnam without becoming
upset. As our collective memory of that debacle has faded, we seem as a
society, as a world, as individuals to keep making the same mistakes. Someone
needs to remind us of the lessons we should have learned from Vietnam.
For years I’ve avoided
talking or even thinking about Vietnam, but as I get older – I’m 81 now – I
feel like I have to say something, to try and articulate some of what I’ve
experienced, and felt, and learned – hopefully.
My wife Sarah gets upset when
she sees how much attention is paid to the Ukraine and Israeli-Hamas wars, and
how little to the other conflicts / crises in the world: Haiti, Congo, Syria,
Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, just to name a few. It reminds me of how I felt
watching the news during my tour in Vietnam. Just as now, there were conflicts all
over the world, Israel, Ireland, Africa, and it seemed like no one cared. Many
of the younger people were “Hippies,” into finding different kinds of pleasure:
free love, drugs. “If it feels good, do it,” was their slogan. They
demonstrated over our involvement in Vietnam, but it was because they thought
it was a waste. We were fighting and dying for them, and they were either
apathetic, or joining the resistance. What upset me instead was how we were
destroying their country and killing a generation of Vietnamese.
What Sarah pointed out to me
was that we (as a society) care more about people who look like us – white, middle
class, and preferably able to speak English. It’s a form of racism. So when
there’s a genocide going on in Rwanda, or in Vietnam, we don’t care as much
about the people there – in, as our former president so eloquently called them,
the S-hole countries.
Our ability to empathize is
greater towards people with more things in common with us.