| On the Wings of a Dragon |
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| Afterthoughts - On the Whims of the Dragoons |
| Wed, September 29, 2010 9:55 am |
| Dear Friends: |
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When I had last been in Vietnam, in Saigon, way back in the fall of 1965,
when the U.S. was about to enter the war against the Vietminh in force, I have
to admit that I was in favor of it. I had liked the people I met in the south
and naively did not want to see them crushed by the nasty Communists from the
north.. As I heard the artillery thumping at night on the distant outskirts of
Saigon, I even thought of re-enlisting in the Army, resuming command of my
155mm gun crew and blasting the Cong.
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I was not aware then, or for many years after -- because our government
had not been truthful to us -- that the people of the entire land were far more
in favor of Ho Chi Minh, who had driven out the French colonialists and wanted
to make a unified, modern nation there, than with Ngo Dinh Diem, who the U.S.
supported and kept in power, an out-ot-touch, authoritarian, mandarin who
wanted to retain the old feudal society, despite his propaganda speeches about
the need for social justice.
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Now, after spending several days chatting with the people here in Hanoi --
good, friendly, peaceful, hard-working capitalists -- I wonder what was I thinking back then,
and I wonder more than ever about how we blundered into that senseless war...
How time, and the real facts, changes perceptions...
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I sit here at the computer in the lobby of my hotel, which is decorated
with five-foot high Hollywood posters for "Apocalypse Now", "Good Morning
Vietnam", "The Quiet American", "Full Metal Jacket", and "Hamburger Hill," and
I wonder....
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Yesterday I visited the Museum of the Vietnamese Revolution and the Museum
of Vietnamese History, both of which clearly demonstrate that the movement for
Vietnamese nationalism began around 1853, many decades before Communism
existed, and I wonder how we got it all so wrong...
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And today I visited Hoa Lo prison, the notorious "Hanoi Hilton," where
captured American fliers were incarcerated after having been shot down while
bombing North Vietnam, and I wonder...
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I have no brilliant analysis to offer, but it does seem, in retrospect,
that our foreign policy throughout the 60's and 70's was both warped and
short-sighted. It was warped by the wrenching events following World War II,
when our country had hoped to settle down after a hard-won, four-year, all-out
fight against totalitarianism and enjoy some well-deserved peace and
prosperity, but got instead the Cold War with Russia, the "loss" of China to
the Red Star, the unprovoked aggression on the Korean peninsula, and the
frightful rise of McCarthyism, all of which concentrated our attention on the
evils of Communism and made it virtually an act of treason to not be staunchly
anti-Communist and to not view every event through that Red-colored glass..
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This prevented us from realizing that the incipient revolutions then
brewing in French Indochina, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, and in other places
in Asia, including even the southern Philippines, were really less part of a
global Communist conspiracy to take over the continent and much more akin to
our own American revolution, the forceful expression of the pent-up longings of
long-colonized peoples to be free of abusive foreign control and able to
determine their own destinies.
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In the aftermath of the disturbing events of the 50's, and our decision in
1945-- which most likely would have been different had President Roosevelt
lived longer -- to help our beleaguered WWII allies re-assert control in their
Far Eastern colonies, our reaction against these indigenous revolutions was
close to inevitable. But just think of the million of lives that could have
been saved, and the billions of dollars of destruction avoided, and all the
poverty and disease and deprivation that could have been alleviated, if only
the leadership of our country could have been more understanding and sensitive
to, and supportive of, these legitimate, nationalistic, anti-colonial
aspirations, or listened to those experts in theState Department who were,
instead of branding them as "soft on Communism".
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(I don't think we are making a similar mistake by intervening with
military force in Iraq and Afghanistan, for surely Saddam Hussein and his
Baathists did not represent the will of the Iraqi people, not do the Taliban
speak for the majority of Afghanis. But we must be prepared to expect an
outcome that is less than perfect from our viewpoint, for this ole world is a
messy place.)
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We were not alone in our error in Asia. Japan, in the years leading to
WWII, paid only lip-service to these same anti-colonial stirrings, and
propagandized to these struggling nationalists the benefits of joining it in
the Greater East Asia Co--Prosperity Sphere. But instead of quietly helping
these peoples escape the harsh domination of their French, British, and Dutch
rulers, which would have won Japan tremendous favor and enabled her to garner
all the tin, rubber, petrol, and prestige she wanted, she fell prey to her
militarists and instead decided to use armed force to conquer these countries,
and employ brutality, rape, pillage, and mass murder to cower them, in the
process destroying millions of lives, setting herself back several generations,
and losing the opportunity to totally dominate Asia economically and
peacefully.
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If only Emperor Hirohito had had the wisdom and or courage to object when
Tojo began to take Japan on the road to military conquest, what a different
world it would be... One of the great "what ifs" of history...
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But I have to go. I've used up all three jars of red pizza pepper I
brought, all four bottles of sunscreen, all 200 packets of Equal, seven out of
eight paperbacks, and I am down to the last one of the 43 cheap Times-Square
T-shirts I started with 70 days ago. I also think I need a new prescription for
my glasses: This morning at breakfast the waitress brought me a bonus plate of
sliced pineapple, which I mistook for the scrambled eggs I had ordered and
liberally doused with pepper and ketchup, which, to save face, I then felt
obliged to eat. Surely time to head home.
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albert
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