>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > My position is that American servicemen & servicewomen (which
>> unfortunately sounds awfully like "comfort women") & veterans should
> > _think_ & reject Victor's Justice -- but not through special pleading.
>
>Vietnam vets have long done their deliberations. I think there's
>a tendency for vets to salvage some kind of honor and heroism from
>their efforts - a move that militates very much against what you
>want.
What about Hugh Thompson & other vets who actually resisted -- through combat refusal, combat avoidance, desertion, sabotage, fragging, preventing fellow soldiers or even superior officers from committing worst atrocities, participating in the anti-war movement, testifying in "Winter Soldier Investigation," etc.? Why do we not remember them as often as we should? There are honor & heroism in their actions. There are honor and heroism in draft resisters also.
>The passage of time is not kind to a preferred reconciliation
>of the cognitive dissonance experienced by the vets who served in
>Vietnam. Nor to those who didn't. And notions about "adequate
>justifications" are always open to debate. Your special pleading
>is Powell's airtight case. I hardly endorse his reasoning but I
>know that mindset is inpenetrable.
Memory & history are a contested terrain.
>On the other hand, you're using a blunt instrument. Isn't this
>playing in the fields of absolutism, if I understand you correctly.
>How do you avoid the moral posture of "no good soldiers come out of
>bad wars?"
There are many good soldiers -- see above.
>Isn't Max's question relevant? What about all those who served in
>the military during the cold war, especially those in FBM submarines,
>missile silos, B-52s all working toward a nuclear apocalypse.
>There was a conspiracy to obliterate life as we know it and the
>effort was unparalled as was the complicity. Am I a war criminal
>because I served on one of the boats that were little more than
>a floating missile platform?
You & Max may not have noticed, but the Nuremberg Charter applies to "civilians" as well. See the excerpt from Edoardo Greppi's article that I posted earlier.
To repeat, the point is to reject Victor's Justice, and reject it wholesale. If American soldiers & civilians were not guilty during the Vietnam War, neither are Iraquis, Yugoslavs, Rwandans, etc. In reality, however, the former go scot-free, while the latter get punished -- that's the problem of imperialism.
Yoshie