Joanna Sheldon wrote:
>
> Gordon has a point. After the initial street party on the night of the
> war's end, none of us felt there was much to crow about.
It took so long, and the formal end when it came was almost anti-climactic. But for a long time yet we're going to have to exult in small things.
> And we did feel tainted -- by association.
You shouldn't -- the Vietnamese did not feel that way about us. I have a button someplace around the house made from the metal of a shot-down B-52, given to my daughter in Cuba by the last surviving member of a bomb removal squad in Hanoi. One of the delightful tricks of the killing machine was a bomb with a delayed action, or something like that. Solidarity can't grow from guilt. You should read W.D. Ehrhart, _Going Back: An Ex-Marine Returns to Vietnam_. He has material for both your position and mine.
> I hadn't started paying taxes at that point,
> but just being a citizen of such a monstrous killing machine was enough to
> give me the horrors. Still is.
This kind of focus on personal guilt (or on personal credit for that matter) simply interferes with political work. Universal guilt is also universal innocence (or as they say, all cats are black in the night).
> One of the reasons I'm glad not to be
> living in the US is that I'm not contributing to its bloody coffers. At
> least that.
Pish. It simply doesn't work to equate state with people -- even when
the people are wired into the ideology of the oppressor. Such an
equation reflects the tyranny of the immediate present, a barrier to
preparing to respond to a changed present.
>
> I may be especially sensitive to the association because, having grown up
> in Asia, Europe and N. Africa, I've spent more time than I'd like to
> receiving scathing comments about the States, 99% of 'em justified.
Yes. There were Australians in both Korea and Vietnam. The French set the stage for the genocide in Ruanda. The ANC is cooperating with the IMF.
Carrol
>
> ...
>
> Funny moment that thought brings to mind: In September '83 I was crossing
> Checkpoint Charlie to visit friends in E. Berlin. Got to the E. German
> side and my little 2 CV was immediately swarmed by gruff German Shepherd
> dogs and scowling border control robots. One of the guards scoffed -- "Oh,
> American, eh. We've heard about your President Reagan." "Reagan? Can't
> stand the guy!" I said. The bot was transformed. Huge grin. "Hey!" he
> shouts to the next group of uniforms in my path. "This American hates
> Reagan! Let her through!" They didn't even search my car. ...Just as
> well, too.
>
> Joanna S
>
> > > At 23:49 31-05-01, Gordon wrote:
> > > >, a pervasive sense
> > > >of general dishonor and disgrace with which even the opponents
> > > >and critics of the war were tainted.
> > > >
> >
> >This is nonsense. Do you expect people in struggle to emulate St.
> >Francis -- who I have always found offensive anyhow. Or perhaps
> >Tennyson's Sir Galahad.
> >
> >This is politics for nursery school tales.
> >
> >Carrol
>
> -----
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