On Suffering

[Hopalong]

I found this review so moving the book itself must be amazing, and thought people here might be interested in it. (To read content on Salon for free, just click on the Enter Salon link top right--you can ignore the ad it opens with.) The accompanying Letters (link at end) are fascinating as well.

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/09/05/trachtenberg/index.html

And, I received the essay below from its author today. Feel free to copy and send to people if you like.
love,
Hops
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Mike Huckabees’s Theory of Original Desklessness
 
In Mike Huckabee’s speech Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, he told a story of an elementary school teacher who, at the start of the school year, took all the desks out of her classroom. When the students came in on the first day, they asked where the desks were. She said, “You will get the desks back when you earn them.” So, the students wondered how they would earn back the desks. “Will we get the desks back when we earn good grades?” one student asked. “Yes,” teacher said, I expect you to get good grades, but that is not how you will earn the desks back.” Another student said, “We will behave.” “Yes,” the teacher said, “You will behave in my classroom, but that is not how you will earn the desks.” Different classes came to her room that day, and the desks remained absent . Word traveled around the school about the missing desks, and the students thought the teacher gone crazy. Then at the end of the school day, veterans wearing the uniform of various past wars came in carrying the desks. They placed them down and arranged them neatly in rows.

The teacher said, “Now, I want you to listen to me, class. You do not have to earn your desk. It has already been earned by these men,” she said, pointing to the war veterans. You do not have to buy these desks, they have already been bought for you,” she said, “by these men.” The students listened closely. “And I don’t want you to ever forget who earned these desks for you,” she said and thanked the veterans.

Huckabee continued by describing how people like John McCain had earned our desks for us by his service in the Vietnam War and that the desk in the Oval Office would fit him nicely.
The Christian imagery in the desk story fascinated me.  I tried to follow the logic: the war veterans were like Christ. We were all without desks (salvation) until the soldiers bought them.  I thought of the Vietnam War in which McCain flew missions to drop bombs. That war was supposedly to prevent the dominoes from falling in Asia and then across the ocean after Vietnam “fell” to Communist China. But that didn’t happen. More than fifty thousand Americans died and about three million Vietnamese, for what reason? So when the dominoes fall, then I will lose my desk? The Chinese took it? I can hear my eight-year-old son trying to figure this out.  John McCain has my desk? If we vote for him, I can have my desk back?

I teach college English, and the night I was listening to Huckabee’s speech on the radio in my car, I had just finished teaching a World Literature class. We were studying the medieval period and the Crusades. The knights believed they served God by going to war for the church. The more they sacrificed in this life, shed blood and killed people if needed, the greater rewards in the afterlife. Killing and dying were honorable in service of the church.

Hearing Huckabee's powerful abstractions like America’s greatness, fighting for freedom and goodness against evil, against the evil people who want to “destroy our way of life,” I thought of th e Crusades. He added the Iraq War into the rhetorical mix. Because of John McCain’s character, he will not allow the country to “retreat” from Iraq before victory is established and security won, Huckabee said. Lost in this mix is the memory that the war started from lies and manipulations.  Thousands of American veterans are permanently brain-damaged or have lost arms or legs or eyes. This war has caused fewer deaths than Vietnam because the equipment is better. What would have killed soldiers in Vietnam now permanently disfigures them.

More than 4000 Americans have died and over a million Iraqis. I want to say for nothing, but I believe that no life is for nothing; every death matters. Iraqis and Americans who have died had families, homes, schools, desks, cars, jobs – people who loved them and dreams for the future. Their lives were something, but justifying their deaths for a noble cause seems impossible. And yet, we still try. They died for “the cause of freedom” or “to defend our way of life” or so our children could have desks.
But how did decimating Iraq fight “terrorism” or avenge the 9/11 attacks? And is vengeance a noble cause?  My son came home from school one day and said he had heard that we were at war in Iraq “so we could go to school.” I imagined that tablet of rhetoric that someone had passed him going down his throat whole.

I heard the thousands of people at the RNC cheer and chant, “USA,” “USA,” as though they were at a sporting event. The phrase “the greatest country in the world” swept over me. They believe. I saw the seduction of this belief. Tuesday night, Laura Bush said the “angry left” would not sway the resolve of rock hard John McCain.  Was I the “angry left”? I remembered the ways I heard my friends refer to Republicans like they were so incomprehensibly other, as though they had something like a genetic defect.  But they aren’t, and they don’t. They are my students; they our co-workers and neighbors. They are fellow church members and preschool parents.

Because I know John McCain is popular and may win this election, I decided to listen to the RNC this week like an anthropologist – to observe and learn – and because I have become disillusioned with both Democrats and the Republicans dur ing these years of war and national trauma. I have now heard the John McCain story several times and am struck by its myth-making power but also troubled by its lack of difficult context. Both Democrats and Republicans give rhetorical nods to “admiring his service.” He suffered long brutal treatment and disfiguring wounds in a war that most people generally agree now was also based on lies and manipulations . This is tragic and horrible.  But people still create the reasons and the cause, and they still believe – the greatest country in the world, defenders of our way of life, the United States will prevail over the axis of evil, we will win the global “War on Terror.” We will have desks and schools and all things good and true and right, and the brave men and women “who wear the uniform of the United States” will buy those desks with their lives, if necessary.

One of my students in class said this presidential election troubled her because, after 9/11 and the Iraq War lies, “Who can you believe?” she asked.   “What can we believe now?” Other students shared her bewilderment, sadness, and disgust. Then on the drive home, I heard those thousands of people at the RNC cheering, laughing at the shared jokes, chanting with optimism at the spee ches. I’m seeing lots more McCain bumper stickers in town. John McCain may win.

McCain may win because looking into a shocking abyss of millions dying in wars the U.S waged in Vietnam and Iraq, for no good reason, is too painful to bear. Acknowledging the crushing crises of trust we have endured may be too daunting, loss of trust in our myths and  government officials, those supposed representatives of ours who led us into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost trillions of dollars. The myths of the great liberators, the Crusaders on the side of good and right and God, the warriors who buy the desks, the saviors, who sacrifice for the afterlife, these myths may be stronger than ever now because there is so much more at stake, so much more damage to face if they are not true -- if children, Iraqi and American and Afghan and Iranian and Palestinian and Jewish and Vietnamese, should have desks and supplies, clean water and electricity – no matter what -- in safe schools out of war zones.

To defend against the horror of remembering that our government has tortured people, held hundreds without charge, largely caused the current situation in Iraq where many families s till don’t have clean water and electricity to cool their homes in one of the hottest places on earth, millions have lost homes, and Afghan children die from American bombs, many may clutch these American myths even tighter. What would it mean for our “way of life” if we didn’t? What new stories of courage might we write?

love,
Hops

[teartracks]

All of Huckabee's speech.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/03/raw-data-remarks-by-mike-huckabee/

tt

[mudpuppy]

 

More than fifty thousand Americans died and about three million Vietnamese, for what reason?

The reason was the invasion of the sovereign country of South Viet Nam by the communist dictatorship of North Viet Nam.

That war was supposedly to prevent the dominoes from falling in Asia and then across the ocean after Vietnam “fell” to Communist China. But that didn’t happen.

First, the author is an ignoramus because we were never fighting China except in a very tiny way, if at all, in Viet Nam, but rather the Soviet Union. Viet Nam and China despise each other and fought a war in 1979 after we had left.
Second, try saying 'but that didn't happen' to the two million dead Cambodians and the millions of Laotians still living under a brutal dictatorship. Tell it to the millions of Laotian and Viet Namese boat people. Tell it to the millions of Afghans who were killed and maimed by the Soviets as a result of our loss in and betrayal of Viet Nam. Tell it to the hundreds of thousands of Africans killed and maimed in civil wars fomented by the Soviets and Cuba after we cut and ran in Viet Nam. The dominoes may not have fallen in whatever comfortable little neighborhood the author lives in, but for millions of people around the world they most assuredly did fall and they fell right on top of them.
 But thanks to millions of men and women who didn't listen to people like this idiot and who put on the uniform and stopped the Soviets and their disgusting allies like Castro in their tracks, this knothead is able to sit in his comfortable little neighborhood and spit on the sacrifices they made on his behalf.
  The hard fact is imbecilic idealism like this can only be comfortably indulged in by the ingrates who practice it as long as there are men and women who are probably not nearly domesticated enough for this person to allow into his house and whose boots he is not fit to clean, but whom are willing to go out and face the murderers and dictators of the world so that he can demean their sacrifice and honor.
 Our school desks and our homes and our liberty were earned by the men and women who have sacrificed to keep us safe from the enemies of our allies and our country. My father and my uncles gave up years of their lives in WWll saving the world. Friends of mine gave up years of their lives in Viet Nam and Korea and Iraq keeping us safe from people whose lives are dedicated to destroying us. Some gave up more than just years.
And please don't tell me this isn't disrespectful to the actual vets. Ask one, he'll let you know. Ask me. I'm one.


mud

[teartracks]

Hi Mud,

My father and my uncles gave up years of their lives in WWll saving the world. Friends of mine gave up years of their lives in Viet Nam and Korea and Iraq keeping us safe from people whose lives are dedicated to destroying us. Some gave up more than just years.
And please don't tell me this isn't disrespectful to the actual vets. Ask one, he'll let you know. Ask me. I'm one.

Thank you for your sacrifice.

My grandparents  had five children in WWII at once.  My aunt wore a Hobby Hat in the WACS.  Ask them...

tt

[Hopalong]

this knothead is able to sit in his comfortable little neighborhood and spit on the sacrifices they made on his behalf.
  The hard fact is imbecilic idealism like this can only be comfortably indulged in by the ingrates who practice it as long as there are men and women who are probably not nearly domesticated enough for this person to allow into his house and whose boots he is not fit to clean

Hi Mud.
Sorry this roused your ire.

My "knothead" friend is the daughter of a Viet Nam vet and she is passionately committed to veterans. She is immersed in peace work and tutors at a prison and although she is a poet and not a solider, I don't think she's an imbecile...

I know it's easy for veterans to feel unappreciated. I don't think that's where she's coming from.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

This tiny excerpt from a longer article in the distinguished periodical Foreign Affairs explains the China connection to the US involvement in Vietnam.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/19950501fareviewessay5044/george-c-herring/the-wrong-kind-of-loyalty-mcnamara-s-apology-for-vietnam.html

McNamara recalls a dramatic encounter in which Jackie Kennedy literally beat his chest and demanded that he "do something to stop the slaughter."

The secretary of defense was a key figure in decisions to escalate the war between 1961 and 1965, and he readily concedes that the assumptions upon which he and his colleagues acted were badly flawed. They approached Vietnam, he recalls, with "sparse knowledge, scant experience and simplistic assumptions." Victims of their own "innocence and confidence," they foolishly viewed communism as monolithic, knew nothing about Indochina, and were "simple?minded" regarding the historical relationship between China and Vietnam.


"In the lands of the blind, one?eyed men are king," said President Eisenhower in 1954, explaining his decision, against the recommendations of many of his expert advisers, to aid South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy fell victim to the same delusion, as did Johnson.

No political figure, especially a Democrat, was prepared to risk the fate that had befallen Harry Truman and Dean Acheson for the loss of China. Despite his doubts, Kennedy refused even to consider withdrawal from Vietnam until he had been safely reelected. Johnson repeatedly insisted that he was not going to be the president to see Vietnam go the way of China.



http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/11/interviews/mcnamara/

Robert McNamara was interviewed for this episode of COLD WAR in June 1996.

On why the United States became involved in Vietnam:
[The domino theory] was the primary factor motivating the actions of both the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations, without any qualification. It was put forward by President Eisenhower in 1954, very succinctly: If the West loses control of Vietnam, the security of the West will be in danger. "The dominoes will fall," in Eisenhower's words.


I [McNamara] was determined -- to avoid the risks that would follow from applying unlimited military force [on North Vietnam]. In addition to a terrible loss of life that would have resulted from that, there was ... a risk of overt confrontation between the U.S. and China and the Soviet Union, overt military confrontation, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.

On the war in general:
But today, General Westmoreland, who was the commander in Vietnam at the time, says that while at the time he felt he was constrained, he now understands that that was an effort by the president to prevent the U.S. coming into open military conflict with China and the Soviet Union.

Conclusion:
We'll have lost 160 million people, killed by conflict. Is that what we want in the 21st century? I don't think so. If we want to avoid it, we have to learn from our mistakes in this century. Vietnam was one of those.

[debkor]

Hi Mud,

I remember when I was little that my father still would jump out of bed and take shelter when heard a loud bang...eventually it went away, I think.

I remember military officials and priest pulling up in front of an apartment building..and everyones breath stopping to see where they would go..hearing screams out windows when they finally arrived at the right apartment..people fainting...and parents..well one in particular..lost..for a lifetime.. Never the same...I don't think I was either...I never had a brother and he was as close as it got...and his house is the one they visited...he was gone..he was coming home..helicopter ambushed...they were all lost. And I didn't understand..I went though gifts sent, letters sent, things they wanted me to have..screams, crying..and people..changed forever..right before my eyes in a heart beat..like an alien came and snatched their very lives besides there son gone...They were walking dead people...as I was skipping rope...all this took place.

I also remember how the vets were spit on, disgraced when they came home...never welcomed...had a hard time coming home..and when did we add them into the parade...Desert Storm.? 

I remember doing dance shows for the Vets Hosp..I was about 11 or 12 and thought  WOW..they are so young...I thought it would be old guys like my dad..(who wasn't that old)...so what does that tell you how young they were.

I remember about 13 when the American Flag shirts were hot...about as hot as my father was over the burning of Flags....I didn't understand when he went Bonkers to see me wearing this....disrespect....I didn't understand...and in the house I went crying...but had to take it off.  I eventually wore it...he chilled out..  But I got it..I got where he was coming from...but not at his level..I could not..I didn't experience any war other then reading or watching it....to be there..would have been different...

I think often on my children being of Age to have to go to war if called upon.and I cringe..and I don't want that to happen..yet..I know that if so..they would have to serve their country..scared to death a proud parent..but knowing..that I am no different then any other parent who does not want  them to go ..God Forbid..lose a child but we must defend..and mine would have to be one of them..if so called upon...

I have a friend who still suffers and is 61 with PTSD...his tank hit a mine field..he buried many of friends...I have another who had flash backs..

Didn't they do a study on the homeless and found  many of them were Viet Nam Vets?...

And you know what..Many veterans who came home with their lives from Viet Nam... Desert Storm were taken on Sept 11, WTC terrorist attack.. ..only this time they did not get to come home...Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters..all going to work that day...make a living.....everyday normal day..sunny out..Nice day..I remember....and what.....an attack on our country..  And the enlistment was incredible...That famous football player enlisted..lost his life.. ..  At my D's graduation...so many students called up named..what service they had enlisted into..

I appreciate Mud.

Love
Deb

[gjazz]

My response to that speech, when listening to it, was very similar to Hopalong's, though I didn't explore my reaction or thoughts as she has here.  Thanks for the heads-up on the book, which sounds very interesting.

[mudpuppy]

"In the lands of the blind, one?eyed men are king," said President Eisenhower in 1954, explaining his decision, against the recommendations of many of his expert advisers, to aid South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem. Kennedy fell victim to the same delusion, as did Johnson.

The author is inaccurate. Kennedy actually supported a coup by the South Viet Nam military against the elected government of Diem (who was murdered the next day while under arrest).

I [McNamara] was determined -- to avoid the risks that would follow from applying unlimited military force [on North Vietnam].

Which is precisely why we lost and the deaths of 58,000 Americans was for nothing. We now know from the release of documents after the Soviet Union fell that McNamara's fears of the war expanding if we used appropriate force were groundless. McNamara is a man without shame. He didn't have the integrity to oppose the war at the time, nor did he have the integrity to denounce it until it was safe and fashionable. He only responded to the expediency to do what his superors wanted and then washed his hands of the consequences. Many honorable people either opposed or supported the war. he is not one of them.

We'll have lost 160 million people, killed by conflict.

Close to 200 million innocent civilians were murdered by their own governments in the 20th Century, primarily because people who could have prevented it vacillated until it was too late. The fear of fighting small, winnable wars against Lenin and Mao and Hitler prior to their consolidation of power not only gave us WWll and Korea and Viet Nam and Afghanistan etc, it gave us the Gulag and the boat people and the killing fields of Cambodia and the Great Leap forward and the Cultural Revolution. There are evil men in the world who wish to conquer it and there always will be. Either we stop them early in small ways or we hold candlelit vigils singing Peter Paul and Mary songs until we are forced to stop them with millions of lives. Consistently choosing the latter is primarily why 160 million died in wars and another 200 million were simply murdered in the last century. WWl shows us it is very hard to stop all wars as it was difficult to see just how large it would be and it had complex roots, but the difficult cases just emphasize how important it is to act in the easily anticipated and containable situations.

Thanks for what you said Debkor and TT. Just to emphasize, I served in peace time and make zero comparison to what I did and those who served in combat.

Hops,

Sorry for the intemperate remarks about your friend. My point is she can only be a poet because there are soldiers. I don't believe it is possible to honor soldiers, especially those KIA or wounded by telling them their cause was morally reprehensible.

mud

[Hopalong]

That's okay, Mud. You ain't heavy, you my brudda.

I honestly disagree though. But I think it's just semantics. Seriously. Here's a tour of my brain (I know, you were hoping  ):

Because I'm a peacenik old Quaker-influenced crone, I disbelieve in war, period. So...the way my brain works with the language is, I read what you said about dishonoring them, and my brain sez to me:

The soldiers' cause is service, love of country, and obedience to orders.

The governments' cause was immoral.

So...I don't connect the soldiers themselves to a government's bankrupt (imo) solution to conflict or self-interest, which is death.

Some wars must probably be fought. It's a horrible paradox but I accept that it's real.

Absolutism on anything won't sit well with me. But I still believe war is always wrong. So there's a contradiction in my thinking. I accept that too. It's like, I don't claim that logic answers the question.

Kind of like my agnosticism. Comes from the same kind of process, for me.

Hope some of that made a shred of sense.

hugs,
Hops

[gjazz]

For me this is one of the hardest questions ever.  Is it not better to fight a war than accept an injustice?  Is it not true that evil happens when good people do nothing?  Ultimately, how should outside countries respond in the face of a foreign tyrant or a government that is (for instance) committing genocide?  I do believe the best and most lasting change must come from within.  I do believe wars should not be fought for economic reasons and only as a last resort.   But when to step in, and when to stand aside?