{"id":20728,"date":"2018-02-04T00:06:20","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T08:06:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=20728"},"modified":"2018-02-04T00:06:20","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T08:06:20","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-remembering-tet-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-remembering-tet-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: Remembering Tet Part Two."},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It won\u2019t help us to elect women to offices of power, if they turn around and vote for huge military budgets. This recently happened in the vote for the US National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, the largest \u201cdefense\u201d bill in history which passed 89-8 in the Senate.\u00a0 Of the 21 women senators voting (16 Democrats, 5 Republicans),\u00a0only one\u00a0<\/strong>Democrat woman voted against it. That means 15 Democrat women betrayed, and made insecure, women here and around the world. There are approximately 3.8 billion women in the world; 126 million in the U.S. For whom does our feminism stand?<\/em> By Leslie Dwyer\u00a0 www.design4peace.com\/women-live\/<\/a><\/p>\n

www.facebook.com\/marines\/videos\/10154971127645194\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Critical<\/p>\n

Volume 9 Number 2 February 1, 2018 ISSN 1920-4125
\nMemory and Meaning in the Representations of The American War in Vietnam<\/strong>
\nFran Shor<\/strong>
\nWayne State University<\/p>\n

If, as argued by Viet Thanh Nguyen, \u201call wars are fought twice, the first time on
\nthe battlefield, the second time in memory,\u201d who or what shapes that memory determines,
\nto a large extent, the meaning of that war for the present.1 Indeed, the Vietnam War,
\nwaged at different levels of engagement by the United States for almost three decades,
\nremains a battlefield because of the contestation over what is remembered by those who
\nlived through that time. Certainly, as noted by Christian Appy, \u201cthe Vietnam War
\ncompelled millions of citizens to question the once widely held faith that their country is
\nthe greatest force for good in the world, that it always acts to advance democracy and
\nhuman rights, that it is superior in both its power and its virtue.\u201d2 Nonetheless, as
\nmemories fade and new representations of the Vietnam War take center stage, that war,
\nonce more, reveals how and why it continues to be a \u201czone of contested meaning\u201d where
\nthe \u201cpower to control memory is\u2026bound up with the power to control the representations
\nof history.\u201d3
\nOne of the most recent and highly touted representations of the Vietnam War was
\nthe 18-hour, 10-episode PBS documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. In
\nanticipation of the impact of that series on renewed debate and discussion of the war, I
\ndecided to offer an intensive two-day seminar through a specially designed classroom
\nprogram at Wayne State University sponsored by the Society of Active Retirees (SOAR).
\nAlthough I planned to offer my own reflections on the war as a scholar of United States
\nimperialism and anti-war activist and draft resister, I was particularly interested in their
\nmemories and perspectives on the Vietnam War, as mediated by the documentary,
\nespecially since all of the students in the SOAR program were older retirees and would
\nhave lived through the period. Therefore, I developed a questionnaire that requested
\nbasic brief information about age, gender, race\/ethnicity, and previous occupation, as well
\nas what their particular situation was between the years 1965-1973, the period of most
\nintense combat in and developing protest against the Vietnam War. In order to get some
\nfeedback on their impressions of the documentary and its influence on their own
\ninterpretation of the meaning of the war, I included an open-ended question on how much
\nof the series they watched and what proved to be the most compelling and controversial
\nelements for them. Finally, I gave a short quiz that was intended to highlight what I
\nbelieved were either gaps in the documentary or under-emphasized components. What
\nfollows are highlights from the aforementioned questionnaire and quiz measured against
\nmy own understanding of the Vietnam War and the flaws in the Burns and Novick
\ndocumentary.\u00a0 ices.library.ubc.ca\/index.php\/criticaled\/issue\/current<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Critical<\/p>\n

Some Lessons and Myths of the American <\/strong><\/em>War in Vietnam<\/strong><\/em>
\nJohn Marciano<\/strong>
\nState University of New York, Cortland<\/p>\n

The War Was an Example of Imperialism<\/strong>
\nThe Vietnam War was an example of imperial aggression. According to historian
\nMichael Parenti, \u201cImperialism is what empires are all about. Imperialism is what empires do,\u201d as
\n\u201cone country brings to bear\u2026economic and military power upon another country in order to
\nexpropriate [its] land, labor, natural resources, capital and markets.\u201d Imperialism ultimately
\nenriches the home country\u2019s dominant class. The process involves \u201cunspeakable repression and
\nstate terror,\u201d and must rely repeatedly \u201cupon armed coercion and repression.\u201d The ultimate aim
\nof modern U.S. imperialism is \u201cto make the world safe\u201d for multinational corporations. When
\ndiscussing imperialism, \u201cthe prime unit of analysis should be the economic class rather than the
\nnation-state.\u201d1
\nU.S. actions in Vietnam and elsewhere are often described as reflecting \u201cnational
\ninterests,\u201d \u201cnational security,\u201d or \u201cnational defense.\u201d Endless U.S. wars and regime changes,
\nhowever, actually represent the class interests of those who own and govern the country. Noam
\nChomsky argues that if one wishes to understand imperial wars, therefore, \u201cit is a good idea to
\nbegin by investigating the domestic social structure. Who sets foreign policy? What interest do
\nthese people represent? What is the domestic source of their power?\u201d 2
\nThe United States Committed War Crimes, Including Torture
\nThe war was waged \u201cagainst the entire Vietnamese population,\u201d designed to terrorize
\nthem into submission. The United States \u201cmade South Vietnam a sea of fire as a matter of policy,
\nturning an entire nation into a target. This is not accidental but intentional and intrinsic to the
\nU.S.\u2019s strategic and political premises.\u201d In such an attack \u201cagainst an entire people\u2026barbarism
\ncan be the only consequence of [U.S.] tactics,\u201d conceived and organized by \u201cthe true architects
\nof terror,\u201d the \u201crespected men of manners and conventional views who calculate and act behind
\ndesks and computers rather than in villages in the field.\u201d3The U.S. abuse of Vietnamese civilians
\nand prisoners of war was strictly prohibited by the Geneva Convention that the United States
\nsigned. U.S. officials and media pundits, however, continue to assert that torture is a violation of
\n\u201cour values.\u201d This is not true. Torture is as American as apple pie, widely practiced in wars and
\nprisons.
\nWashington Lied<\/strong>
\nThe war depended on government lies. Daniel Ellsberg exposed one such lie that had a
\nprofound impact on the eventual course of the conflict: the official story of the Tonkin Gulf crisis
\nof August 1964. President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara told the public that
\nthe North Vietnamese, for the second time in two days, had attacked U.S. warships on \u201croutine<\/p>\n

patrol in international waters\u201d; that this was clearly a \u201cdeliberate\u201d pattern of \u201cnaked aggression\u201d;
\nthat the evidence for the second attack, like the first, was \u201cunequivocal\u201d; that the attack had been
\n\u201cunprovoked\u201d; and that the United States, by responding in order to deter any repetition,
\nintended no wider war. All of these assurances were untrue.\u00a0 ices.library.ubc.ca\/index.php\/criticaled\/issue\/current<\/a><\/p>\n

www.youtube.com\/watch?v=wPT3H8hmYSU&feature=youtu.be<\/a><\/p>\n

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