The Ugly American

Last weekend while I was laying in bed trying to get some sleep from the ongoing trials and tribulations of everyday life (which never seem to end), I experienced a sudden jolt that reminded me of that great poem from Poe:

'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Well, actually, the only thing about my sleepless night that resembled the great poet's night of insomnia was the fact that we were both "nearly napping" when something woke us up. That's where the similarities end because whatever it was that was (figuratively speaking) a-rappin' on my chamber door that night was not a "gentle tapping" but seemed more like a pounding fist!

For some inexplicable reason I woke up feeling this inexplicable rage, a rage that jolted me as if I had suddenly stuck my finger in a light socket.
It lasted for just a brief moment and then was suddenly gone. It was as if a cold dark wind blew through my bedroom window, then blew through me, and then out the back window in a sudden gust and then everything peacfully calmed down.

"And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,' "

Well, the intense anger lasted for but a brief moment and ended as quickly as it came. I know enough now to not worry about such things since I'm quite aware that many of my thoughts and feelings are things that pass through me, much like smoke passes through a forest. But I knew that something was "not right" that night.

Fortunately, I was finally able to get to sleep and after waking up the next day I read in the newspaper that some unbelievably horrific crimes had occurred in the city and one in particular that occured in a nearby suburb (I don't wish to go into the gory details of the crimes). Let's just say they that these crimes were of mind boggling barbarity and it had been many years since any kind of crime of that magnitude had occurred in that quiet suburb.

The following day I go outside and I notice that the people were acting differently.
The change happened stunningly fast. The first impression I got was that there was a racial polarization between the blacks and whites that was not there before. It was as if people were glaring at each other, especially the blacks toward the whites and the whites towards the blacks. If I would pass by people in the street I could "feel" their thoughts and I knew instantly that the crime in the suburb was the cause of this tension (since it involved blacks and whites), or perhaps, this tension is what really precipitated the actual crime and after the crime had occurred then this tension became manifest as a recognizable reality that took the form of hatred between the races. Before the event occured, the tension may have been present in the mass consciousness, that is as a future event, but had not yet actualized. After the event the tension may have became actualized as a tension between whites and blacks. So the actual event just put a particular focus on a general hatred that was always there to begin with, directing it to a specific focal point much like a lens directs light. Or so it seems to me.

It appeared that the race thing was now popping up in my area, at least tempoarily, until things settle down over time (as usually happens). I thought that this racial tension was something that was in the past when I lived in the big city. But it's always there lurking in people no matter where you go. Well, after carefully observing the way the people were glaring at each other I soon realized that this hate is actually something that people really enjoy. The hate gives people a release of this tension and this release feels good.

After all, if hate feels so good then how can it be so bad?...Right?

This is typical of the American mindset. Our sense of good and evil is so screwed up that we are like the ugly guy who looks in a mirror that he just found laying on the road. Upon seeing himself and seeing his horrible reflection cast therin, he casts it as far away as he can, and all the while cursing his terrible luck in finding that despicable and evil thing.

Along with our inability to see ourselves we Americans all think we are "owed" something, like we got a raw deal from life and the world owes us something just because we're US!

As the rock and roll singer Meatloaf says in one of his songs:

"I want my money back
I want my money back
It’s all or nothing"

"And nothing’s all I ever get
Every time I turn it on
I burn it up and burn it out"

"It’s always something
There’s always something going wrong
That’s the only guarantee
That’s what this is all about"

"It’s a never ending attack
Everything’s a lie, and that’s a fact
Life is a lemon and I want my money back"!

Yep, that's the attitude of the American culture. America wants it's money back, because we think we deserve more when we get a raw deal. And the more we kill then the worse that things will get. And the worse that things get the more we'll want our money back. Take that to the bank.

Well, this racist attitude of the people in America perfectly reflects our attitude towards the rest of the world

It is this very racism in us that had the US military calling the Vietnamese "gook" in Vietnam and now it has simply been focused on Iraq. But this time it is done with religious fever because of Bush's mixing religion with politics making it a thousand times worse and 10,000 times more deadly.

After all, people don't question religion so why should they question murder?

As one person put it on a political forum:

"According to one British commander in Iraq American troops often saw Iraqis as "undermenschen" the Nazi expression for sub-humans. Although embedded US reporters rarely provided an insight into this racist mentality, Mark Franchetti of the London Times quoted one US soldier as asserting that "Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy." And with chemotherapy if the sick person dies it was only to help cure the person. This reminds one of the infamous pronouncement by a US officer on the destruction of a Vietnamese village during the war in that ravaged country: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

"Neither in Vietnam nor Iraq would Washington and the Pentagon admit to carrying-out war crimes. However, in the war on Iraq Rumsfeld clearly did approve violations of the Geneva Conventions in the use of torture on Iraqi prisoners, especially in the Abu Ghraib prison. But, like Vietnam, the focus is on a few "renegade" soldiers and not the actual policy-makers. Also, those who would excuse such war-crimes, like Rush Limbaugh and his ditto-heads, are an American version of holocaust-deniers, excusing the historical record of death and destruction".

For the ordinary man who cannot see within himself, the darkness within him has the most power over him and the enemy is not the 'gook' or the 'undermenschen', but it is the enemy within, the hidden darkness within ourselves.

That's the real enemy.

But we will never learn, not from WWII, or from Vietnam, or from all the wars throuhout known history. When we call others the fool it is really ourselves saying "I am not a fool." When we say that others hate then it is really ourselves saying "I do not hate."

And the more we think of ourselves as not being the fool then the more we believe the other guy to be one.

And it hasn't changed for thousands of years.

Judging from the below article I'd say that we haven't learned a thing and a lesson unlearned is a lesson repeated, but this time it will repeat on a much, much larger scale.

You can take that to the bank.

The Unreported Vietnam-Iraq Parallel

By Danny Schechter
MediaChannel.org

NEW YORK, May 2, 2005 — There is a word missing in most of the coverage of Iraq. It's a ghost-laden word that conjures up distressing memories that Washington and most of our media prefer to keep in that proverbial "lock box," hidden away in dusty archives and footage libraries.

The word is Vietnam.

Its absence was never more noticeable than in the coverage this past weekend of the 30th anniversary of the Vietnam War, marked in Vietnam with celebrations, but largely ignored in America where CNN led with the story of a bride who went missing when she had second thoughts.

Is this denial or is it deliberate? Just this past month, the national Smithsonian Museum of American History installed a new patriotically correct permanent war-positive exhibition, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War."

If you want to know about the pain of the war official America wants you to forget, you have to head a few blocks south on the mall in Washington to the Vietnam Memorial with its nearly 60,000 names engraved in black marble. That's where you will see the tears of visitors every day and their lingering memories three decades later.

While American media outlets avoid any parallels — with pundits insisting that none exist — overseas some see what many of us don't or won't. A BBC story by Matt Frei reports, "Thirty years after the end of the war, Vietnam continues to divide and haunt America far more than the country that lost 50 times as many people."

His is one of few Vietnam reports that references Iran even though the Iraq connection is buried in the last paragraph, an association even the journalist seems uncomfortable with:


"Iraq is far from becoming another Vietnam. But today the ghosts of the jungle are busy getting resurrected in the sands around Baghdad."
What are those ghosts? And why do they deserve more than media burial in the jungles of Asia or the sands of Iraq?

Here are some of the largely ignored parallels:

Both wars were illegal acts of pre-emptive aggression unsanctioned by international law or world opinion. Earlier, U.S. interventions involved successive U.S. administrations. JFK's CIA helped put Saddam in power, Reagan armed him to fight Iran. George Bush, 41 led the first Gulf War against him. Clinton tightened sanctions. George Bush, 43 invaded again. Five Administrations — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford fought in Vietnam.

Both wars were launched with deception. In Iraq it was the now proven phony WMD threat and contrived Saddam-Osama connection. In Vietnam, it was the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident and the elections mandated by the Geneva agreement that were canceled by Washington in l956 when the U.S. feared Ho Chi Minh would win.

The government lied regularly in both wars. Back then, the lies were pronounced a "credibility gap." Today, they are considered acceptable "information warfare." In Saigon military briefers conducted discredited "5 O'Clock Follies" press conferences. In this war, the Pentagon spoon-fed info at a Hollywood style briefing center in Doha.

The U.S. press was initially an enthusiastic cheerleader in both wars. When Vietnam protest grew and the war seen as a lost cause, the media frame changed. In Iraq today most of the media is trapped in hotel rooms. Only one side is covered now whereas in Vietnam, there was more reporting occasionally from the other. In Vietnam, the accent was on progress and "turned corners." The same is true in Iraq.

In both wars, prisoners were abused. In South Vietnam, thousands of captives were tortured in what were the called "tiger cages." Vietnamese POWs were often killed; In North Vietnam, some U.S. POWs were abused after bombing civilians. In Iraq, POWs on both sides were also mistreated. It was U.S. soldiers that first leaked major war crimes and abuses. In Vietnam, Ron Ridenour disclosed the My Lai Massacre. In Iraq, it was a soldier who first told investigators about the torture in Abu Ghraib prison. (Seymour Hersh the reporter who exposed My-Lai in Vietnam later exposed illegal abuses in Iraq.)

Illegal weapons were "deployed" in both wars. The U.S. dropped napalm, used cluster bombs against civilians and sprayed toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. Cluster bombs and updated Mark 77 napalm-like firebombs were dropped on Iraqis. Depleted uranium was added to the arsenal of prohibited weapons in Iraq.

Both wars claimed to be about promoting democracy. Vietnam staged elections and saw a succession of governments controlled by the U.S. come and go. Iraq has had one election so far in which most voters say they were casting ballots primarily to get the U.S. to leave. The U.S. has stage-managed Iraq's interim government. Exiles were brought back and put in power. Vietnam's Diem came from New Jersey, Iraq's Allawi from Britain.

Both wars claimed to be about noble international goals. Vietnam was pictured as a crusade against aggressive communism and falling dominos. Iraq was sold as a front in a global war on terrorism. Neither claim proved true.

An imperial drive for resource control and markets helped drive both interventions. Vietnam had rubber and manganese and rare minerals. Iraq has oil. In both wars, any economic agenda was officially denied and ignored by most media outlets.

Both wars took place in countries with cultures we never understood or spoke the language, Both involved "insurgents" whose military prowess was underestimated and misrepresented. In Vietnam, we called the "enemy" communists; in Iraq we call them foreign terrorists. (Soldiers had their own terms, "gooks" in Vietnam, "ragheads" in Iraq) In both counties, they was in fact an indigenous resistance that enjoyed popular support. (Both targeted and brutalized people they considered collaborators with the invaders just as our own Revolution went after Americans who backed the British.) In both wars, as in all wars, innocent civilians died in droves.

In both countries the U.S. promised to help rebuild the damages caused by U.S. bombing. In Vietnam, a $2 Billion presidential reconstruction pledge was not honored. In Iraq, the electricity and other services are still out in many areas. In both wars U.S. companies and suppliers have profited handsomely; Brown &Root in Vietnam; Halliburton in Iraq, to cite but two.

In Vietnam, the Pentagon's counter-insurgency effort failed to "pacify" the countryside even with a half a million U.S. soldiers "in country." The insurgency in Iraq is growing despite the best efforts of U.S. soldiers. More have died since President Bush proclaimed "mission accomplished" than during the invasion.
The Vietnamese forced the U.S. into negotiations for the Paris Peace Agreement. When the agreement was continually violated, they brilliantly staged a final offensive that surprised and routed a superior million-man Saigon Army. Can the Iraqi resistance do the same?

The BBC is wondering too, reminding us, "As the casualties mounted so did the questions about how much a threat the Vietcong could really pose. Today another pre-emptive war against an enemy far from home has posed similar questions."

As the insurgency in Iraq escalates and continues to seize the initiative with the capacity to attack where and when it wants, is it unthinkable to suspect that another April 30th campaign of the kind that "liberated" Saigon is possible in Baghdad?

We have already seen "the fall" of Baghdad. Can it "fall" again?

Of course not!

Repeat after me. We are winning.

Democracy is on the march.

Join the dialogue: post a comment on this article.

-- News Dissector Danny Schechter, editor and "blogger in chief" of Mediachannel.org, reported from Vietnam in 1974 and 1997. His latest film, "WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception)," examines media coverage of the Iraq War.