Part Three: The Vietnam War in Retrospect

August 28th, 2009  |   

All Things, Oh Priests, Are On Fire

In November of 1962, while at Virginia Seminary, I picked up a copy of The New Yorker and read an article by James Baldwin, America’s celebrated black author. Entitled “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” it turned my mind in a new direction about race, and my heart as well. A yellowed, much underlined copy of that article, converted into a 1985 book, sits on my dining room bookshelf. It bears the title, “The Fire Next Time.”

Looking back at the 1960’s, I visualize fire — nothing but fierce, red-hot, scorching fire.

Clay Risen, author of “A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination,” chronicles the rioting and burning in nearly 120 cities within hours after King’s death in 1968.

On top of the fires kindled over racial tensions, there was Vietnam, the incendiary war which reduced President Johnson to ash, and contributed to Nixon’s flaming exit.

As far as the Vietnam War was concerned, fire was symbolic of all that was wrong about the war. Napalm — the coagulated gasoline in a gelatinous base spewed from U.S. planes — stuck to and incinerated anyone splashed with the deadly substance.

But the military firestorm in Vietnam was, also, fought with fire, as protesters fought fire with fire.

In 1963, Americans were shocked by the picture of Trich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk engulfed in flames after having set himself on fire at a busy Saigon intersection.

This monk’s death was followed by the fiery death of Alice Herz, an 82 year-old woman in Detroit, who, in 1965, struck a match to her gasoline-soaked body, shortly after U.S. troops landed at Da Nang.

Roughly seven months after her death, Norman Morrison, a Quaker — a married father with two children, set himself on fire beneath Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s Pentagon window.

Morrison’s incineration had a profound effect on McNamara. In his book, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” written nearly 35 years later, he wrote: “Morrison’s death was a tragedy not only for his family but also for me and the country. It was an outcry against the killing that was destroying the lives of so many Vietnamese and American youth. I reacted to the horror of his action by bottling up my emotions and avoided talking about them with anyone — even my family. I knew Marg (Robert McNamara’s wife) and our children shared many of Morrison’s feelings about the war…. And I believed I understood and shared some of his thoughts. There was much Marg and I and the children should have talked about, yet at moments like this I often turn inward instead — it is a grave weakness. The episode created tension at home that only deepened dissent and criticism as the war continued to grow.”

In 1968, two months before leaving Annapolis to take a parish in Martinsburg, West Virginia, Roman Catholic priest and prophet, Daniel Berrigan, entered the Selective Service Office in Catonsville, Maryland, a short drive from my home in Annapolis, and burned draft records with homemade napalm in protest against the war in Vietnam.  

There is a saying attributed to Buddha that reads like this: “All things, oh priests, are on fire; the eye is on fire; forms are on fire; eye-consciousness is on fire; impressions received by the eye are on fire.”

Arriving in Martinsburg, I knew that sooner-or-later I’d have to fight fire with fire. I’d have to address the fire storm in the world around me with some fire from my own soul. Little did I know that a tiny village in Vietnam, My Lai, would be the spark for my fire.

William Calley

Last week at a Kiwanis Club meeting in Columbus, Georgia, a 66 year old man, speaking in what the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer called “a soft, sometimes labored voice,” made a confession. He said, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

The man was William Calley who, as a young Army lieutenant, gave the orders for his platoon to burn the homes of villagers in My Lai and kill upwards to 500 men, women and children. Calley was court-martialed and was sentenced to life in prison, only to have the sentence reduced by President Nixon to three years of house arrest.

If the James Baldwin piece in The New Yorker in 1962 had moved my mind and heart on racial matters, it was Seymour Hersh’s explosive exposé about the My Lai Massacre in The New Yorker in 1969 that moved my heart and mind on the Vietnam War. The article moved me out of my silence and into the pulpit to offer assistance to any young person who felt compelled to resist the draft. It moved me to public demonstrations of protest.

I met opposition from some who supported the war, and even saw me as un-American and guilty of the sin of speaking of political matters in a church setting. On the positive end, my small effort drew some folks who supported the message, and, thank God, I made contact with physically and emotionally wounded veterans back from Vietnam.

I regret having waited so long to offer resistance to the war. But I am grateful for the faith I had inherited from my family and church, and the news reports that finally helped to awaken me to some ugly truth about the racism and militarism of the nation I love.

A Balancing Act—The Bible In One Hand—The Newspaper In The Other

I must tell you, I am discouraged by the number of people who tell me they don’t read newspapers, or for that matter, watch or listen to the news. I’m aware of how bad the news industry is, but it spells death with a capital D to just plain cold-turkey on newspapers, and the radio and television industry that gets its news from newspapers.

And, at the risk of alienating my friends who groove on news delivered by John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, I just have to say that getting comedic news, as entertaining and informative as it is, just isn’t enough.

Evangelical theologian Karl Barth once advised Christians to “read the Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other.” Call it a balancing act. Social analysis and biblical discernment are critical components for clergy and lay folks alike. If Christians drop the Bible or the newspaper, or both, they will inevitably stagger about.

All of that is to say that my love affair with the Bible stories, and my addiction to the smell of newsprint and printer’s ink, has kept me in constant Barthian intercourse with two mistresses — the Bible and all the news that arrives at my doorstep daily.

This three part series on the Vietnam War (which ends with this issue) came about as a result of my attendance at Washington & Lee University’s weeklong course on the war. Interestingly enough, I will return to the campus in October to hear Alex S. Jones, a W&L graduate, talk about his new book, “Losing the News That Feeds Democracy.”

Jones is not a Luddite, nor am I. I have no desire to curse or junk Internet information. It is a valuable tool for communicating news. But Jones points to a truth which I embrace. That is, without journalists on the ground and reporters doing in-depth analysis and investigation, democracy is threatened by its ever-present nemesis — ignorance.

Jones comes from a family of newspaper people in Tennessee. That’s interesting, because it was a newspaper reporter from the Tennessean that gave me newsprint for the opposite hand from the one that held my Bible. His name was David Halberstam.  

Magnificent Journalists

It is a fact worth noting that David Halberstam covered both the civil rights struggle and the Vietnam War. He was in the South watching and reporting on red-hot white violence against blacks. And later, in 1963, he was in Saigon watching Trich Quang Duc douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire.

A reviewer of books recently wrote that “good writing is not about knowing words, grammar or Faulkner, but having the rare ability to tell the truth, an ability that education and sophistication often served to conceal.” Halberstam, and a host of remarkable reporters — the likes of which we may not see again — were on the ground in Vietnam. They were telling the American people the truth which the educated and sophisticated generals and political leadership — labeled the “best and the brightest” by Halberstam — didn’t want reported. Their free and uncontrolled reporting was so authentic that our government would never, in the wars that followed, let it happen again. Controlled and manipulation of news from the battle zone would become the standard operational procedure.

Some of the Vietnam War veterans who took part in the course this summer, did what so many supporters of that war did and continue to do. They bashed the media and accused reporters of causing us to lose the war because of the words they wrote and the pictures they sent back home. I tire quickly of that argument.

One of those truth-telling reporters was Walter Cronkite, who after visiting Vietnam in 1968, completed his television series “Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?” He concluded that we were on the path to defeat in Vietnam. I watched the series this summer. That series, now available on video, should be compulsory homework for all Americans who want to understand the Vietnam War and what is taking place at this very moment in Afghanistan.

And for anyone who wants to kill the messenger by taking shots at the news media, keep in mind that 139 reporters and 15 media support people have been killed covering the war in Iraq. That compares to 66 killed during the Vietnam War. Within the past three weeks, three journalist were killed covering the war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan & Vietnam

The other day I heard Jamie Rubin, professor at Columbia, and an advisor to President Obama, say that it would be a mistake to compare the war in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War.

Go to your timeout chair, Jamie, and reconnect with the news. (Of note: Jamie’s wife, Christiane Amanpour, is a first-rate CNN international correspondent.) Afghanistan has reelected President Hamid Karzai, much to Washington’s disdain. This should be a reminder of the days when we did not support President Diem in South Vietnam. If I were Karzai, I’d keep my eye on the CIA, the Terminator of leaders we don’t like.

The news out of Afghanistan is that the Afghans are not supporting the very troops we have sent into the country for their “liberation.” This should serve as a reminder to us of those days when a brave journalist, Neil Sheehan, was reporting the truth from Vietnam — that we were engaged in a “bright and shining lie.” And that the South Vietnam troops had no heart in the fight and were not pulling their load, despite what Lt. Col. John Paul Vann and General Westmoreland were telling us.

Remember, also, that General Westmoreland kept asking for more troops, even as U.S. support for the war was evaporating. And now, Gen. Stanley McChrystal is about to ask for more troops in Afghanistan at a time when 54% of Americans do not support the war there.

Sitting under my fig tree, here’s what I see. Afghanistan is Vietnam, another sink-hole destined to end in defeat, suck money from a beleaguered U.S. budget, result in the unnecessary death and wounding of our troops (not to mention Afghan losses), and undermine President Obama’s presidency, just like Vietnam buried President Johnson.

Those of us in the peace and justice movement had better wake up and call for an immediate exit strategy to get us out of Afghanistan. As long as we keep pouring military money and personnel into a country with a long history of rejecting invading empires, you can kiss health care reform goodbye.

If we peace and justice folks don’t go after Obama on this war, and torture as well, we will be found guilty of the charge that right wing commentators are accusing us of. The accusation that we are nothing more than former Bush-bashers that now refuse to hold Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress accountable.

“Always Faithful” Takes On New Meaning

In 1958 I made a commitment to be faithful to Judy “until death do us part.” Two weeks later I was sworn into the Marine Corps, an organization with the motto “always faithful.” Six years later, I was ordained as an Episcopal minister with the pledge that I would be faithful to the Word of God as it is manifested in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Taking any oath of fidelity, I do believe, is generated out of a basic human desire for self definition. We find out who we are by the commitments we make, the fidelity we pledge. The question then becomes, “Faithful to what?”

Over the years, my faith has grown through the commitments I have made and been able to keep by the grace of God. Traveling outside the familiar circle of my own family, with their blessing, I might add, I have discovered a common humanity that exist between all people. I have also come to know the violent roaring beast — the principalities and powers of my own nation. If you listen carefully, you will hear the roaring now.

Looking at just the past hundred years, I have come to realize that our country has been at war with, and occupied such places as Central America, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Southeast Asia, Granada, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And, if I look closely, I am forced to notice that all these places are inhabited by people of color. Racism and war are inextricably bound together in a demonic and perversely violent way.

Those of you, who are faithful readers of these Notes, know very well my reliance on the theological and anthropological wisdom of Réne Girard. Girard roots human violence in the mythological story of Cain’s murder of Abel. The story provides an etiological foundation for the persistence of violence down through the ages. In order to gain power — all kinds of power — we human beings imitate Cain’s violence to get what we want or hold on to what we have. People are sacrificed whenever greed and lust dominate our lives, both individually and institutionally. Jesus, by his life, shows us a different, nonviolent way to live. He is the nonviolent counterpoint to Cain’s point of violence.

In my view, the cross, upon which Jesus was crucified, is misrepresented when it is seen as a sacrifice to a bloodthirsty God who demands flesh and blood — His own Son, as orthodox theology proclaims. Instead, the crucifixion is better understood as the place where human violence is on display. And the Roman Empire becomes the symbolic representation of all empires — all nations which assume power through violent means.

Since my early baptism in the Christian faith, I have been magnetically drawn to the love of God vivid and proclaimed in Jesus — a Jesus who calls his followers to a way of life marked by nonviolence. The Kingdom of God which Jesus came to proclaim is an alternative way of life — in musical terms, a counterpoint to those points of violence in my life and in my own nation. The cry of the Psalmist challenges me constantly — “How can I sing a new song in a strange land?”

This land I live in is in every way a dying empire. That’s a message not easily accepted by people who, out of fear, choose to cling to the way things are, or, even more tragically, the way they think things are. Americans, for the most part, don’t believe in death after life. And nostalgia for that which has never been becomes a kind of Alzheimer’s of the soul. It leaves us incapable of recalling any memories of a once-held imagination of what life could be, if we would only let go of the worn security blanket of our own self interests.

Such thoughts could well invite despair and loss of hope, particularly in a man living out the last years of his life. But, I can assure you, that is not the case. That’s true because a spirit, one might call holy, continues to blow my way. I can still manage, somehow, to sing a new song when I see signs of new life, even in the most dreadful places.　

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