Tag: Mohammad Ali

The Vietnam War – the movie

Whether you lived through it or are viewing it as ancient history, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War is shattering. I alternately wept and retched. It was a serious mistake that took over twenty years to back (or crawl) out of. The loss of life was staggering. Estimates of war related deaths between 1954 and 1975 vary from 1.5 to 3.6 million people. Of these 58,220 were U.S. military personnel. Less reliable estimates of South Vietnam military (ARVIN) deaths range from 100,000 to 250,000 and of North Vietnam military and their South Vietnamese collaborators (the Viet Cong) around one million. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 225,000 to 500,000 of which 195,000 to 430,000 where in the South.

But these deaths only scratch the surface of the costs of this war in blood and treasure. Those injured numbered 1,170,000 people. The sight of returned American solders without legs (which seemed more common than missing arms) became relatively common in the 1970s. Greater still was the emotional damage to those who participated in and witnessed up close the human waste of this war, the emotional anguish of those with the courage to refuse to fight what they (and history) considered an immoral war, which included Mohammad Ali, and the scars to our nation, which most of us witnessed from afar, and all can now see again in the Burns/Novick film.

The film balances the horrible visual images of the wasted and mutilated bodies of old men, women and children sprawled or piled along the roads with the personal human stories of individual participants. The terror in the faces of women and children running through the streets is excruciatingly hard to watch. But the contemporary interviews of solders and reporters who had participated in the war and the Americans back home who demonstrated against it gave a very human touch to the pointless horror they looked back on.

As the war dragged on from the 1960s into the 70s solders increasingly questioned the wisdom of torching the homes of impoverished South Vietnamese with no way of knowing whether they were the “good guys” or the “bad guys.” These men, and in some cases women, served faithfully and bravely in what was increasingly, obviously a pointless slaughter. And our Presidents—Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—lied to us about what was going on—not the easily provable and obvious lies Trump tweets throughout the day, day after day, but serious lies most of us believed until near the end. The Burns/Novick film presents it all—all sides, including fascinating interviews with a number South and North Vietnamese—in as humanized a way as possible for such an unbelievably inhuman undertaking.

What have we (or should we have) learned as we wage war in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and Yemen to name the most conspicuous cases and not to mention the threats of war in Iran and North Korea?

  • Fighting other people’s wars on other peoples’ land that we know little about is foolish. In fact “foolish” is far too mild a characterization. It is reckless in the extreme. It is insane.
  • Wars are between real people, many if not most of who may have nothing to do with the struggle. The costs to them in lives and limbs should be taken into account when evaluating whether America’s interests are really served by foreign military engagement.
  • The intense patriotism and sense of adventure of American solders is similar to the motivation of ISIS fighters. I admire them and their courage because they were my guys who believed they were fighting for my safety. I see them through my eyes, but I was struck by how similar their motivations for fighting a perceived enemy were to what seems to be the motivations of ISIS fighters. That should give us pause.
  • Foreign adventures—a few trainers, or solders to lend a hand—almost always sound better at the beginning than by the end (when there is an end).
  • Real people, especially our youth who tend to do the fighting, cannot easily escape the emotional damage of the horrible acts they are required to undertake. This cost should receive its due weight in evaluating whether our interests are really served by participating in foreign wars.
  • Madeleine Albright’s famous comment that “what is the good of having the world’s most powerful military if you can’t use it?” should have landed her in jail.

We must defend and protect the homeland without question. It should be very hard to justify sending American troops anywhere abroad to fight for whatever reason. We should have very clear answers to the following questions: Why should we be there and who are our enemies? Who are we fighting and to what end? We almost never do.

 

How People Become Terrorists

Yesterday I attended a fascinating lecture by Marc Sageman on his latest book: Misunderstanding Terrorism. You can watch it here: How-people-become-terrorists

Though greatly oversimplified, the essence of his findings, which included direct interviews of over 30 captured terrorists, is that members attracted to a close net group with a shared concern and thus shared identity and common cause can for various reasons rise to terrorism when they think their issue is not receiving a fair hearing. He does not consider the ultra conservative interpretation of Islam espoused by ISIS to be a very important factor in attracting its “soldiers.” Perhaps this is why National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster urged Trump not to use the label “radical Islamic terrorism” in his speech to congress saying that it was not helpful. McMaster-trump-terrorism-speech

America’s best defense against ISIS and other terrorist producing groups is to adhere to the values that have made American so respected and admired around the world. These include the evenhanded application of the rule of law.

While listening to Dr. Sageman’s presentation I was reminded of the University of California’s handling of the Free Speech Movement in 1964-5. The FSM was formed in the fall of 1964 after the University banned the traditional sidewalk tables on the edge of the Berkeley campus from which student organizations recruited members and/or passed out their literature. I was a member of the FSM council, as were the presidents of virtually all recognized campus organizations, in my capacity as President of the University Conservatives. The council’s purpose was to get the Berkeley administration to lift its ban and restore free speech on campus (a different time indeed).

As the daily meetings of the FSM council droned on, the group began to informally split between those pushing for more and more forceful demonstrations (which led eventually to the student take over and sit in of Sproul Hall, the administration building) and those of us favoring discussions with the Administration. As the FSM council became increasingly more radical, more moderate groups began to drop out and five of us (the Presidents of Young Republics, Young Democrats, University Conservatives, Young Peoples Socialist League, and Democratic Socialists) began meeting separately in the middle of the night to agree on a strategy for approaching the Administration. We met in the office of Professor Seymour Martin Lipset because the YPSL President was his research assistant and had the key. In this we succeeded but not until Bettina Aptheker and the Marxist group led students into Sproul Hall where they “sat in” for the next few days until they were carted off by the police. Sadly, Joan Baez, who had performed on the steps of Sproul Hall (from which Mario Savio and I and others addressed the daily crowds) every Friday, and whose music I love, led the students into the building singing “We shall overcome” (though she stopped outside the door herself). It was an unforgettable experience with protest movements and crowd dynamics.

President Trump has taken the opposite approach to our terrorist threat. Rather than honestly debating whether Muslims or any other identifiable group are unfairly treated in America (of course some are occasionally, but not as the result of an official discriminatory policy), and/or our purpose and conduct in occupying Iraq, Trump has pretended that the threat comes from abroad and has tried to make it even harder for foreigners to visit. In the process he has given an ugly tone to our discussions of real issues and concerns. Trumps-foreign-policy-and-Mexico

Trump’s poorly conceived, poorly drafted, and poorly executed Executive Order temporarily banning entry of people from seven Muslim majority countries fits Dr. Sageman’s description of how to promote terrorism. Tears-and-detention-for-us-visitors-as-trump-travel-ban-hits. In the past few weeks, our charming and welcoming airport immigration officials have detained some unusual travelers.

American born citizen Sidd Bikkannavar, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Lab with Global Entry, was detained in Houston on his return from Chile and pressured to give over the pin access number to his phone, which had been issued by his employer and contained sensitive material. Indian-origin-nasa-scientist-detained-at-us-border-phone-confiscated

French historian Henry Rousso, a pre-eminent scholar on the Holocaust, was also held at the Houston airport. “When the immigration officer discovered he would be receiving a fee for his keynote address at Texas A&M University, he ordered him to be deported, claiming he should have a working visa rather than a tourist visa.” French-historian-Henry-Rousso-detained 10-hours.

The celebrated Australian children’s writer, Mem Fox, was detained at LAX and wrote that “In that moment I loathed America.” In-that-moment-I-loathed-America-I-loathed-the-entire-country.

The detention for several hours of Mohammad Ali’s son on his way home from a speech in Jamaica because he is a Muslim is one of the more outrageous examples of what is happening. Muhammad-Ali-son-detained-Fort-Lauderdale-airport

These short sighted and ugly measures are not making us safer, quite the opposite:

Former-CIA-chief-says trumps-travel-ban-hurts-American security

In response to stricter requirements for European travel to the U.S., the European Commission is considering whether to suspend visa free travel to Europe for Americans. Did we really think we could do it to them without them wanting to do it to us? Where are the adults?