Vietnam to be continued...
I have been hearing so much these days another one of those 'facts' stated with such belief to make it real: "it is the SOLDIERS who ended our invasion and occupation of Vietnam".
You know, I deeply resent how easy it is to be male, violent, and a hero in our society. Why when so many hundreds of thousands of people in the u.s.a. (including soldiers) AND in Vietnam were working so hard to end war, why would some want to single out soldiers and once again make them heroes?
Yes, soldiers were committing acts of resistance. Soldiers were killing their officers. The discipline, the mindless obedience to orders, the blind following of superiors - these were deteriorating among the military forces fighting in Vietnam, panicking the old men holding the military together I'm sure.
But also 500,000 refused to join, to fight.
And people were on the streets in GREAT and GROWING numbers and actions in Birmingham, in New York, in Seattle, in Grand Forks, PROTESTING war.
And Congress was passing resolutions to stop funding, to end war.
And who knows what else was happening - what wife of what business man was pushing to end war; what student was pressuring her father to end war; what homeless person was approaching an officer to end war.
And what about the courageous, barely armed if armed at all, farmers, villagers, women, men and children who were living in and fighting an occupied Vietnam.
As there are many pillars upholding war, there are as many actions tearing down those pillars.
I know that if any one pillar in it's entity decided to pull out of upholding war, yes war would end: the pillar of the president, of congress, of soldiers, of war profiteers, of the media, of tax payers - any ONE of those could withdraw support and war would crash.
But what has happened and is most likely to happen is that each pillar will weaken, making war crash.
So pointing the finger at the one who should end war or waiting around for someone else to do the work to end war, will NOT work - as we see.
We MUST get allies in each pillar to undermine their own pillar. But more importantly, we must undermine our OWN pillar - and trust that by our example or not, others will be working on undermining their own pillars.
You know, I deeply resent how easy it is to be male, violent, and a hero in our society. Why when so many hundreds of thousands of people in the u.s.a. (including soldiers) AND in Vietnam were working so hard to end war, why would some want to single out soldiers and once again make them heroes?
Yes, soldiers were committing acts of resistance. Soldiers were killing their officers. The discipline, the mindless obedience to orders, the blind following of superiors - these were deteriorating among the military forces fighting in Vietnam, panicking the old men holding the military together I'm sure.
But also 500,000 refused to join, to fight.
And people were on the streets in GREAT and GROWING numbers and actions in Birmingham, in New York, in Seattle, in Grand Forks, PROTESTING war.
And Congress was passing resolutions to stop funding, to end war.
And who knows what else was happening - what wife of what business man was pushing to end war; what student was pressuring her father to end war; what homeless person was approaching an officer to end war.
And what about the courageous, barely armed if armed at all, farmers, villagers, women, men and children who were living in and fighting an occupied Vietnam.
As there are many pillars upholding war, there are as many actions tearing down those pillars.
I know that if any one pillar in it's entity decided to pull out of upholding war, yes war would end: the pillar of the president, of congress, of soldiers, of war profiteers, of the media, of tax payers - any ONE of those could withdraw support and war would crash.
But what has happened and is most likely to happen is that each pillar will weaken, making war crash.
So pointing the finger at the one who should end war or waiting around for someone else to do the work to end war, will NOT work - as we see.
We MUST get allies in each pillar to undermine their own pillar. But more importantly, we must undermine our OWN pillar - and trust that by our example or not, others will be working on undermining their own pillars.
posted by Xan @ 7:18 PM
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