This reminds me of my old philosophy professor, who would often fence with me on a subject by gently passing me back questions to naturally draw out my thoughts into a more coherent (ha!) mode of expression.

Clearly with no great success.

The fencing analogy is apt here, as this is exactly how fencing is taught: gently. The Maestro leads the pupil through a slow and safe sequence and at the moment of commitment points out, by gently prodding them, that they have overreached and should have covered quarte instead. However, I prefer being taught in the vein of the martial arts. In karate, any point of view is thrown mercilessly into the crucible of combat and tested to destruction. If it is right, then it works. There is no gentleness and no kindness. Only something that stands and something that falls. It is true that when you over-reach you are battered, but at least you learned something and your master has shown you some honesty.

Honesty is always refreshing. As John Lennon said, “Just give me the truth.”

So, while Nigel might want to consider renaming the podcast to “Philosophy Nibbles”, apart from that, it is by far one of the most intelligent and thought provoking downloads available anywhere on the web and one of the reasons I fell in love with podcasts in the first place (the other was MOG Army, which has unfortunately pod-faded).

So, what of it?

I am going to start writing some opinion on these podcasts, posting it here, and inviting a more stimulating debate that is possible in the show’s current format.

We will start with this episode, “Jeff McMahan on Killing in War,” from Sat, 21 November 2009.

When is it right to kill?

Often, when this question is raised, it is answered only in a negative sense. That is, “When isn’t it right to kill?” While this is a valid tactic in any argument, it does not cover the crux of the matter, mainly because the arguments put forward focus on the matter in hindsight. As in, “When wasn’t it right to have killed?” Such answers are always going to be easier to formulate because one can immediately refer to examples common between the members of the debate. People will use the Second World War, the Falklands Conflict and the Iraq Wars to draw lines in the sand that fit their point of view, with the benefit that the outcome of those conflicts is already settled.

Therefore, when discussing “necessary defence” and “righteous conflict,” they will refer to WWII. When talking about “empires rattling their sabres,” out will come the Falklands. When talking about “immoral” and possibly “illegal invasions,” they will mention the Bush years and the Iraq War.

Convenient. Very convenient to restrict yourself to judging decisions after the fact. Philosophy is not a justification of something that has passed; it is also necessarily a framework for going forwards. This, of course, runs the risk of being prophesy and therefore an argument that cannot be immediately proved (an anathema to most modern moralists), but it grasps the truth of the matter. It is actually saying something on the subject.

I want to depart from the larger pictures representing the mired discussion of international relations for a moment (we will come back to it – as it forms the conclusion of the argument I am going to advance), to discuss killing on a much more individual and personal level. For while we may, and often do, ascribe individual concepts (concepts designed for individuals and their actions) to larger concepts (concepts such as ‘a nation’), we are stretching outside our terms. I believe it is a mistake to start talking about a “nation’s will.” National will is fractious, and necessarily so in a democracy. Trying to claim there is such a thing existing for more than a short moment in history is anthropomorphising unnecessarily and incorrectly. Conclusive national will is not really like fish swimming all together, but rather like marbles falling down a stairs; gravity draws them in the same direction; it is directed chaos. Armies, nations and states do not have a moral consciousness, generals; soldiers; combatants do.

I believe that when it comes down to it, right down to it, killing is between people not peoples. It is individual direct action. Killing is in a human pushing buttons, a human pulling a trigger and – tragically often – a human coming Mano-a-mano with the enemy.

So, before discussing right actions in wars, and the possible justification of some of the actions we see around us, lets us consider an individual’s rights.

Of all the rights we enshrine in laws, morals and philosophies, the one that matters the most is the right to life. Every human was born with the right to live. What does that mean? It means the right to be. It seems almost too simple, since we are regularly surrounded with people being (and we are being ourselves) that we forget what it really means. It means, simply, that your life belongs to you. It is yours. It is the one thing that truly is yours. It is the last thing you would give away and usually the first thing you would save. It is short, perilous, exciting and yet sometimes incredibly boring.

It is all you really own.

You therefore have another right, the right to defend it. Nothing that anyone can do will take this away from you. But, what does this mean? If you have the right to defend yourself, can this right get cancelled?

No, it can never be cancelled.

You can fight until your last breath if you wish. You can be dragged to the gallows, to the opera, to the hospital. No one can take this right away. Rights cannot be cancelled.

Of course, a right needs something else. It needs the power to exercise it. Through exercising your fundamental rights you realise your ability to be free to a greater or lesser extent. Of course, this extent is always going to depend on the situation you find yourself in.

So, while a prisoner on the gallows may have lost the ability to exercise his right to life, he has not actually lost the right. He will, most probably in a moment, lose his life, but he never at any time lost his right to it. He cannot. A society may judge him and say, “We will take your life,” but there is never a point that he loses the right to try to defend it. That is why execution is a terrible thing, sometimes necessary, sometimes the least cruel option, but always something that pricks with guilt.

This may sound pedantic, but I am leading somewhere. So, let us put this another way. Let us start a little further back. A tiger stalks a boar in the fields of India. The tiger draws near. Near enough that the boar is about to die. She leaps. The boar is taken in the neck and in a moment of chaos his throat is crushed. Death follows this killing.

That is just nature we say. The tiger did not take the boar’s right to life away, she just killed him. The boar, if he could have, would have defended himself or run away to preserve and defend his right to life. On the other hand, the tiger also has a right to life. She has a need to eat to preserve it. She has cubs to feed. At no point does the rights of either get taken away, they only get expressed.

That’s nature sure enough. It is called by one group, “The survival of the fittest,” and by another, “The will of God.” Regardless, it is nature. A cycle repeated all the way back in the distant history of time. Since the first single cell organism ate the one next to it, it has been nature. That single cell organism took the other organism’s energy for itself. It took it away as a competitor for other food, for space and perhaps for a mate. By surviving, it preserved its life. This was not an immoral action, only an expression. The tiger is in the same situation. The boar is food – energy is in the form of other living things – and the tiger needs this energy to survive. The boar on the other hand is not gifted a moral high ground for being attacked and killed. It has been unable to express its right to life. If it could somehow turn the tables on the tiger and fight her off, even perhaps kill her, then he would not be expressing a moral victory. He would be expressing his right to defend his life, and expressing it well.

The tiger is not better than the boar.

The boar is not better than the tiger.

It is a simple matter of capability, the movement of energy, the weight of power. The expression of rights.

The animals are free.

The human is only an animal.

One of the greatest mistakes mankind makes is the thinking of themselves as separate from the animals in the world. It is a mistake as we are not that special. The reasons that we do this are not that special either. Tigers probably consider themselves better than boars and boars surely are better, they must grunt to each other, than those bloody tigers!

It is a matter of skewed perspective.

Perspective that is also not special to humans. There is a type of bird in Iran that lives in a recognisable “family”. They share the food, share the preening, fall asleep on each other, take turns standing guard, scare off snakes and such. To see such activity in birds, an animal we do not normally anthropomorphise, is to see ourselves in an unusual other. I am always amazed at humanity’s judgement in this regard. I often meet people who state that there are, “Humans and then animals like elephants, oh, and of course, the fish in the sea and the birds – don’t forget the birds.”

I used to think this attitude was one of ignorance. A simple misunderstanding that the term “animal” means fish, birds and mammals such as humans and elephants. An ignorance of our place in the tree of life. But, it isn’t. It is something else. It is the placing of our minds, our consciousness, and our view of the world above that of the other life on the planet. We have achieved this distinction, this pedestal’ing, through one thing only: the expression of power. We think this because we have the power to do so.

Power, in this sense, is expressed in every way we can measure it, we convince ourselves it is true. Intelligence and the ability to kill with impunity for two. We tell ourselves that it is only natural, and it is, to kill to eat. Even vegetarians kill something that lives; it is the essential nature of life on Earth. What is wrong, what blinds us, is our made up justifications.

Our made up morality.

We do it with more than the “dumb beasts” outside in the world. We do it with each other too. The vast majority of humans are suffering from a terrible skewing of perspective. Their own. Their own life is somehow more important that anyone else’s. This leads to the most amazing level of self-serving justification for many things. The human mind naturally, it seems, manages to smooth over their own mistakes and horrible actions, sweeping them under the carpet, while all the time taking great pains in pointing out each other’s. Therefore, we tell ourselves that we are not ‘rude’, only ‘outspoken’. When someone tells you what he or she would do in their place, “Oh, I would have just smacked him” they say gruffly, with the scowl of fantasying visualisation, as though they actually did do that, they are actually simply confirming their own view of their place in the world. It is a kind of “king of the hill” moment probably common to all animals.

All life has some level of societal structure. It is, in the very least, the method that they have to reproduce.

When there are 6 billion of you, this is naturally a mesh of complex relationships floating one atop another. How you talk to your wife, your boss, your friends. How you treat strangers, old people and different people. All these layers mesh into how others see you and, in being in one place or another within the mesh, how your mind sees itself.

Tigers do this too. Just at simpler level.

Therefore, if all life acts in this way, if it is a commonality to see yourself as special, it becomes – like in a top-heavy fraction – something you can cancel out of the final reduction. This leads to the truth. Refreshing, but cold.

Your life has no more meaning as anyone else’s. Your right to defend yourself is exactly the same as someone else’s.

If that is the case, then the morality (that natural-perspective-judgement on the situation) cannot and should not enter into the decision you find yourself faced with.

And so here we are. We have swum, albeit briefly, down into the water of the pool and touched the bottom, only to now turn and reach back for the surface and another breath. Sometime soon, a full and slow dive will be needed, so that we may explore this strange underwater world in more depth. Consider this a quick pre-se.

Take a so called, “moral dilemma” of two soldiers shooting at each other. They are both in a fight to defend their life; they both have an equal right to survive. Just because one shoots first, because one has the drop on the other or because one flanks and has an easy kill, matters not one jot. The same as for the tiger. Both have the right to defend themselves and both are expressing that right. Just because one has the power to express that right more effectively than another is irrelevant.

Now, let us not jump ahead here to my conclusion, because perhaps it is not as you imagine from the above. For while, this may sound like I am expressing the ancient creed of, “might makes moral right,” if you think about it, I am not. I may not like the truth of this argument, but that doesn’t mean I should not face it, or I fall into the trap that it highlights. So, I am actually saying that there is no “moral right.” There is only an animal’s right to its life and its ability to express that right. A tiger is not morally right. It is just capable. Reality is without morals. Reality is natural.

If you accept that the tiger is not “wrong” for hunting the boar, if you realise that all living things takes energy from other creatures, if you realise that we delude ourselves when we raise humanity above the other life of this planet, then this argument naturally follows.

“Morality,” is our limited invention, this we already know, and we waste a lot of time scrabbling around trying to universalise this. What is now hopefully clearer is that morality is necessarily an illusion. A framework based on a selfish perspective on the world, a misunderstanding of our place on the planet, in the Universe(s).

Someone might now say to me, “But what of that ‘right,’ you mentioned? The right to life. Is that not the basis for a morality? The keystone upon which it all rests?”

Well, no. It is not. As I said, rights mean little without the power to express them. The right to life and the right to defend your life are clearly not things that prevent nature affecting you. You may, almost certainly will, one day become ill enough to threaten your life. Does that make the virus killing you “wrong?” Our moral judgements predicate that we put ourselves on a pedestal that blinds us to the reality we find ourselves in.

What does this mean for morality?

It leads to a simple truth, that is: “morally right” does not exist. Actions cannot be correctly and objectively judged under the frameworks we have built ourselves, because the complications, the un-weaving of the web of morality, is impossible and eventually limited to our own selfish perspectives.

Here is an everyday practical example. Today, 16th December 2009, the workers of British Airways announced that they were going on strike for the 12 days over Christmas. From the point of view of the news media, my mother and almost anyone outside this strike, this is a reprehensible action of moral outrage. Think of all the people, “whose Christmas is going to be ruined” is what we are urged to do. However, for the staff of BA who are going on strike, some sort of behaviour, some sort of management ‘evil’ has led to such a situation that they must strike to stop it. To them, they are doing the right thing. It is a morally right action to strike.

How can one unravel this situation and judge moral rights? Are the strikers right? Is the news media right? What about those affected by the strike? Are they morally right to complain? They will miss Christmas, what if one of them is going to the sick bed of a dying relative? Does that make the strike wrong? What if one of them is going to the sick bed of a recovering relative that they plan to murder? Does that make the strike right?

This maze, this puzzle with no answer, is the essential dilemma that cannot be unravelled ahead of time. A group of expert Philosophers might be try to unravel it and after years pronounce that yes, or no, the strike was morally right or wrong, but what would be the point? Not only will have the strike passed, but clearly no one could have decided the correct action ahead of time. If morals can only look back, then they lose much of their worth.

Why?

Because, they rely on the illusion of perspective. Who is to judge? Who is impartial? No one.

There is no real “moral right” or “moral wrong” and certainly the attempt to judge as such using the common framework is fruitless. Countries that try to make moral decisions before attacking do so only in terms of their own perspectives. For example, take America. They are not interested in anyone else’s perspective in the slightest. Any attempt to arrive at a judgement outside the self-serving American one is met with incredible violence. That is why America lets no soldier face trial in the International Court. That is why America has passed a law legalising (to themselves) the potential invasion of Holland.

That is the height of illusion. The attempt to force your perspective onto the world through the strength of your country. Eventually it will necessarily fail. It cannot do anything else.

So, lets us take war.

War is neither right nor wrong. It is tragic, spiteful, unnecessary and – from the moral perspective of those attacked – “wrong.” It is however, not actually “morally wrong” since such a judgement is impossible to decode from the web that surrounds any action, let alone a country’s actions, or a President’s actions.

We can make up some rules, but then so can anyone. We can moralise, but we can only do this within the framework of the community we live in, and in the well of self-centred illusion we all wallow in.

What can be done?

That is a much more difficult question. I am a Daoist. My perspective is that of Daoism. Therefore, my answer is going to be one expressing Daoist values. To the Daoist, one should always live in tune with nature. Expressions made naturally and peacefully. Not beat oneself up about moral rights and wrongs and simply allow all to be. However, as a philosopher, I can use the tools and skills taught to me. But, I must recognise the futility of this. My tools are those of my society passed to me. My training is based in a Western model of understanding, stretching back all the way to Plato. I must sublime these two parts of myself.

To find an answer that is correct we must face the facts. It is the whole framework that is wrong. Our natural-perspective-judgement had built a collection of self-serving, selfish, cruel, and deluded societies based on a simple false predicate; morality can be judged. Well, I am sorry, it can’t.

This is also a moment of pause, for I am also not suggesting that the Hippies had it right either. I am not particularly a pacifist. I am a, if I may borrow a phrase, a “naturalist”.

For me, the answer is this: life is not about goals and wants. Life is not about desire. By stripping away the illusion surrounding us, we can realise a connection with life and nature that naturally leads to peace. Desire for things, for objects, for control, for domination, is a waste of everyone’s time and effort. A waste of life. Desire for stuff, for iPhones, Playstations, houses, for “owning”, is wasted life.

I spoke to someone the other day, who was unhappy about their life, and wishing it was more like so-and-so’s. “Why should they have all that? Why can’t I have some of that life, they are so lucky.” Really? I know the other party well. They are no happier than the first. No morally better off. No personally richer. They just have more “stuff”. This is not the path to happiness. This is not the path to peace. Peace comes from a realisation of reality, a realisation that leads to “letting go of grasping”, to contentment. In a society built upon the need for “stuff”, for consumption, for capitalism, one can never reach a level of peace. The society will always want more, the individual will always be unhappily grasping.

In a way the capitalist society already knows this. Consuming is life to most. The country is setup to drive this consumerism in a feedback mechanism that is considered the drive to growth. The idea is that this mechanism (called, “The Market”) is the natural order. It is really a way of growing wild and dangerous. Like the marbles bouncing down the stairs, we are unable to stop the momentum of this mechanism (after all I am writing this on the train to work!). Where does it lead? If wanting things is a way of existing – if it can be called that – It is actually a way to frustration, to desire driving action.

It leads to destruction.

Destruction of the people, the planet and the person. This is commonly expressed as war. For what is war than simply one nation trying to take the “stuff” of another? Sure, all sorts of excuses are made up for this, usually the argument of acting in self defence. An argument that tries to claim the “country” involved is only expressing the “right” I mentioned at the beginning of this article. But, as I also mentioned, countries don’t have rights. Only living things do. Countries, as we know them, are made up of people all lost in the two illusions, those of desire and the excuses of natural-perspective-judgements to explain those desires. To call them morals.

We say that life is like a journey, with a reward waiting at the end. But, really, life is like a dance, and one you will only dance once.

So, having – as my friend would say – “rooting around in the mud”, we come to the end. In the end the conclusion is one of practical advice ahead of the fact, advice most cannot give from the truth I expounded at the beginning, only from a huge framework of “moral laws”.

Here it is:

For the general expressing his countries “will”, the action cannot be judged to be wrong. Nor can it be judged to be right. Invading one city, bypassing another, killing in the name of, is what it is. It is a heck of a lot of dead people.

Remember that.

For the pilot pressing his bombing button, the tank commander ordering, “fire!” and the missileer targeting a city, you are not immoral, but neither are you moral. Don’t believe such a thing is necessary, it is not. No one can tell you that it is the “right” thing to do.

Act on your own conscience.

For the soldier trapped in the web of those who live in illusion about the nature of life (including himself), if he has the ability to express his right to life, then he is never wrong. Killing in war is not wrong. But, neither is it right. There is no moral right and wrong. Only the chaos of life, the disorder of perspective and the illusion of desires. Defending one’s right to life is never wrong, in the sense that this is not a waste of life to do so. While you can decide to sacrifice yourself, realise, understand, you are neither right nor wrong.

You are only dancing.

Basho.

Agree? Disagree?  Then step up to the plate my friend and join the debate! You can leave a comment here or email me through the form at the top.

Introduction

They say the better part of travelling is meeting the people from the countries you visit.  They do not say how much that meeting will affect you, neither how heartbreaking such encounters can be.  The first time I met a one legged man in Laos, while visiting COPE – the charity for the war injured, I asked him how he lost his leg?

“The American’s took it,” he replied.

What can one say to that? 

Such emotionally confronting sights are common in South East Asia if you let yourself see them.  Too many of the people who come here simply gloss over the lives of the people they encounter.  Too many go home and say, “Oh South East Asia is alright, beautiful countryside… but so many beggars!”  Without giving any thought to what this means and what causes people to beg on the streets.  Beg, not because they want money for a drug addiction, simply because there is no governmental help for the war-wounded and having no legs, fingers or arms is a lifelong barrier to entry to almost anywhere.

We have spent the last three months travelling all over SEA with our eyes wide open.  In fact, we decided to go all the way and visited all the disabled workshops, children’s orphanages and museums that we could.  We have met with Cambodians missing limbs, Children Orphaned by AID’s, Vietnamese who fought against the US and Laotians struggling to come to terms with their ravaged country.  Along the way, we have visited many of the actual areas attacked by or affected by the war, spoken with war photographers who captured the images that define the war and run our hands over the pockmarked remains of war equipment.  This is not very hard to do.  Simply visit Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam and you cannot help but see if you only look.

However, the results are not pretty.

Read more by clicking here:

Through all this I have held off commenting on the war, known to those in Vietnam as “The American War,” until I actually left the area.  This is because millions of people in South East Asia are still feeling the effects of the conflict everyday and by being there I was in danger of missing perspective on the big-picture.  I wanted to be far enough away from it all to be able to get some context before I commented.

That is why this blog entry exists.  We left the area in February, bound for India, and after much discussion between us, I feel I can properly write about the American War.

Historical Outline

Everyone knows about the war in Vietnam, right?  Wrong.  Before coming here, 90% of the information I had about the Vietnam War was created by the US movie industry.  I grew up watching Platoon, Hamburger Hill and The Deer Hunter.  To me the Vietnamese were slant-eyed nightmares who charged the noble US grunts fighting for freedom in the jungle.  Before I left home, I had neither any idea where Laos was nor had I known the tragic history of Cambodia (all I knew was that it didn’t look like Kansas).

If you are in the same situation, here is a quick outline of what actually happened in easy to understand steps. 

Caveat.

Please keep in mind that while I do have some qualifications as a historian, I have not attempted to be definitive here in any sense other than intentions. Some of the numbers happened at the same time and some may be out of order.  I have linked all my sources in the endnotes of the article.

The War

1. The French took over a lot of SEA apart from Malaysia, which was British owned thanks to a British adventurer who had his balls shot off.

2. The Japanese invaded in WWII and “kicked them all out”.

3. The British, US (via sea), Australasians’ and free people of SEA defeated the Japanese.

4. The French tried to get their empire back.

The French landing back in SEA were confident of victory

5. They were defeated by the Vietnamese in battle.

 

A soldier begs for the end to battle

6. Meanwhile the Chinese went communist.

7. The US invented the idea that since China was next to the USSR and SEA was next to China, a dangerous “Domino Effect” might spread Communism as far south as taking over Australia.  This shows a mighty misunderstanding of the Australian temperament.

8. Ho Chi Min declares his country separate and his view communist.

Ho Chi Min (Centre in white)

9. The King of Cambodia declares his leanings communist after a long visit to China.

10. All parties agreed to avoid war or get involved.

11. All parties ignored this agreement and the US started “advising” South Vietnam.

12. The South Vietnam regime is blood thirsty and even uses the guillotine. Much like the reports of the North then.

The guillotine of Deim

13. The South Vietnam leader is assassinated, which shocked Kennedy.

Kennedy and US Defence Secretary Robert Mcnamara

14. Kennedy is assassinated.

15. The US either engineer, or allows to happen, the Gulf of Tonkin incident securing a declaration of war.

16. The US strategy in the war is similar to the “Shock and Awe” tactic used in the 2nd Gulf War.  They believe that the communists will eventually quit.  Thus, it becomes a war of attrition.  This later proved a wrong move (see endnotes).

A US base comes under attack

17. The Vietnamese do not give up and build a very long road that weaves in and out of Vietnam and Laos, which allows them to go around the north/south divide in Vietnam.  This is known as the “Ho Chi Min Trail.”

 

When the trail was blown up the VC simply carried their equipment

18. The Laos army tries to stop this and the Vietnamese start a revolution/uprising/civil-war in Laos.

19. Laos’ king asks the US to help after being left somewhat in the lurch by the French.  They start a secret CIA led war in Laos by using the highland Hmong tribes as soldiers supported by the US airforce (directed by the famous Ravens). This war is against the Pathet Lao communists supplied by the Vietnamese.

One of the Raven spotter planes

20. The US uses most of their airforce in Laos to bomb the HCM Trail.  In fact, the bomb they crap out of it with cluster bombs, high explosives, soap and anything else they can think of.  Nothing works to stem the flow and many of the bombs do not explode.  The rest they use against the Pathet Lao around the Plain of Jars.

Bombing runs in Vietnam

21. The US government says to the people that the war will soon be won; the communists are weakened and cannot fight anymore.

 

The US president Johnson talks the talk

22. In reality the communists threaten the Khe San base to such an extent the US commanders plan on using short range nukes to defend it.

23. The Khe San offensive turns out to be a ruse by the Vietnamese and they have been secretly digging tunnels to Saigon (the Cu Chi tunnels).  On the eve of the Tet celebrations (New Year – around mid Jan) the Vietnamese attack everywhere from these tunnels.

A US soldier orders up help during the Tet offensive

24. These resulting battles are all won by the US, but the public realise that they have been lied to and the US have to pull out.

 

Nixon describes the pull out of troops

25. Without US support Vietnam falls to the HCM forces.

26. Laos falls to the Pathet Lao and the Hmong are all killed or flee around the world.  Many now live in the US.  Some, amazingly, still live in the Laos hills avoiding the Laotian army.

27. Cambodia is in civil war at this point and the communist Khmer Rouge win the conflict in many ways thanks to the king (who is still in China) publically supporting them.

28. The Thai / Cambodian border is mined.  A lot.

29. The Khmer Rouge move into the capital of Cambodia amid celebrations, but they have another agenda.  They announce that all the people must leave the city immediately.  Anyone who argues is shot on the spot.  Those hiding in the French embassy are forced to leave and shot.

30. The Khmer Rouge forces the people of the cities of Cambodia to work in the fields as farmers.  Anyone who argues is shot.

31. The Khmer Rouge leader starts rounding up people who do not fit his plans, basically educated people.  Has them all seriously tortured and then taken out to fields and beaten around the head until dead.  This is a staggering amount of people.

32. The Khmer Rouge then tries to take over Southern Vietnam.

33. The Vietnamese invade Cambodia, knock over the Khmer Rouge in two weeks and turn Cambodia into a vassal state only allowed to buy products from the Vietnamese (much like Laos then).

34. Thousands of Laotians start to die from Unexploded US Ordinances (UXO’s) every year.

35. Thousands of Cambodians step on land mines every year.

36. Thousands of Vietnamese start developing strange symptoms and having children with very serious birth defects.  This is traced to “Agent Orange” that the US dropped on the jungles of Vietnam.  “Agent Orange” contains some of the worst ingredients imaginable. Top of the list is Dioxin – look it up.  Its claimed effect was to defoliate the areas hiding VC troops (Chu Chi for example), but the ingredients basically kill all life, not just trees.

37. Australia does not become communist.

That is the basics.  There is much more to it than that, but this is enough for you to be going on with.  What is clear from the history of the area is that the US hates Communism.  Hates it to such an extent that they almost nuked the country they were trying to defend to stop it.  That’s some hate.

Why?

What is so wrong with Communism?

Well, nothing in particular, but it is essentially a people supposedly without rich and poor.  Equality.  Which doesn’t seem so bad until you realise how screwed up some of the attempts to implement the idea have been. 

Take Cambodia.  There, the Khmer Rouge were inspired by Maoist Communism and yet decided that it was not going far enough.  They tried to force the entire Cambodian people back into a simple farming life, a basic existence, by shooting anyone who said anything against it. 

Alternatively, take Laos, the Pathet Lao won the war and changed the country forever.  Consequently, Laos is one of the world’s poorest countries; it has elections but only one party is on the ballot. 

The issue is not so much that a share-alike egalitarian culture is a bad idea, only that it has not been successfully implemented yet (Kerala in India not withstanding- it’s only a state).  To the US though, it is more than this.  The US is essentially designed as a country that rewards striving for wealth.  The idea that a man is due the full value of his work in the pursuit of happiness.  This is the “American Dream.”  What it leads to is a country split between those who have and those who have not.  Those who have: have a lot, and those who have not: have bugger all. 

The government is highly influenced by those who have and they were not about to give it all up to those who have not, right!?  Bingo.  The people who have won the “American Dream” deeply fear to lose their cut of the world’s profit.  This fear underpins almost all US aggression around the world.  The rest is just marketing; the picking of a bogyman and sticking it to him.

The Aftermath

The aftermath of the American War is the greater tragedy. 

Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge was one of the most bloodthirsty murdering governments in history.  One really has to get Biblical to match them.  Would such a group have prevailed if not for the war?  This is perhaps something that no one could have predicted.  However, their legacy is still with us today; anyone over 35 in Cambodia lived through the Khmer Rouge government.  That in itself is an achievement and the scars are everywhere.  There is honestly something in the eyes, something in the attitude of Cambodians, which is not yet healed; the entire country is still emotionally broken.  Mostly, this is due to the lack of justice done on the Khmer leaders.  Pol Pot died under house arrest escaping a trial, and even the man who ran the Tuol Sleng Centre (also known as S-21) has not been tried yet.  The ringleaders of the Khmer Rouge are all dying of old age before being judged.  Its not that putting octogenarians into jail is going to protect anyone, but the country needs to judge these people as wrong.  Only then can the healing begin. 

The horror of S-21 and the Killing Fields

So what’s stopping it?  The Khmer Rouge have simply faded into a new skin: that of the Communist Party.  The trials are therefore all being held up and so justice and healing for the Cambodian people is still a long way off.

When visiting Cambodia, a number of things tug at your heartstrings.  That is, after they are through tugging your arms.  The whole country is awash with children who are forced to work.  In many cases this is a genuine need for the family to supplement its income, but it does not change the fact that these children are everywhere.  Everywhere but school.

Child workers sell theirs wares and services to a
Western Lady

The second thing also tugs at you.  At your ankles.  So many people have lost limbs through stepping on mines, or though the war, that you encounter them all the time.  In certain places you will encounter one every ten minutes.  Cesca and I went to a performance by an invalided acting troop in Siem Reap and saw firsthand the mental effects and stigma of having such injuries in a country without a social service.  Begging becomes their only hope.

The disabled acting troop in Siem Reap

Thus, the cycle perpetuates itself.  In fact, for the children at least, selling bracelets, massages and themselves on the beaches of Cambodia is a real career choice.  I remember Cesca asking one little girl what she wanted to do when she was grown up.  “Doctor!” came the reply.  Cesca was moved enough to buy the proffered item; why not to help a girl in her ambitions?  Twenty minutes later another girl came up and she wanted to be a doctor as well.  So did the next one after that.  It seems that “becoming a doctor” means more sales because Western people respect doctors a lot.

Small things like that work on you.  They gnaw.  Cambodians are great people- friendly, helpful and smart.  They need a break, but for now, they are broken.

Laos

The US really wanted to save Laos. I say that now because this is the only redeeming quality for what they did to this country.  It was akin to saving a man from robbery by shooting him in the head.  In addition, official history has not been kind to them on this score- the Pathet Lao, now the government, has very subtly changed the version of events in its official histories.  As far as they are concerned the US were fighting against the Laotians, not for them.  Such a dichotomy partially explains the over-bombing of Laos, making it the most bombed country in the world, when in fact the truth is far worse. 

The US bombed the hell out of Laos to try to save it.

Of all the countries to suffer from the American War, Laos is the one left with the longest legacy.  The entire eastern side of the country is littered with unexploded bombs of all types.  Even monstrously large B52 bombs are regularly dug up. On one video we watched they found two in the road between two schools.  Both armed, both ready to blow if knocked.  Aside from the big stuff, Laos was cluster bombed to hell and back.  Cluster munitions, called bombies by the children of Laos, are small cricket ball sized bombs of varying types. 

A collection of deactivate cluster bombs (bombies) made into an art exhibition at COPE

The idea is that the cluster container opens and disperses these bombies over a large area.  The problem is that they often did not explode; in order to prime the basic type requires a number of rotations.  If they hit a paddy field before the required count or snag a tree and stop spinning then they will often not explode.  That is until picked up or disturbed by a local.  Then they will blast out 200 red-hot ball bearings in all directions.  Mixed in with such devices were all sorts of ‘special’ bombies.  Some are smaller, some are meaner, but by far the most terrifying is the Spider Mine.  On landing, this bombie shoots out trip wires in four directions and blows up the first thing that crosses them-

Usually a child.

You see, Laos is so poor that scrap metal is worth serious money.  Little children all want to get the bounty on scrap and so regularly hunt for Bombies.  This is too often a tale with the most tragic ending imaginable.  I cannot think of anything worse than children blown to bits by cluster bombs dropped by an ally in order to protect their culture. 

That is exactly what happens every day here.

Laos was the country that stole our hearts in SEA.  It has an innocence about it that belies the fact that a fair percentage of the population is living with the threat of being blown to bits every single time they step out their door.  It is testament to their innocence that they do not realise that this is not normal.

Perhaps they are waking up.  The government of Laos is a classic Eastern Block Communism but now with capitalist overtones.  The opening of the country to international trade has started a chain reaction that will eventually lead to change, even if that change is violent.  Necessity will drive it.  For now Laos is a wondrous mix of countryside Asia unchanged for 100 years and French inspired food and drink.  The beer in Laos is one of the very best in the entire world and in the capital you can get a brilliant steak dinner for pocket change. 

The simple Mekong Life – how long will it last?

The visitor numbers are increasing and it will not be long before this travel trade, properly directed, will make a real difference.  Much of the conversation held between backpackers is on the subject of the travel trade in Laos.  The question is, “will the money made from travel affect Laos in a good or bad way?”  Already the town of Vang Vieng is given over to supplying tourists with drink, drugs, endless episodes of Friends and riverfront clubbing.

Lao T-Shirts, great but only for tourists.

To those harmed by bombs it is already too late, but organisations such as MAG (Mine Action Group) are trying to de-bomb Laos by 2012.  On our visit to their headquarters, they showed us a computer drawn map of the amount of Unexploded Ordinance in Laos.  Each bomb sortie was a red dot.  The entire eastern side of the country was red with so many dots that they all blended together.  You can see the data yourself online using Google Earth.  We donated all we could to MAG and hope they achieve their projected clear date as each year adds more misery to this already burdened country.

Downtime in Vang Vieng

Vietnam

Vietnam’s issue is not with UXO’s – although they do exist and like Cambodia, you should never walk off the path, nor is it to do with societal mental damage.  In Vietnam, they have sorted through the American War and put the blood very firmly on the hands of the US.  In Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) there is a very good museum to the war that pulls no punches to tell you what the US did to these people.  However, it did not break them.  The Vietnamese are proud of their achievements.  Proud to have won what, was from their point of view, a war of independence.  I could not help but be impressed by both their attitude to it and indeed their industrious attitude to the future.  So, what is the damage here?

Basho considers facing one of these monster US tanks in battle – they are scary enough when decommissioned.

Two things. Firstly, one man you meet fought against the US, the next fought for them.  This has a dividing effect on the country and while the north/south border has physically gone, the mental border is still there.  Still, that is no worse than in England.  The second, and far worse thing, is the way the world see’s Vietnam is through US war movies.  I watched Rambo cut down multitudes of evil VC in the Rambo: Part 2 movie.  I saw Platoon portray the VC as simple targets.  I have seen them dehumanised repeatedly.  Even the films that try and “apologise” for the war, like The Deer Hunter, shows the VC in a way that would be scorned if it were – say – the Japanese.

I have seen a man in Ho Chi Min take his children for a walk to the same park every day.  Feed them breakfast on the grass, play with them and watch over them.  He did not fit a stereotype I was force fed all my life, he was simply a good father.

This Hollywood movie misrepresentation leaves the Vietnamese with a lot of catching up to do even today.  I lost count of the number of people who warned me against the Vietnamese culture.  Many said that they were rude, hostile and not friendly.  This malignment was quickly banished on arrival.  I have to say that the Vietnamese are some of the nicest people we have yet met on our journey and all through the country the same smiling faces greeted us.  We felt very welcome, even when chatting to a man who had lost his arm during the war.  They are proud of the war.  Such wounds are worn with pride here.

 

The modern Tet celebration has a real buz about it.  It is everyone’s birthday, the New Year and the “surge that changed the war” all rolled into one. Great fireworks.

Conclusion

In 50 years time, will we be writing posts like this about Iraq?  The amount chaos left in South East Asia is truly tragic.  Death and destruction to prevent a theory, a theory that said if SEA falls to the “commies” that “western” people may be next.  The real fear the US had was a fear of about its own societal core, it is after all a very young country and such upheavals always seem more possible.  It is no gratification that the US even turned on its own people to flush out possible communists with the advent of the “Reds under the bed” and McCarthyism.  It is, I guess, just another part of the tragedy of the American War in South East Asia.

Regards,

Basho

Endnotes:

Where the note is marked “(WIKI)”, it is linked to Wikipedia.  Note that this brilliant website is not the be all and end all of factual information on anything.  It is, however, a very good place to start.