November 11th is Veterans Day and Remembrance Day
During the past two years, the US military has lost more men and women to suicide than it has to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Congress.org]
My thoughts exactly…(although in my Canadian’s words)
In the United States they call it “The Vietnam War”, here in Vietnam, they call it “The American War”. Who won this war (if you want to be technical though it wasn’t actually a war for the United States because of a technicality with Congress)? There are still many Americans that think they won…
This photo makes my heart hurt.
the media tends to focus on males when portraying children that are participating in wars in advertisements, but it is important to note that while women are mainly used in human trafficking & sexual slavery to more economically developed countries, women are also used in the military forces in their home-countries.
(via natenotes)
(via sanityscraps)
Lupe Fiasco, Part 1
Now, I’m not usually the biggest rap buff but there are two songs by Lupe Fiasco with lyrics too powerful to be ignored. As its lyrics apply to the work I have done in the past and hope to continue with in the future, I want to start with some of the lyrics to Little Weapon. They break my heart and even if you don’t like rap, read the lyrics. Remind yourself that there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the world younger than 18, some as young as 8, and be thankful for the life you lead. I know I am.
“Little Terry got a gun, he got from the store,
He bought it with the money he got from his chores,
He robbed candy shop told her ‘lay down on the floor,’
Put the cookies in his bag took the pennies out the drawer.
Little Kalil got a gun he got from the rebels,
To kill the infidels and American devils,
A bomb on his waist,
A mask on his face,
Prays five times a day,
And listens to Heavy Metal.
Little Alex got a gun he took from his dad,
That he snuck into school in his black book bag,
His black nail polish, black boots and black hair,
He’s gonna blow away the bully that just pushed his ass…
I killed another man today,
Shot him in his back as he ran away,
Then I blew up his hut with a hand grenade,
Cut his wife’s throat as she put her hands to pray,
Just five more dawgs then we can get a soccer ball,
That’s what my commander say,
How Old?
Well I’m like ten, eleven, been fighting since I was like six or seven,
Now I don’t know much about where I’m from but I know I strike fear everywhere I come,
Government want me dead so I wear my gun, I really want the rocket launcher but I’m still too young,
This candy give me courage not to fear no one,
To fear no pain, and hear no tongue,
So I hear no screams and I shed no tear,
If I’m in your dreams then your end is near.
Little Weapon,
We’re calling you
There’s a war
if the guns are just too tall for you
We’ll find you something small to use
Little Weapon
We need you now, pow
Now here comes the march of the boy brigade
A macabre Parade of the toys he made
And in Shimmer shades who looks half his age
About half the size of the flags they waved
And Camouflage suits that made to fit youths
‘cause the ones of the dead soldiers hang a little loose
And AK-47’s that they shooting into heaven
Like they’re trying to kill the Jetson’s
They struggle little recruits
Cute Smileless, Heartless, violent
Childhood destroyed, devoid of all childish ways,
Can’t write their own names or read the words on their own graves
Think you gangster popped a few rounds,
These kids will come through and murder a whole town,
Then sit back and smoke and watch it burn down,
The grave gets deeper the further we go down
Last week, my Canadian and I went on a mission to find B-52 lake. Despite the fact that I’m sure many visitors to Hanoi would love to see this, it remains below the tourist radar and finding it is no easy feat. We looked it up on the map and set out but after we found the closest main road, we didn’t quite know where to turn. We drove along the side streets, periodically stopping to ask a shopkeeper “Ho B-nam-hai ao dau?” (where is B52 lake?). When we finally stumbled upon it, it was barely marked but the remnants of a large bomber made it pretty evident that we’d found the right place.
This plane was shot down during the Christmas bombings of 1972. It landed in this small “lake” and hasn’t been touched since. It’s somewhat a shock to the system to see this stark fragment of war amidst cafes and family homes, but it couldn’t have been a more perfect time for me to go see it. I had just finished Bare feet, Iron Will, an incredible book encompassing various interviews with Vietnamese soldiers and civilians who had experienced the war against America. The book is truly the first of it’s kind; the first to give the Vietnamese a chance to speak on their experiences during the war. Amazingly, it was compiled and annotated by a US soldier whose father had been in the Navy against the Vietnamese. Seeing the shot-down pieces of this bomber, questions rushed through my mind. “Who flew this plane? What happened to him? Who shot it down? Who lived here, in this small side street, when the plane came crashing to earth?” The one sign giving information in English didn’t answer any of these questions. I’m sure I could find the answers to the first two if I looked them up in google but what about the second two? In the US, we spend a good amount of time in school studying the Vietnam War but how many first person accounts do we hear from the Vietnamese? We hear about the horrible things done on both sides but the focus is often on how the soldiers felt upon their return home. What about the actual politics of what happened? What about what happened to the Vietnamese during and after the war? How much do we, as students and civilians, ever really learn about the people we were, and are, fighting?
As I looked at the destroyed bomber, I kept coming back to a quote by Bao Ninh, the author of Sorrow of War and a Viet Cong soldier.
“While war is brutal and illogical, perhaps the ultimate ‘sorrow of war’ is we learn, only after the shooting stops, how much we share in common with our enemies.”
“To residents of Hanoi during the war, “Kham Thien” has special meaning. It is a name symbolic of the terrible suffering and tragedy visited upon the civilian population during the Christmas bombings of 1972.
On December 13, 1972, the Paris peace talks had stalled. Washington determined Hanoi was only using the bombing halt, called as a result of the scheduled talks, to continue infiltrating troops into the south. President Nixon wanted to send Hanoi a strong message - one designated to bring the Vietnamese back to the negotiating table. On December 18, 1972, Nixon authorized Operation Linebacker II, or what came to be known as the “Christmas Bombing” of Hanoi and Haiphong. Conducted by the US Air Force, the operation continued through December 29.
Daytime attacks were conducted by tactical strike aircraft; night attacks by B-52s and F-111s. Military targets such as airfields, antiaircraft batteries, surface-to-air missile sites, railroads and storage facilities were hit repeatedly during the eleven-day period.
The actual damage inflicted upon Hanoi and Haiphong during this bombing period was not limited to just military targets. An unfortunate consequence of war is that collateral damage always occurs. On the evening of December 26, US aircraft inflicted extensive collateral damage upon the residents of Hanoi as thirty-nine bombs fell on Kham Thien Street.”
from “Bare feet, Iron Will” by James G. Zumwalt
When I first moved to Hanoi, my apartment was on Kham Thien Street. Even though the war between the USA and Vietnam is still a prevalent part of our cultural history in the States, it isn’t talked about with the same frequency or intensity here. Although we study the Vietnam War in school in the USA, I hadn’t know the details of the “Christmas Bombings” when I moved here. When I found myself at the Hanoi Hilton for the second time with my Canadian, I noticed a picture I hadn’t paid attention to the first time. My breath caught in my throat as I read the caption “Kham Thien Street, December 1972.” I couldn’t believe that the street I had lived so happily on for four months was simply a pile of rubble just 40 years earlier. I don’t have the constant reminder of the war here that I was expecting but every now and then something will remind me of the horrors experienced here and the true resilience of the Vietnamese people.
One of my students today told me excitedly that we have 4 days off next week, this sounded vaguely familiar so I asked “what’s the celebration?” She said “it’s independence day!!! When we defeated the…uhh…” She looks at her friend inquisitively and her friend rolls her eyes and says “Mỹ!” (which means USA in Vietnamese). My student gasps and covers her mouth, says “Oops! Sorry!” and smiles. She is a 25 year old business woman (not one of my kids). This is an example of how far gone the “American War” is from the cultural memories of many of the young Vietnamese. So different from how the “Vietnamese War” is in the States.
In the midst of war, our human nature to love, even the descendants of our enemies, still prevails in one way or another.
what an unbelievably striking picture
(Source: anitaoxoxo, via onellabella)
