Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 09:44:58 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: M-TH: Heroes in Vietnam


I've been getting angrier and angrier the past couple of days over a big
story in the Swedish papers (and not just there).

A page of the foreign news was dominated by the headline: "Heroes back in
Vietnam", and then we could read about how three Americans stopped a lot of
other Americans from slaughtering a few of the still-surviving civilians at
My Lai, how they were (at long last) honoured for it and how they were
guests of honour at a ceremony in My Lai to commemorate the massacre. The
butcher Calley, protected, honoured and pardoned by President Nixon, was
tucked away in two or three lines.

The anger comes from the dialectical character of the event. See it in a
wholly American frame, and the heroism of the two men (which is undoubted,
in the limited context) becomes the big deal. See it as what it was, an
incident in a vicious imperialist war of subjugation, and the true
proportions emerge. The real heroes are the Vietnamese fighting for their
national freedom and socialism, and those Americans who fought to stop the
US war effort -- like Bob Malecki, who is still today refused entry to his
home country, the US, suffering the consequences of the heroic position he
took, along with too few others, back while the war was in progress.

During the war, this incident received very little publicity -- the choices
for the US propaganda machine in relation to the My Lai massacre were clear
-- our guys (Calley) and the gooks. Now that twenty years have passed and
the Vietnam syndrome still hasn't gone away, it's time to bring in
Hollywood to spin the thing, so we get all the emphasis on the good guys,
human beings in uniform.

But they were still there as if they had no choice but to fight for the
imperialists, and as if the whole war was a tragic misunderstanding. But
the imperialist troops should never have been there in the first place!

And now it looks as if Vietnam itself is being sucked into this criminal
revision of the history of the war -- at least I haven't seen any
repudiation of the US media sob story from that direction.

I don't begrudge the life-savers their honour -- they showed great courage.
I do begrudge them the lying prominence of their story when the real story
is still hidden behind a screen of lies and imperialist propaganda.

All honour to Bob and all those with him who fought to break the US
imperialist war machine!

End the sanctions against Bob Malecki and all those with him who are still
being punished for their opposition to a criminal war!

No to the restoration of capitalism in Vietnam and China!

For a socialist Vietnam and a socialist federation of South-East Asia!


In anger,

Hugh




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