John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN SCOOPY WEB
“A new art installation at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, called “Above and Beyond,” features over 58,000 replica dog tags — one for each American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.”
_____________
Response to another reader who asked where are the million dog tags for the Vietnamese killed:
Indeed, and the number is actually greater.
Total estimated losses for Vietnam are 3 million.
After all, America tried every new filthy idea it could come up with there, from massive carpet bombing to early versions of cluster bombs, to say nothing of napalm.
In the CIA's Operation Phoenix, somewhere between 20 thousand and 40 thousand alone had their throats cut in the middle of the night by belly-crawling American special forces. These victims were civilians, typically people such as village mayors and other officials. It was an effort to destroy leadership and dispirit the people.
Add to that the horrors of landmines and a sea of Agent Orange left behind to kill and mangle and cause birth defects for decades more.
Of course, another million died in Cambodia's Killing Fields.
And who was responsible for toppling the neutralist government of Cambodia, a government which remained peaceful despite American pressure, allowing the Khmer Rouge guerillas to take over the country?
You're right if you guessed the United States with its long series of illegal, secret bombings and mini-invasions ("incursions").
And after the bloody Khmer Rouge took over and started its slaughter, the United States did absolutely nothing to stop them. Finally, the Vietnamese, despite their own years of immense war suffering, attacked them.
It's a glorious record for America, to be sure.
One to be proud of. A genuine holocaust begun just 20 years after the Nazi Holocaust.
Certainly, something to commemorate.
It is why I thought the Vietnam War Memorial was remarkably, surprisingly appropriate when it first appeared, a plain dark wall of names sunk into the ground almost as though to commemorate shame. Washington has since managed to spoil the effect with various groups of heroic bronze statues.
