Anti-Americana: Historical Optimism

 

"Vietnam Will Win! America Will Lose!" reads this Chinese poster, probably from the early 1960s. I'm not 100% sure of this poster's provenance, and would love to know more about it. The illustration shows a crowd of peasants attacking an American soldier; usually the careful compositions of Chinese propaganda art showed a measured balance between civilians, militia, and military. Also, I'm pretty sure the Chinese characters used predate the simplification engineered in the PRC in the 1950s, and there is no use of Pinyin, which seemed to appear on most Chinese posters predating the Cultural Revolution. 

As for the slogan, of course it turned out to be quite accurate. A myth of the invincibility of US imperialism emerged somewhere between the Spanish-American War and World War II, that the US always emerged victorious from war. This myth is largely preserved in popular consciousness, even though it's quite far from the truth.

The U.S. failed to make a decisive victory in its first major post-WWII engagement, Korea. Unable to defeat the North Koreans, who were heavily backed by the Soviet Union and more importantly the new People's China, the best the US could achieve was a military stalemate, easily claimed as a victory by the North. Vietnam ended in the ignominious collapse of a massive American war effort. Cuba brushed off the CIA attack at Giron in 1961. Some minor US engagements, on might call them episodes of bullying, like Grenada and Panama, ended in decisive US victories. However, its two wars in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, while victorious in battlefield terms, probably count as net political defeats. The US seemed to win the cold war, though the resurgence of no-longer-even-claiming-to-be-socialist Russia on the international scene in the last few years makes it clear that that victory might have been only politically solid, leaving a potential military opponent standing.

Surely the US is hungry for a clear military success. Let's hope that proves elusive in Syria... or Iran.

Anti-Americana: Remember Norman Morrison, I Am Today and You Are Forever

I don't usually run two Anti-Americana features in a row, but the onslaught of pro-war propaganda as the Obama regime and his bipartisan allies attempt furiously to drum up support for their apocalyptic attack on Syria seems to demand it. Shown is a stamp from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam, issued in 1965 to honor "Noman Morixon," otherwise known as Norman Morrison. The stamp shows Morrison's smiling face, shown above an apparently American anti-Vietnam war demonstration with signs in English.

Morrison would be eighty this year had he not sacrificed his own life to protest the Vietnam War, then rapidly escalating. Morrison was a devout pacifist Quaker; in November of 1965 he doused himself with gasoline and burned himself to death in front of Robert McNamara's Pentagon office in Washington, D.C. Self-immolation has, of course, a long and tragically noble tradition, from the South Vietnamese monks who Morrison was probably emulating, to Mohammed Bouazizi of Tunisia who set off the Arab spring with his own supreme sacrifice.

Morrison became a folk hero in Vietnam. An incredibly moving poem about Morrison, his daughter Emily, who he carried along with him on the day of his death, and his act of political and social protest, was written by Vietnamese poet To Huu. I tracked down the poem, in its original Vietnamese with English translation, on a Vietnamese blog of poetry, Tay Bui, which I repost below. It's angry, profane, and really evocative of both the moment of Morrison's sacrifice and the horrible murderous moment in Vietnam he was protesting. Be sure to go to the original blog and thank the blogmaster for making this powerful poem available. Tay Bui offers some further information on Morrison in English and in Vietnamese.

I weep that once again, as warships steam toward Syria, this refrain of tragedy has the ring of now. It's past time to rid the world of the scourge of U.S. aggression, once more under the false flag of humanitarianism. How many more will die this time?

Emily, Child (Ê mi-ly, con)

Ê mi-ly, con đi cùng cha
Emily, come with me
Sau khôn lớn con thuộc đường, khỏi lạc...
Later you'll grow up you'll know the streets, no longer feel lost
- Đi đâu cha?
- Where are we going, dad?
- Ra bờ sông Pô-tô-mác
- To the banks of the Potomac
- Xem gì cha?
- To see what, dad?
Không con ơi, chỉ có Lầu ngũ giác.
Nothing my child, there's just the Pentagon.
Ôi con tôi, đôi mắt tròn xoe
Oh my child, your round eyes
Ôi con tôi, mái tóc vàng hoe
Oh my child, your locks so golden
Đừng có hỏi cha nhiều con nhé!
Don't ask your father so many questions, dear!
Cha bế con đi, tối con về với mẹ...
I'll carry you out, this evening you'll going home with your mother...
Oa-sinh-tơn
Washington
Buổi hoàng hôn
Twilight
Ôi những linh hồn
Oh, those souls
Còn, mất
That remain or are lost
Hãy cháy lên, cháy lên Sự thật!
Blaze, blaze the Truth!
Giôn-xơn!
Johnson!
Tội ác bay chồng chất
You fucker, your crimes accumulate
Cả nhân loại căm hờn
All humanity detests
Con quỷ vàng trên mặt đất.
The yellow demon upon this earth.
Mày không thể mượn nước son
You cannot borrow the crimson waters
Của Thiên Chúa, và màu vàng của Phật!
Of God, and Buddha's yellow.
Mác Na-ma-ra
McNamara
Mày trốn đâu? Giữa bãi tha ma
Where are you hiding, asshole? In the burial yard
Của toà nhà năm góc
Of a five corner building
Mỗi góc, một châu.
Each corner a continent
Mày vẫn chui đầu
You still squeeze your head
Trong lửa nóng
Inside hot flames
Như đà điểu rúc đầu trong cát bỏng.
Like the ostrich buries its head in the scorching sands

Hãy nhìn đây!
Look over here!
Nhìn ta phút này!
Look at me right now!
Ôi không chỉ là ta với con gái nhỏ trong tay
Oh it's not only me with my little daughter in my arms
Ta là Hôm nay
I am Today
Và con ta, Ê-mi-ly ơi, con là mãi mãi!
And my daughter, oh Emily, you are forever!
Ta đứng dậy,
I stand awake,
Với trái tim vĩ đại
With the great heart
Của trăm triệu con người
Of a hundred million
Nước Mỹ.
Americans.
Để đốt sáng đến chân trời
To flame, light up the horizon
Một ngọn đèn
A light
Công lý.
Of Justice.

Hỡi tất cả chúng bay, một bầy ma quỷ
Hey all you fuckers, pack of devils
Nhân danh ai?
In whose name?
Bay mang những B 52
You bring B52s
Những na-pan, hơi độc
Napalm, poison gas
Từ toà Bạch Ốc
From the White House
Từ đảo Guy-am
From Guam
Đến Việt Nam
To Vietnam
Để ám sát hoà bình và tự do dân tộc
To liquidate peace and national freedom
Để đốt những nhà thương, trường học
To incinerate hospitals and schools
Giết những con người chỉ biết yêu thương
Murder people who only know love
Giết những trẻ em chỉ biết đi trường
Murder kids who only know going to school
Giết những đồng xanh bốn mùa hoa lá
Murder green fields, four seasons of leaves and blossoms
Và giết cả những dòng sông của thơ ca nhạc hoạ!
And even murder rivers of poetry, music and art!

Nhân danh ai?
In whose name?
Bay chôn tuổi thanh xuân của chúng ta trong những quan tài
You bury the bloom of our youth in coffins
Ôi những người con trai khoẻ đẹp
Oh, those strong, handsome sons
Có thể biến thiên nhiên thành điện, thép
Who can transform nature to into electricity, steel
Cho con người hạnh phúc hôm nay!
For people's happiness today!

Nhân danh ai?
In whose name?
Bay đưa ta đến những rừng dày
You bring me to dense jungles
Những hố chông, những đồng lầy kháng chiến
Spiked pits, muddy fields of resistance
Những làng phố đã trở nên pháo đài ẩn hiện
Villages that become fortress that disperse to reappear
Những ngày đêm đất chuyển trời rung...
Nights and days where the heavens and earth shake and jolt
Ôi Việt Nam, xứ sở lạ lùng
Oh Vietnam, a strange land
Đến em thơ cũng hoá thành những anh hùng
To the children who become heroes
Đến ong dại cũng luyện thành chiến sĩ
To the wild bees who train to be warriors
Và hoa trái cũng biến thành vũ khí!
And the trees and flowers become weapons!

Hãy chết đi, chết đi
Go ahead and die, die
Tất cả chúng bay, một bầy ma quỷ!
All you jerks, a pack of demons
Và xin nghe, nước Mỹ ta ơi!
And I ask that you listen, my America!
Tiếng thương đau, tiếng căm giận đời đời
To the voices of pain, of eternal hatred
Của một người con. Của một con người thế kỷ
Of a child. Of a person of this century

Ê-mi-ly, con ơi!
Emily, oh child!
Trời sắp tối rồi...
It's beginning to get dark...
Cha không bế con về được nữa!
I can carry you no further
Khi đã sáng bùng lên ngọn lửa
When I ignite, light up as a flame
Đêm nay mẹ đến tìm con
Tonight, your mother will come find you
Con sẽ ôm lấy mẹ mà hôn
You'll hug her and kiss
Cho cha nhé
Her for me
Và con sẽ nói giùm với mẹ:
And tell your mother this for me:
Cha đi vui, xin mẹ đừng buồn!
I left happy, mother don't be sad!
Oa-sinh-tơn
Washington
Buổi hoàng hôn
Twilight
Còn mất?
Remains or is lost?
Đã đến phút lòng ta sáng nhất
It's come, the moment when my heart's brightest
Ta đốt thân ta
I set fire to myself
Cho ngọn lửa chói loà
So the flames dazzle
Sự thật.
Truth.

No US Intervention in Syria!

Postcard from North Vietnam, ca. late 1960s

Predictably, and just in time to attempt to redirect national discussion away from all those pesky leaks about government spying, President Obama has announced that in light of his determination that the Syrian government used chemical weapons "against their own people," the U.S. would commence openly arming the opposition Free Syrian Army. Disappointingly for those of us who love a good hack job, no proof of the alleged WMD use was offered, which means no embarrassing pictures were taken of government officials posing in front of hastily doctored and captioned photos. Who says the US government has learned nothing from its mistakes? Anyway, as of this writing there's some dispute about whether the misleadingly-named no-fly zone will be applied to Syrian airspace, since what that actually means is that presumably NATO airforces would have to bomb the crap out of Syria to enforce the grounding of Syrian jets.

I offer up this lovely postcard from Southeast Asia in the 1960s with its brilliantly mocking original caption as a model for what I believe should happen to any US or NATO military airplanes crowding Syrian airspace. Pay attention: the more powerful nation doesn't always win.

The day will come when the Syrian people will kick out brutal rulers like the Assads on their own. But meanwhile, the agenda for those of us in the United States who oppose imperialism is now clear: we must unite to stop US intervention. All you liberals and alleged progressives who united to oppose Bush's attack on Iraq, now is the time to realize that Barack Obama is just as much an enemy of peace and justice as Bush was. It's time to act.

U.S./NATO Hands Off Syria!

Imperialism in a Bell Jar?

I wrote this polemic as part of an ongoing discussion about the attitude of revolutionaries toward imperialism and toward the military conflicts that have arisen out of the "Arab Spring." It's crossposted from Kasama, "A Reply to Pham Binh and Clay Claiborne: Imperialism in a Bell Jar?"  It's a response to an article by Claiborne and Binh on an episode late in World War 2 where the revolutionary anti-colonialists of the Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap briefly cooperated with the OSS, the predecessor of the American CIA. I've discussed many of these themes before but they remain central.

Ever since they decided to back US/NATO intervention in Libya (and later to argue for the US to arm or otherwise support the rebel forces in Syria), Clay Claiborne, Pham Binh and other folks associated with the North Star trend like Louis Proyect, have been repeatedly touting this story of US-Viet Minh cooperation. They fall back on this story as though it's some kind of stunning death-ray evidence that annihilates any argument against their position. They argue that it bolsters their case, somehow transforming their support of their own imperialist power into an act of revolutionary internationalism.

There are many problems with the attempt to enlist this historical episode as an argument for their position. Let's dismiss outright Binh's ridiculous assertion that this is just about historical "fact." We all know why he posted this article. But let's tackle a few of the problems with Claiborne and Binh's assertions.

So what actually happened in Vietnam? It's instructive to read Ho Chi Minh's 1952 article "Imperialist Aggressors Can Never Enslave The Heroic Vietnamese People," up on Marxists.org. Unlike the recipients of US armed beneficence in Libya, Ho is absolutely clear what the role of the United States was in Indochina. He rightfully called the American interventionists "masters" of French colonialism: "The U.S. interventionists have nurtured the French aggressors and the Vietnamese puppets, but the Vietnamese people do not let anybody delude and enslave them."
There was a brief historical moment when the strategy of Ho and the Viet Minh was to exploit the contradictions among imperialists. In the declaration of independence that Ho wrote, he says "The whole Vietnamese people, animated by a common purpose, are determined to fight to the bitter end against any attempt by the French colonialists to reconquer their country. We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam."

But there is simply no comparison, historical or otherwise, between the situation in Indochina in 1945 and North Africa and the Middle East in the 2010s. There is simply no contradiction to exploit. And while I think many debates are possible about the nature of the war between Japan and the US, the US was aiding an actual anti-colonial national liberation struggle, regardless of whether they were ultimately trying to hijack it. Binh has claimed that in Libya the US was aiding a "bourgeois democratic revolution." In the post-colonial age of neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism, this argument strikes me as dangerously flawed. Perhaps BInh would support waves of NATO airstrikes against the less-than-democratic regimes across Africa? What does he think of the French neocolonialist intervention in Mali?

Who in Libya or Syria today is calling out imperialism for what it is? It's not the people that the US and its close allies are assisting, and that Claiborne and Binh seem to be supporting.
One has only to look as far as Binh's North Star blog to see what the relationship of the pro-NATO Libyan forces is to US imperialism: In "Stage Two of the Libyan Revolution," a "Libyan Rebel" writes, unchecked by any North Star moderator, "Since the killing of Libya’s tyrant and official declaration of liberation, the Libyan people began calling for the next stage in their revolution which is state building....The attack on the U.S. consulate and the passing of the late Chris Stevens was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The act of attacking guests of Libya and the resulting death of a good friend of the Libyan people highlighted the fragility of the state and the danger these militias posed." The article is glowingly illustrated by a picture of Libyans carrying signs like "Sorry People of America" to atone for the attack on the Benghazi spy den.

Back to Vietnam, it's no stretch of the imagination to draw a straight line from US cooperation with the Viet Minh toward the end of WWII to the US relationship with French colonialism and their various puppets in South Vietnam after the war and the eventual defeat of the French, to the apocalyptic war of annihilation waged by the US against the NLF and the North Vietnamese in the 1960s and early 1970s. It would be interesting to know what Ho Chi Minh thought, from the benefit of historical hindsight much later before he died in 1969, whether the aid the Viet Minh received against the Japanese was balanced by the fact it allowed US imperialism a toehold in the independence struggle. Certainly the appeals to American conscience in the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence seem to have quickly given way to condemnations of American meddling.

Which brings us to another problem with Claiborne and Binh's arguments. They argue as though NATO intervention in Libya happened in a bell jar. Or now, that US arming the Free Syrian Army that they advocate would be happening in that same bell jar. Ironically they don't seem to even notice the leap from Libya to Syria. One might think such an attitude was quaintly naive, but neither Claiborne nor Binh are naifs new to the way the world works. Is it an accident that the US/NATO embrace of the Libyan manifestation of the so-called Arab spring corresponded to the US acquiescence of the smashing of Arab spring revolts in the US client state of Bahrain? Is it an accident that in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, full of the same brutal violence from the sky that NATO and the US displayed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has now successfully established a drone base in neighboring Niger? Is there no connection between what imperialism wrought in Iraq and what they're up to now in the rest of the Arab world?

Imperialism was emboldened by its success in Libya. Obama's strategy — which, by the way, should be of great concern to revolutionaries — has been to employ clients and high-tech weapons systems to maximize US military success while minimizing the potential for domestic opposition; this has proved itself invaluable to imperialism's warchest. Regardless of the nature of the Gaddafi regime (in my opinion unmourned), US imperialism achieved a major victory in Libya. And Binh and Claiborne cheered that victory on.

Elsewhere Binh has argued that his call for arming Syrian and Libyan "revolutionaries" doesn't mean he supports U.S. "boots on the ground." But this is meaningless semantics. Everyone knows that the claim the US only facilitated actual military action by NATO members Britain and France in Libya is bullshit. And everyone knows that the claim that the FSA is being armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar but not the US is equally bullshit.

Imperialism is a web of dependent connections, and the destructive, world-dominating force that is US imperialism is the monstrous spider at the center of that web. It's true that the US finds the presence of Salafist and Al-Qaeda-linked forces in the ranks of the Syrian rebels somewhat problematic. It's true that despite the militant rhetoric of the Assads over the years they have proved to be some of the best, non-actually-threatening neighbors the Zionist regime could have asked for, and that therefore the US and its Israeli allies are waiting to see which way the wind blows before making their next commitments. But the partial hesitation of US imperialism to throw its full weight behind the Syrian opposition, or to establish something like a no-fly zone (a thinly veiled declaration of war) shouldn't be seen as some kind of alibi for what Binh and Claiborne are calling for.

Let's get real: Pham BInh and Clay Clayborne are standing right next to the war criminal John McCain in calling for the US to send heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels. The John McCain who, by the way, didn't mind being photographed with sectarian kidnappers in his quick jaunt across the Syrian border.

In my opinion the Assad regime is not something communists have any business supporting. But as the leftish Lebanese resistance movement HIzbollah and some Palestinian factions enter an increasingly polarized conflict on Assad's side, will Binh and Claiborne really be cheering on the shipping of weapons to be used against, say, the PFLP?

What will be the legacy of avowed socialists supporting the military actions of "their own" imperialist power? Karl Liebknecht taught this to us a long time ago: "The main enemy is at home!"  The best way for those of us in imperialist countries to aid the oppressed peoples of the world is to do everything we can to defeat the ruling classes of our own countries. Solidarity that doesn't follow that basic lesson is no solidarity at all: and every failure of leftists like Binh and Claiborne to tell the truth to Libyan or Syrian rebels who might be listening to us further weakens the already damaged reputation of socialism.

It's not like the current conflicts aren't the first time leftists have gone soft on imperialism. In the US wars on Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, segments of the left all abandoned their principle to support the actions of imperialism. It's a timeworn tradition that has happened over and over again when socialists in the homeland of imperialism lose faith in their arguments and doctrines. And the embrace of "state department socialism" is usually also marked by all sorts of other accommodations to capitalism, to imperialism. It marks a shift in roads: is this shift something the fragile and tiny US left can afford?

You wouldn't know it from reading Claiborne and Binh's writings up on North Star, but there are Syrian leftists who recognize the danger from imperialism, while also completely opposing the Assad regime. From the Syrian Leftist Coalition's statement "A Marxist Perspective on Syria: A letter from the Syrian Left Coalition to the Leftists in the Arab Countries" (definitely worth a read in its entirety):

"The media is trying to represent the people’s revolution by the forces of current political “opposition”. This media does not focus on the fighting people, but it considers an “opposition” is combating the regime. This shallow logic reflects a shallow “Marxism” that considers this opposition to represent the people, and thus approaches the revolution through the opposition... No doubt these “opposition” parties should be criticized. Parties that called for an imperialist military intervention, and published an ethnic, fundamentalist speech, in alliance with imperialists and reactionary Arab regimes, should be condemned. These parties are very harmful for the revolution as much as they delay the growth of this mass movement by posing the a speech that frightens the minorities, and also frightens the wide spectrum of people that supports resistance and defiance against imperialism and Zionism...In this situation, a Marxist should be with the people against the regime. At the same time, a Marxist should also fight against this liberal elite “opposition” and against all these fundamentalist forces that threaten a derailing of the revolution into an inter-ethnic and inter-religious struggle, and this is the exact aim the regime was trying to achieve since the beginning of the popular uprising. This can only be achieved first by improving the role of the oppressed masses in this struggle, expressing their demands in a clear program, organize the revolution, and stating a strategy for this revolution in order to overpass its spontaneity into an organized conscious movement.... We should reject any calls for imperialist military intervention, and on this basis also we should reject the intervention of Russia and Iran."

Yes, this is a harder, more difficult position to maintain. The conflict in Syria has taken thousands and thousands of innocent lives. Lives that the United States doesn't actually care about, not one bit. Communists must take the side of the Syrian people, and that means telling some truths that might be unpopular and hard to hear: that intervention of the US into the Syrian civil war, which is already happening, will not free the Syrian people. US weapons come with long strings attached.

So that story about Ho Chi Minh, the Viet Minh, and the American OSS is an interesting historical tale. But as a rationalization for abandoning everything revolutionaries know to be true about imperialism? No thanks. The first gut response of revolutionaries in the U.S should be to bristle with rage against the machinations of our imperialist ruling class.

Vietnam, Libya, Syria, different stories, different times. But the enemy remains the same.

Anti-Americana: The Glorious Spring Victory

April 30 is the anniversary of the victory of the combined forces of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and the People's Army of Vietnam over the United States and its Republic of Vietnam puppets in 1975, as tanks bearing NLF flags crashed the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon. This beautiful Vietnamese poster gets to the heart of the matter: vastly outgunned, a determined people defeated the most powerful military on earth and ended a conflict that had cost millions of lives. Human resilience won over military might. We do well to remember that conflict.

Anti-Americana: Vietnam Was a Victory

It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? If you're on the side of peace and justice, the correct side won. There's a lesson in there. Here's a (North) Vietnamese poster dating from the time of that American war of aggression, showing a sandal clad foot tromping an American tank.

For more anti-American propaganda art images, see The Cahokian's archive here.

Anti-Americana: The People's War

"Long Live the Victory of the People's War!" shouts this classic poster from Cultural Revolution-era China. While the concept of "People's War" is a central Maoist tenet formulated during the guerrilla war against the Japanese occupation of China in the Second World War, the slogan itself is vintage Lin Piao, the Cultural Revolution architect and presumptive heir to Mao who was disgraced (and killed) in 1971. You can read his 1967 appreciation of the Maoist theory here. Back in the day that essay titled with this slogan was bound in a little red vinyl booklet just like the more famous Quotations from Chairman Mao, and studied and toted around as a talisman of revolutionary fervor by radical students around the world. I have a copy myself...that I bought second hand. For many Marxists, the theory of people's war was a point of divergence since it suggested a path of ex-urban military confrontation rather than an urban, political class struggle.

Obviously the graphic focus of this poster is updated from the 1940s to the 1960s worldwide struggle against (American) imperialism. The central motif shows Vietnamese, Cuban and African fighters resolutely facing forward while the flames of revolution redden the sky in the background. You know me, I'm against war. But a little more of that righteous revolutionary fervor might do the world some good.

(I'm so proud of myself... I translated this myself by guessing into google translate: 人民战争的胜利万岁! Ah, modern technology. Anyway, I haven't been posting many of these lately, but this is one of many many classic anti-imperialist propaganda art images I've featured here. Click here to see those in the Cahokian's Anti-Americana archive.)

Anti-War Anthems: "Saigon Bride"

The version of this song I'm familiar with is from Joan Baez's 1967 album "Joan" and bears a beautiful, mournful string arrangement by Peter Schickele ("PDQ Bach," who arranged many of her early works). The version above was recorded live in concert in Italy is spare and acoustic.

She says something in her introduction above that really resonates with me, "I'd like to start by making one thing clear. I feel that I carry the guilt of the United States aggression in Vietnam, and I'm fighting against this and any other violence." I was watching one of those Iraq-war movies over the weekend that didn't make much of a commercial impact and I realized the terrible guilt that all of us in this country bear for the tragedies in the Middle East. Even those of us who protested against these wars — back in Vietnam in the 1960s or Iraq in the 2000s — failed to prevent the carnage of these wars, and every moment we pretend that we don't know about the ongoing horror our government bears responsibility for, creases our good conscience. We should be shouting about these things all the time.

This song is dated in some ways with its specific references to "red and yellow," but it communicates the cynicism of those who backed the war and created lies of rationalization. I remember the cultural wars over heroes like Joan Baez and Jane Fonda who did the right thing against so much pressure at the time. They were very brave.

Farewell my wistful Saigon bride
I'm going out to stem the tide
A tide that never saw the seas
It flows through jungles, round the trees
Some say it's yellow, some say red
It will not matter when we're dead

How many dead men will it take
To build a dike that will not break?
How many children must we kill
Before we make the waves stand still?

Though miracles come high today
We have the wherewithal to pay
It takes them off the streets you know
To places they would never go alone
It gives them useful trades
The lucky boys are even paid

Men die to build their Pharoah's tombs
And still and still the teeming wombs
How many men to conquer Mars
How many dead to reach the stars?

Farewell my wistful Saigon bride
I'm going out to stem the tide
A tide that never saw the seas
It flows through jungles, round the trees
Some say it's yellow, some say red
It will not matter when we're dead

(Music by Joan Baez, Lyrics by Nina Duscheck. © 1967 Robbins Music Corporation and Chandos Music)

May 19 Is Ho Chi Minh/Malcolm X Day

Today, May 19, is the birthday of two immortal heroes in the struggle against injustice, Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh and our own Malcolm X. Since I quoted Malcolm back in February, here's some of Ho Chi Minh's words.

Below is an excerpt of Ho Chi Minh's most famous writing, his declaration of independence for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which he delivered in 1945 and spent the rest of his life defending:

"All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness" This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America m 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free. The Declaration of the French Revolution made in 1791 on the Rights of Man and the Citizen also states: "All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights." Those are undeniable truths. Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow-citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice. In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center and the South of Vietnam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united. They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots- they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion; they have practised obscurantism against our people. To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol. In the fields of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people, and devastated our land. They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolised the issuing of bank-notes and the export trade. They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers. In the autumn of 1940, when the Japanese Fascists violated Indochina's territory to establish new bases in their fight against the Allies, the French imperialists went down on their bended knees and handed over our country to them. ...

We are convinced that the Allied nations which at Tehran and San Francisco have acknowledged the principles of self-determination and equality of nations, will not refuse to acknowledge the independence of Vietnam. A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last years, such a people must be free and independent. For these reasons, we, members of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, solemnly declare to the world that Vietnam has the right to be a free and independent country and in fact it is so already. The entire Vietnamese people are determined to mobilise all their physical and mental strength, to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty." September 2, 1945

"This Is Not The Way We Put An End To War"

In the thread about "Galveston" downblog, a friend recommends Glen Campbell's version of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Universal Soldier." It's worth a listen. I tracked down this other version with a really interesting introduction by the writer. She wrote this song back in 1964, though this is a much more recent performance. She's got an interesting take on the antiwar song: it's not about the poor cannon fodder being victimized, but instead about the people -- like you and me! -- who enable war by not stopping it. Sorta brutal. I didn't realize before how polemical this song was.

Reconsidering "Galveston"

Jimmy Webb is one of my favorite songwriters of the classic sixties era. He wrote heady, thoughtful, emotionally wringing songs which were often mistaken for pop ditties. His songs are such great little pieces of music that it's no wonder so many different kinds of musicians not so much recorded them as subverted them: Isaac Hayes' 18-minute-plus take on "By the Time I Get To Phoenix" is brilliantly and soulfully seductive just as Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 recording of "Wichita Lineman" becomes a perfect vehicle for bossanova saudade, or melancholy, perky and grooving despite its lyric of loss and regret. Levitating while Donna Summer turned the seemingly inexplicable lyrics of "MacArthur Park" into a transcendant disco vehicle on a late 1970s dancefloor was one of the highlights of my coming-of-gay-age.

Some of his songs were rightly made famous by Glen Campbell: "Where's the Playground, Suzie," "Wichita Lineman," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," and of course "Galveston." "Galveston" came out during the Vietnam War, and Glen Campbell's rousing almost martial version leaves some doubt as to the emotions it's meant to summon. While the version sung by its writer above last year is not the most beautiful version of this great song I've ever heard, Webb's explanation of the politics behind the song at the beginning of the clip is fascinating. I've heard "Galveston" described as an anti-war song, and indeed, it seems that's what it was, the intentions of rightwinger Campbell — whose singing I actually love — notwithstanding. Check out the version on Webb's 1972 album "Letters" to hear how beautifully heartbreaking this song can be.

Anti-American Art: Down Here on the Ground

Here's a vintage-1966 Chinese solidarity poster supporting the Vietnamese people fighting off American attack. Notice the GI helments danging fom the guy's rifle toward the back. Perversely this reminds me a little of that old joke "What do they call Chinese food in China? .... Food!" because in Vietnam, of course, they call it not "The Vietnam War," but "The American War." All those lives wasted, all the destruction, all the bombing and burning and killing, all in the end for, well, nothing. The poster says something about the Vietnamese people winning because they are stronger; and indeed defending your own country (for real, unlike the video game I wrote about yesterday) is a position of strength. Which is worth remembering as the U.S. plays great-power-games in the Middle East, maybe (or maybe not!) intervening on "behalf" of the Libyan rebels or supporting the King of Bahrain (just joined by tanks from Saudi Arabia) against an uprising by the Bahraini people. Let's not even discuss Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is part of an ongoing series of posts on Anti-American propaganda images from around the world. For past entries click here.

Anti-American Art: Hey Hey LBJ...

This fascinating item is one of the many leaflets issued by the National Liberation Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam -- the so-called Viet Cong -- in the 1960s aimed at American draftees serving in the American army and occupying their country. The headline is the familiar chant "Hey Hey LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" along with a photo of an anti-war protest in the United States.


The back of the flyer is a direct appeal to American soldiers: "Hey Hey LBJ...How many kids did you kill today? Wherever he goes in the United States -- he meets this sign and hears this sout. Wherever he goes in the world, he can't escape the accusing cry. To and from the phoney Manila Conference he heard it from thousands in Hawaii, in New Zealand, in Australia, in Malaya. and in Manila itself thousands of demonstrators fought police and soldiers and never let the shout die down. They knew that the phoney 'peace' meeting was preparation for killing more kids. AND MORE AMERICAN SOLDIERS, TOO! Do you want to go down in history as one of KBJ's killers! Think it over. Talk it over. Act together. Don't let the Babykiller think for you. It's your head. USE IT -- DON'T LOSE IT"

I guess it's standard operating procedure in this kind of propaganda to appeal to the humanity of the people who are shooting at you, but it sure is hard to argue with.

According to the makers of the film "Sir No Sir!" about the G.I. movement against the war in Vietnam: "By the Pentagon’s own figures, 503,926 'incidents of desertion' occurred between 1966 and 1971; officers were being 'fragged'(killed with fragmentation grenades by their own troops) at an alarming rate; and by 1971 entire units were refusing to go into battle in unprecedented numbers. In the course of a few short years, over 100 underground newspapers were published by soldiers around the world; local and national antiwar GI organizations were joined by thousands; thousands more demonstrated against the war at every major base in the world in 1970 and 1971, including in Vietnam itself; stockades and federal prisons were filling up with soldiers jailed for their opposition to the war and the military." So I guess some of these leaflets were effective!

(Leaflet snagged from a very interesting, if right wing, article on Vietcong propaganda at psywarrior.com)

No, Actually King Would Not Have Supported Today's American Wars

Today is the birthday of the heroic Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This week Jeh C. Johnson, the defense counsel for the Department of Defense, stated: "I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack." He then went on to compare Dr. King's compassion and support for striking sanitation workers shortly before his death to today's military: “I draw the parallel to our own servicemen and women deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, away from the comfort of conventional jobs, their families and their home."

These are obscene statements. Let's remember what Dr. King really stood for:

"Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents....Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition....

At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor....

Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours....

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death....

If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

--From his speech at Riverside Church, April 1967. Read the whole speech and try to resolve the obscenity of the wars started by Bush and continued by Obama with his words. Not. Possible.

Happy birthday, Dr. King.

Anti-American Art: This Is My Rifle, This Is My... Shell

"The Vietnamese People Must Win!" reads this oddly blocky 1960s Chinese poster. A Vietnamese soldier and a militiawoman gaze loftily into the distance as American planes fall from the reddened sky in the background. But it's hard to remove one's gaze from the remarkably phallic artillery shell the soldier holds with his chunky hand. His companion has her own weapon but his is clearly the most powerful.

The lip service Cultural Revolution-era Chinese propaganda paid to gender equity is commendable. Women were shown to be the equals of men quite matter of factly in posters like this one. It's interesting that since downfall of Mao's widow Jiang Qing shortly after the Chairman's death, the Chinese Communist Party seems, at least to the casual outside observer, completely male dominated. For all Madame Mao's vanities and excesses her role in the cultural aesthetic of classic Maoism was remarkably proto-feminist. I wonder what the political future of women is in capitalist road China.

Anti-American Art: Holiday Cruise Package Deal

"Come Alive, Leave Dead" reads another Vietnam-war era cartoon of uncertain origin, published in China. It's sardonically humorous like this previous entry in our series, and is essentially the nautical version of this one, as a ship going out labelled "U.S." is full of soldiers and war materiel, and the similarly labelled ship returning is full of coffins and wreaths.

The war was won not only because of the military brilliance of the Vietnamese and the righteousness of their cause, but because the draft meant that the American GIs were mostly not voluntary cannon fodder, and draft resistance and rebellion in the ranks of the military coupled with protests from draft-age young people were becoming real problems for the American aggressors. Can you believe the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for almost ten years and people are still signing up to join the military? Crazy. What's wrong with those people. One does suspect that if there was a draft the wars would have been over about five years ago.

Anti-American Art: Redirected Flights

It's a little cartoonish to begin with, and poorly printed at that, but this wartime stamp from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is part of a series marking their military successes against the U.S. and its puppet regime in the south in the period 1966-1967. This particular one marks the 1800th American aircraft shot down by the Vietnamese defenses. The scene of mortarman with the burning wreckage of Air Force and Navy aircraft leads me to believe the illustration is another depiction of the attack on Bienhoa airfield. In any case shooting down American airplanes where they didn't belong was a regular feature of North Vietnamese postage stamps. Seems like the Vietnamese had an effective way of dealing with terrorist aviation.

Click on the image to see it larger.

Anti-American Art: Buddies

My limited knowledge of Chinese tells me that this Cultural Revolution era poster is exalting the friendship of the peoples of three nations against their common enemy. I'm not sure who the third friend to the Chinese & Vietnamese people is. I'm guessing Laos? Anyway who these inseparable buddies are not letting into their club is revealed in the lower right of the image: that's an American GI's helmet and the indistinct but identifiable wreckage of an American airplane in flames. These guys sure do look like they're fans at a sporting event instead of participants in a battle, but what the heck. Fortunately they don't let people take AK47's into the stands of ball games.

Anti-American Art: Glee

My friend Jon of "Poetry is for Assholes" blog found these on youtube. They're North Vietnamese propaganda films from 1967 or 1968. That's the "War Song of Vietnamese Women" above and "War Song of Vietnamese Soldiers" below. I don't speak Vietnamese so I can only guess what these folks are singing about against the jaunty accordion and the background war scenes. You can probably guess also. The women's video focuses on ground defenses against the American attack. There's a sort of pumpkin-headed booby trap among others.


The men's video focuses on defenses against the brutal American air assault, with footage switching perspectives from the B52s dropping bombs to scenes of anti-aircraft teams and bomb-damaged buildings, all with a rousing martial chorus.

It's nice to have human faces and sounds for the Vietnamese who so heroically fought off the greatest military machine ever known. Meanwhile, war criminal John McCain won reelection to the U.S. senate to continue to inflict his militarist terrorist policies on the American people and its modern victims in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Anti-American Art: Surrounded

I don't know much about the source of this political cartoon; the caption is in Chinese but its sardonic humor and the scale of its illustration seem at odds with Chinese Cultural Revolution-era propaganda. I suspect it's a 1960s North Vietnamese illustration translated into Chinese and republished there. If I remember the translation correctly, the sentry at the American jungle outpost is taking instructions from headquarters to be on the lookout for Vietcong infiltrators and he informs them that it's too late, he's already surrounded. Looking pale and washed out compared to the National Liberation Front guerrillas who have captured him, the American and his outpost is made to seem dwarfed and out of place amidst the tropical locale. It's a clever and effective cartoon.