Welcome to The Cahokian... A thousand years ago Cahokia — across the Mississippi from what is now St. Louis — was one of the biggest cities in the world. Now it's an empty green spot next to the highway. I'm a middle-aged gay man living in New York City, center of the world, future footnote on somebody's future map. Welcome to the new world.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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.
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I don't have many issues with John McCain. What makes you call him a 'war criminal,' out of curiosity?
ReplyDeleteI like these videos. It's important to remember that both sides in every war feel equally justified and correct.
what's cute is that Lisa, the secretary of the North Bay Labor Council, they of t shirt fame, reposted these on her Facebook page. She thinks we need to get together and discuss our misspent youth. At the same time the Vietnamese were singing these songs American youth were listening to Aretha Franklin and Jimi Hendrix. Trying their best to keep their souls as they followed orders in a meaningless war of imperial brutality.
ReplyDeletefreebones, some wars are fought for complicated reasons, and some for simpler ones. The wars in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s were complicated: I thought NATO bombing Serbia was as abhorrent as the ethnic cleansing by various parties. In the face of such complication choosing sides is the wrong response; other than choosing the side of the common people being manipulated and used by the rulers of NATO countries and Yugoslav mini-states alike.
ReplyDeleteBut Vietnam was among the simplest of wars, and the United States was 100% absolutely and completely in the wrong. I understand that some Americans responded to the call of their country to fight that war with patriotism (although of course most of the Americans fighting that war were compelled to do so by military draft), but to me that patriotism was misguided, and the courageous, the difficult, choice was to oppose the war.
McCain chose to fight that war, and chose to bomb civilian targets. He also chose to thank the people who saved his life and rescued him from his burning plane, that had moments before been raining death down upon them, by calling them "gooks." And in the distance of time that theoretically imparts wisdom and perspective, he has done everything in his power to keep the machines of war in motion. As opposed to, say, Senator John Kerry whose own military experience in Vietnam lead him to oppose the Vietnam war and be a voice of temperance on America's military ambitions. Not a big John McCain fan!
thanks, ish. i was just wondering, personally. i don't know if that qualifies him as a war criminal, just a racist and a complacent robot.
ReplyDelete