Highbrow Magazine - Vietnam war https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/vietnam-war en A Doctor Slowly Unravels at the Height of the Vietnam War in ‘All Bleeding Stops’ https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/17054-doctor-slowly-unravels-height-vietnam-war-all-bleeding-stops <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 11/01/2021 - 15:57</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2vietnam_tho_ge-_pixabay.jpg?itok=DJJBsno4"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/2vietnam_tho_ge-_pixabay.jpg?itok=DJJBsno4" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>CHAPTER ONE</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Da Nang </strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Republic of Vietnam </strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>May 1967 </strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">His war begins with a quiet palette of turquoise and green; soft, shaded layers of blue and white layered like quicklime over all the darkness to follow. The plane banks left. Their shadow, a hundred yards behind them, flits over the shimmering surface of the South China Sea. Ahead, blue waters lap against brilliant white sand. A canopy of jungle fronting the beach glows green in the slanting rays of the late-afternoon sun. Dark clouds drift north, trailing languid sheets of rain that caress the fecund forests below. In the distance, jagged mountains heave themselves upward, their peaks glistening in the sun, their eastern slopes skittering earthward into the deepening shadows of night. Bluebells in a graveyard. The rouge daub of the embalmer’s art. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Perhaps it is what the eye chooses not to see that matters. An amaurosis fugax of the soul. One more minute, one more hour salvaged from the dark, looming abattoir of war. All the while his plane thunders onward, downward, his reverie shattered for good when the plane and its shadow, having drawn closer and closer together, achieve their inevitable union. Black tires screech on bleached tarmac. A blur of vegetation out the window, engines roaring in reverse, passengers thrown forward, then back. The plane slows, taxis, and finally jerks to a halt in front of a dirty concrete bunker with a dented steel door flanked by two boarded-up windows that glower at them in the last rays of the dying sun. “Welcome to Viet fucking Nam,” the marine next to him mutters</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1war_pexels.jpg" style="height:398px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>CHAPTER TWO</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>The Emergency Room </strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Loyola University Medical Center Maywood, Illinois </strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>May 2017 </strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">All the bleeding, all the screaming, all the pain. At some point it simply became too much, and now the ER itself is in extremis. Burned and battered patients are crammed into every examination room, every office, every hallway. More casualties arrive every minute. Unregistered, unnamed, they are wedged into corners and crannies where they lie moaning and unattended. Doctors in wrinkled green scrubs hunch over shattered bodies, stanching bleeding, inserting tubes, barking orders. Nurses, harried and blood-spattered, start IVs, dress wounds, administer meds. Lab techs, vials of blood held aloft, wriggle through the bedlam toward the pathology lab. X-ray techs, intimidated by the doctors’ furious shouts and frantic gestures, ram their machines through the jumbled mass of gurneys. Near the entrance, one of the orderlies helps a paramedic wheel in a man whose right leg is missing. An ever-weaker pulse of blood oozes through the soggy dressing that clings to his ragged stump. An intern, strings of greasy black hair dangling in front of his eyes, straddles a man with an open chest wound, trying to perform CPR, but his hands keep slipping off the man’s bloody chest. On the other side of the room, beneath the mural of Jesus curing the blind man, one of the trauma residents slaps defibrillation paddles on the chest of a man with a dark, gaping hole where his left arm used to be. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The air is hot and heavy, thick with the smell of blood, iodine, and sweat: the pungent aromas of death in a big-city ER. The plane and the neighborhood where it crashed are still in flames. Everyone’s heard a different story. It was terrorism. No, it was mechanical. There are a hundred dead. No, two hundred. At this point no one is sure of anything. Thirty ambulances have already arrived at the Loyola ER. More roar in every minute. There isn’t enough room for them in the bay, so the drivers pull their rigs as close as they can, throw open the back doors, and rush their mangled patients inside. Squad cars and ambulances—doors open, lights flashing, radios squawking—are scattered all over the parking lot. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1bleedingbook.jpg" style="height:503px; width:350px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Megan Parker jerks to a halt at the entrance to the emergency room, scarcely recognizing the place where she has worked for the last two months. Although her name tag says “MD,” Megan is only an intern. She has just come from the night shift at Jack’s Grill where she moonlights two nights a week as a waitress. Her hair smells of onions, her skin feels like grease, and she hasn’t slept in twenty-seven hours. She stands at the entrance, assaulted by more images of pain and suffering than she ever imagined possible: the jagged end of a tibia sticking through a pair of orange yoga pants; a burned arm, red, raw, and blistered, dangling from the side of a cart; a dirty eyeball floating in a basin; a broken set of dentures on the floor; an exposed breast, the nipple gone; a child, shoeless, standing alone in a corner, hands at her side, tears streaming down her face. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">As a little girl, Megan dreamed of becoming a doctor, of helping people, of making a difference in their lives. She realizes her time has come. She is needed—right here, right now. She wants to do her part, but she is only ten months out of med school. Where should she go? What should she do? Tom Lynch, the surgery chief resident, sees her. He grabs her by the shoulders, spins her around, and nudges her toward a man on a cart. “Megan, take care of that guy!” She stumbles forward. Her eyes widen. She has seen a lot of things during her year as an intern but never anything like this. Curled on his left side in the fetal position lies a white-haired old man covered in dirt, dried blood, and charred shreds of clothing. His clenched hands grasp the base of a dirty, two-foot-long metal shaft that has been driven into his abdomen. The man’s eyes are closed. He is not moving. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1doctor_pxhere.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Megan hesitates. Take care of him? Take care of him where? There’s not an inch of room left in this place. “Megan!” the chief resident shouts, “Move it!” She looks at the chaotic scene in the ER, looks back at the man on the cart, then shrugs, and squeezes around to the foot of the cart. She backs it out the door, plowing between two paramedics trying to force their way in. The cart shivers and jolts over the rough pavement as she wheels it around the corner and down the sidewalk to the delivery door next to Security. She rattles the handle, but the door is locked. “Shit!” She pounds on it three times. No one answers. She pounds again. Nothing. Across the driveway on the loading dock, the workers straighten up and gape at the man with a metal shaft sticking out of his belly. “Come here!” Megan shouts to a stocky Black man in a sleeveless T-shirt. He points at himself. “Me?” “Yes, you. Come here and stay with this man.” “What do you mean stay with him?” he shouts as she runs off. “I ain’t no doctor. What the hell am I supposed to do? Hey! Come back here!” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Megan tears back to the emergency room, pushes through the crowd at the door, then bulls her way through the mass of doctors, nurses, techs, and patients to the roped-off construction area behind the ER. She ducks under the rope, pushes aside the rolling scaffold, turns the corner, sprints down the empty hallway, and bangs open the delivery door at the far end. She finds the dockworker standing four feet away from the cart, shaking his head, staring at the man’s abdomen. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “Jesus Christ.” Megan steps in front of him, pushes the cart in the door, and wheels it down the hall, bouncing over fragments of two-by-fours and electrical conduits until she reaches the new OB/GYN room. She yanks open the door. The room, not scheduled to open for another week, is empty except for two white plastic buckets of adhesive and four rolls of drywall tape piled in the corner. The smell of fresh paint and sawdust lingers in the air. Megan pushes the cart inside. The heavy steel door snicks shut behind her, and the room suddenly becomes so quiet she can almost hear the wild, frantic pounding of her heart as it thunders the beat of all her youthful insecurities.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>This is an excerpt from the new book, </em></strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/All-Bleeding-Stops-Michael-Collins/dp/1525598384/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2WFZAG7RAIJU&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=all+bleeding+stops+michael+j.+collins&amp;qid=1635708314&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=all+ble%2Cstripbooks%2C62&amp;sr=1-1" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>All Bleeding Stops</em></strong></a><strong><em> (FriesenPress), by Michael J. Collins. It’s published here with permission.</em></strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Image Sources:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>FriesenPress</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/soldiers-in-line-to-get-in-a-plane-54098/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline"><em>Pexels</em></a><em> (Creative Commons)         </em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>Tho-Ge (<a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/vietnam-north-vietnam-hanoi-4870715/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline">Pexels</a>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>Gcasacols (<a href="https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1457247" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline">Pxhere</a>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/all-bleeding-stops" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">All Bleeding Stops</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/michael-j-collins" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michael J. Collins</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/doctors" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">doctors</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/medics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">medics</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/new-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fiction</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war books</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Michael J. Collins</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 01 Nov 2021 19:57:08 +0000 tara 10720 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/17054-doctor-slowly-unravels-height-vietnam-war-all-bleeding-stops#comments Spike Lee Explores Themes of Racism, War, and Redemption in ‘Da 5 Bloods’ https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10732-spike-lee-explores-themes-racism-war-and-redemption-da-5-bloods <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 07/10/2020 - 11:50</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bloodsfilm.jpg?itok=cjsFzQpX"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bloodsfilm.jpg?itok=cjsFzQpX" width="480" height="319" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><em>Da 5 Bloods</em> is a Netflix film directed by Spike Lee that features four Black veterans of the Vietnam War returning to the country in the present day to find and return the remains of their fallen friend, “Stormin’ Norman.” They’re also back in Vietnam to find a cache of gold that they left buried during the war.</p> <p> </p> <p>This movie covers a lot of ground in its 154-minute runtime with themes of racism, war, greed, brotherhood, redemption and more. Despite some inconsistencies, the performances from the main cast and pacing make it a worthy watch.</p> <p> </p> <p>The main cast all put in great performances with Delroy Lindo as Paul being the standout. His character is more developed than others, and his scenes towards the end of the film make for some of the most memorable moments in movies this year. The dynamic among the lead characters makes for a convincing portrayal of veterans that have stuck together through the decades.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2bloodsfilm.jpg" style="height:600px; width:495px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>While Spike Lee can direct scenes focused on dialogue and plot development wonderfully, it’s the action scenes that cause inconsistencies in the film. The action scenes do their job, but the use of subpar special effects brings them down. The flashback scenes also use effective techniques like a different aspect ratio, heavier film grain, and darker shadows to give them an old war footage feel.</p> <p> </p> <p>It shouldn’t be surprising that a movie by Spike Lee explores themes of race and racism in a thought-provoking way. <em>Da 5 Bloods</em>  opens with war footage and speakers remarking on the historical use of Black soldiers as frontline infantry. The entire plotline about the buried gold is centered around the idea of taking the gold as a way to “stick it to the man” and support their people. Several characters remark about the injustice of Black people not having the same rights as others despite spilling their blood on the battlefield in large numbers through various wars. It’s a perspective rarely explored in war movies, and Lee does such a good job with it that it’ll be impossible to watch any old war footage or war movies the same way again.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Ulises Duenas is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/da-5-bloods" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">da 5 bloods</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/spike-lee" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">spike lee</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/spike-lee-films" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">spike lee films</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/african-american-films" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">african american films</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-movies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war movies</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/netfilx-films" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">netfilx films</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ulises Duenas</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 10 Jul 2020 15:50:50 +0000 tara 9680 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10732-spike-lee-explores-themes-racism-war-and-redemption-da-5-bloods#comments Planting the Roots of Peace in Vietnam and Beyond https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10623-planting-roots-peace-vietnam-and-beyond <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Tue, 05/05/2020 - 10:03</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1kuhnessay.jpg?itok=Zx7kfHJb"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1kuhnessay.jpg?itok=Zx7kfHJb" width="323" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>Opinion:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>As COVID-19 eclipses 3.5 million confirmed cases worldwide, we must reflect on the astonishing toll human-wrought conflict can exact on populations and the earth alike – and the immense collective effort required to fix them.</p> <p> </p> <p>Today, there are an estimated 60 million landmines silently poised in 60 countries awaiting an innocent footstep to detonate at any moment. This year marks the 45th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. While the war has ended from a diplomatic standpoint, its grave legacy lives on in the 100,000 innocent Vietnamese who have been maimed or were killed by UXOs since the end of hostilities – the majority: innocent farmers endeavoring to cultivate crops and children simply chasing a butterfly across a field of flowers or kicking a soccer ball.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1war_0.jpg" style="height:420px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>When Roots of Peace began its work in Vietnam to heal the wounds of war and firmly plant sustainable peace through agriculture, over 50,000 American mothers had lost their children in the struggle. In Vietnam, that number was over 3 million.</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2010, I set out on a quest to eradicate all explosive remnants of war and train the farmers to grow high-value crops on former battlefields. Working with support from both the Vietnamese and American governments, we raised private funding to remove millions of unexploded ordinances, and to train over 3,000 farmers to grow black pepper on former battlefields. This fine black pepper is now sold to Morton and Bassett Spice Company and distributed nationally on supermarket shelves featuring the Roots of Peace logo.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2kuhnessay.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>The progress was evident. But after years of work, it was clear that safety could not be assured until the last mine was lifted from the ground. Today, millions of explosive remnants of war remain buried in Vietnam’s soil, resulting in a lethal harvest for innocent farmers born long after the war has ended.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Vietnamese are not alone in facing the scourge of landmines. Worldwide, millions of landmines currently lie hidden in soil that might otherwise be utilized for the creation of crops or placement of shelter. As with COVID-19, landmines represent a large-scale loss of life from an invisible threat. The need for global collaboration to overcome both of them make the nexus clear, as does the passion needed to prevail over them both.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3kuhnessay.jpg" style="height:450px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>It will take the type of astounding bravery and enormous sacrifice we are witnessing in frontline workers and medical providers, who are working with <a name="m_-5502845049531304280__Hlk38979300" id="m_-5502845049531304280__Hlk38979300">COVID</a>-affected patients.</p> <p> </p> <p>This is the time for determination and commitment for the long struggle to overcome COVID-19 and the human toll it has and will continue to extract.  May we emerge from these times with a renewed compassion and sense of hope to heal the earth of landmines and other global health threats.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio: </strong></p> <p> </p> <p><a name="m_-5502845049531304280__Hlk29468220" id="m_-5502845049531304280__Hlk29468220"><strong><em>Heidi </em></strong></a><a name="m_-5502845049531304280__Hlk38979418" id="m_-5502845049531304280__Hlk38979418"></a><strong><em>Kühn</em></strong><strong><em> is founder and CEO of Roots of Peace, a humanitarian-nonprofit organization founded in 1997 with a vision to transform MINES TO VINES --replacing the scourge of landmines with sustainable agricultural farmland.  </em></strong></p> <p><strong><em>Kühn’s work empowers families living in wartorn regions,  leading to the economics of peace through export and trade. Her numerous awards include the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, World Association of Non-Profit Award, and the National Jefferson Award for Public Service — the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award, and the Gandhi Global Family Seva Award. </em></strong></p> <p><em> </em></p> <p><strong>To learn more, visit:</strong> <a href="http://www.rootsofpeace.org/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><strong>www.rootsofpeace.org</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.heidikuhn.com/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><strong>HeidiKuhn.com</strong></a>.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>About the Book: </strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Breaking Ground: From Landmines to Grapevines, One Woman’s Mission to Heal the World</em></strong><em> </em>is available in hardcover and eBook at booksellers nationwide and online retailers including <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Roots-Peace-Heidi-K%C3%BChn/dp/1683834461" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><strong>amazon.com</strong></a>, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/breaking-ground-heidi-kuhn/1134273671?ean=9781683834465" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><strong>Barnes &amp; Noble</strong></a>, and <a href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781683834465?aff=simonsayscom" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><strong>IndieBound</strong></a>.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Image Sources:</strong></p> <p><em>--Courtesy of Heidi Kuhn</em></p> <p><em>--DMCA (<a href="https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-ougwm" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline">Pxfuel</a>, Creative Commons)</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/heidi-kuhn" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Heidi Kuhn</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/landmines" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">landmines</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/breaking-ground" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">breaking ground</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/covid-19" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">covid-19</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/global-threat" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">global threat</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Heidi Kühn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Tue, 05 May 2020 14:03:14 +0000 tara 9525 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10623-planting-roots-peace-vietnam-and-beyond#comments Robert Stone Confronts the ‘Random Promiscuity of Events’ in New Book https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10620-robert-stone-confronts-random-promiscuity-events-new-book <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 09:03</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1stonebook_0.jpg?itok=MLSuh4jt"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1stonebook_0.jpg?itok=MLSuh4jt" width="318" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>The Eye You See With: Selected Nonfiction</strong></p> <p><strong>By Robert Stone</strong></p> <p><strong>Houghton Mifflin Harcourt</strong></p> <p><strong>366 pages</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>In an absorbing new biography, Madison Smartt Bell describes <a href="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4592-remembering-robert-stone" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">the late Robert Stone</a> as “one of the most powerful and enduring writers of the late-20th century.” He’s right. Stone wrote at least three career-defining novels—<em>Dog Soldiers, A Flag for Sunrise, </em>and <em>Outerbridge Reach—</em>a nearly unparalleled achievement in modern literature.</p> <p> </p> <p>In addition to the biography, <em>Child of Light, </em>Bell has skillfully edited <em>The Eye You See With, </em>a broad selection of the novelist’s articles, essays, and other nonfiction pieces. The subjects Stone wrote about, as in his novels, range from accounts of the ravages of war in Vietnam to richly textured travel pieces set in Havana, Jerusalem, and other hot spots in-between.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Vietnam War defined Stone’s voice and vision. After a brief sojourn in and around Saigon as a freelance reporter, he wrote the epochal <em>Dog Soldiers, </em>which brilliantly transplanted the agony and immorality of that far-off conflict onto home ground. Three kilos of pure heroin, smuggled from Vietnam back into the U.S. by the novel’s protagonist, John Converse, sends a small group of tormented people fleeing for their lives—and, within the framework of an exquisitely crafted thriller, captured what we all felt in the tawdry aftermath of that failed jungle war.</p> <p> </p> <p>Drugs and alcohol played an active part throughout Stone’s work. This reflected his own experiences with intoxicants of one sort or another. It also found expression in the idea that mind-bending drugs and distorted perception might lead to a higher truth or to abject tragedy.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1war.jpg" style="height:420px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>“It’s a mess when everybody’s high,” he writes in “A Higher Horror of the Whiteness.” “I liked it better when the weirdest thing around was me.”</p> <p> </p> <p>In reports on political events, like the Republican Convention in New Orleans in 1988, Stone’s jaundiced but impeccably astute eye caught the repulsive nonsense of American politics. In <em>The Eye You See With</em>, there are also sensitively wrought essays on his struggles with Catholicism, and on how and why faith plays such a critical role in his fiction.</p> <p> </p> <p>Some pieces, inevitably perhaps, suffer from the passage of years. Even for those of us who lived through it, the turmoil of the 1960s has become shrouded in memory. Stone got it right about the war, of course, and the disastrous effects on a generation of Americans. In both his fiction and nonfiction, he spoke in a uniquely mordant voice, in language that rang true in both high and low registers. Stone looked the heart of darkness in the eye and never flinched.</p> <p> </p> <p>In the end, what seems to have propelled him through conflict with public and personal demons was the need to create fiction that stood for something. In “The Reason for Stories,” he explains:</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/psychedelic.jpg" style="height:404px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>“Storytelling is not a luxury to humanity; it’s almost as necessary as bread … As dreams are to waking life, so fiction is to reality. The brain can’t function without clearing its circuits during sleep, nor can we contemplate and analyze our situation without living some of the time in the world of the imagination, sorting and redefining the random promiscuity of events.”</p> <p> </p> <p><em>The Eye You See With </em>should drive admirers back to the work that first galvanized Robert Stone’s readers in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The novels mentioned above have lost none of their power and resonance. Open <em>Dog Soldiers </em>or <em>A Flag for Sunrise</em> and start reading. Chances are, you won’t be able to stop.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Lee Polevoi, </em></strong><strong>Highbrow Magazine’s <em>chief book critic, is the author of a novel, </em>The Moon in Deep Winter, <em>and recently completed a new novel, </em>The Confessions of Gabriel Ash.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Image Sources:</strong></p> <p><em>--Google Images</em></p> <p><em>--Fotoshop Tofs (<a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/military-vietnam-war-1348228/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Pixabay</a>, Creative Commons)</em></p> <p><em>--Stuart Hampton (<a href="https://pixabay.com/illustrations/jimi-hendrix-hippie-peace-love-2265370/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Pixabay</a>, Creative Commons)               </em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/robert-stone" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">robert stone</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/eye-you-see" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the eye you see with</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/new-biographies" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new biographies</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/1960s" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1960s</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/psychedelic-drugs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">psychedelic drugs</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/drug-culture" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">drug culture</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/new-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new books</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/nonficition" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nonficition</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lee Polevoi</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 03 May 2020 13:03:08 +0000 tara 9521 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10620-robert-stone-confronts-random-promiscuity-events-new-book#comments Remembering the Genius of Kurt Vonnegut and ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10028-remembering-genius-kurt-vonnegut-and-slaughterhouse-five <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/books-fiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Books &amp; Fiction</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 06/23/2019 - 16:48</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1kurtvonnegut.jpg?itok=LC9B3Pea"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1kurtvonnegut.jpg?itok=LC9B3Pea" width="324" height="480" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>As a young man, few books exerted anything like the formative power held by Kurt Vonnegut's <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em>. Despite the grim acceptance of a world with conflict and war, Vonnegut still fell into writing an anti-war book, perhaps an anti-war book highly ranked among the best. This year marks the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of its publication, and, accordingly, Modern Library has released a new edition with a foreword by Kevin Powers. And, as the foreword shows in splendid detail, the lessons of <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em> are just as relevant today as they were in 1969.</p> <p>           </p> <p>Early on, the reader is given a view of exactly what Vonnegut's targets might be. By picking the name “The Children's Crusade” as a subtitle, not only did Vonnegut draw a comparison between selling children off to slavery and sending them off to war (even one that was justified), he also took on a target more familiar to the world of 1969 than today: Dwight D. Eisenhower and his memoir, <em>Crusade in Europe.</em></p> <p> </p> <p> In the author's tale in which the tale of Billy Pilgrim is embedded, we see a clear indictment of the “war story” as it may have been developing by Mary O'Hare: “You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.” It's about as motherly a sentiment as could be written.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2kurtvonnegut.jpg" style="height:523px; width:342px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Something of a sticking point to the reader acquainted with the valorization of past generations and the American fighting man in general is the characterization of the soldiers. The most poignant examples would be Roland Weary's fixation on violence and perverse pornographic picture, and Paul Lazarro taking pleasure in sadistically killing a dog. There is also an adverse selection mechanism at play: The two scouts, who are unquestionably good soldiers, are shot, as is Edgar Derby, a stand-in for civic virtue. One is at one point informed by a German that, “All the real soldiers are dead.” Even if it is 1944 and the conflict is nearing its end, especially for the Germans, the point is clear. Although one is forced to wonder about the biographical details of Vonnegut's life, or the authorial narrator trying to write a book between Vonnegut and Billy Pilgrim, if such things might be allowed to creep into a review, might provide supporting a diagnosis of survivor's guilt.</p> <p> </p> <p>Aside from Vonnegut's commentary on war and its effects on society, <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em> paints an astounding picture of a the combined effects, in Billy, of post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury. He's “unstuck”: in time, flashing back and forward with no clear trigger effects and no obvious narrative logic. If it's confusing for the reader, it's worse for Billy. While one might think of Oliver Wendell Holmes rubbing his fingers over the holes in his old Civil War uniform as one possibility for the mental scarring of conflict, this is another more frightening possibility.</p> <p> </p> <p>And what of Tralfamador? Through providing the reader an alternative vision of seeing the world, with all of history at once, the extraterrestrials give the reader a perspective of what the tragic view of history might actually look like. Whether Billy is mad or not, there is something sane about the Tralfamadorians' perspective.</p> <p> </p> <p>This momentous occasion has been marked by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/books/kurt-vonnegut-dresden-anniversary.html"><em>The New York Times</em></a>, which deftly captured the frustration and anger which gave rise to Vonnegut's novel with an anecdote relayed by his daughter, Nanette. Vonnegut had become so irate at the Vietnam War's misrepresentation, often shouting “liars” at the television, that he took to writing to show people war as it really was (away from the cameras).</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3kurtvonnegut.jpg" style="height:476px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Despite the enmity with which the book was greeted during its publication, for the use of profane language that so often works as a sort of bolster for censorship, according to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2019/mar/05/reading-group-slaughterhouse-five-by-kurt-vonnegut-is-our-book-for-march"><em>The Guardian's </em>Sam Jordison</a>, it was also seen as a classic and critically well-received.</p> <p> </p> <p>While some might wonder what a book from the Vietnam era can teach us today, <em>Slaughterhouse-Five</em> has something even for the most vociferous skeptics. Even the most well-supported arguments of topicality can be met by the sheer persistence of conflict: Our much enlightened times are still rife with opportunities for the young to die on foreign shores.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Adam Gravano is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/slaughterhouse-five" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">slaughterhouse five</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/kurt-vonnegut" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">kurt vonnegut</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-writers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">american writers</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">literature</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/modern-library" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">modern library</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Adam Gravano</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Wikimedia.org; Greg Kolls (Flickr; Creative Commons)</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 23 Jun 2019 20:48:46 +0000 tara 8811 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/10028-remembering-genius-kurt-vonnegut-and-slaughterhouse-five#comments The Temptation of the Intellectuals: LBJ and the 1965 Festival of the Arts https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5062-temptation-intellectuals-lbj-and-festival-arts <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 06/12/2015 - 13:44</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1lbjfestival.jpg?itok=EB1C8Nw8"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1lbjfestival.jpg?itok=EB1C8Nw8" width="480" height="323" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>It is a bright early Summer`s day in the White House`s Rose Garden. Two men - the film-star, Charlton Heston and the highbrow cultural critic, Dwight Macdonald - stand fiercely arguing about whether it is right for guests to a Presidential event - in this case the Festival of the Arts held 50 years ago in June 1965 - to disturb proceedings. Although etiquette is the ostensible subject of the quarrel, tempers are running high because simmering beneath the surface is the heated issue of the Vietnam War.</p> <p>The Festival takes place at a critical and turbulent time in modern American history. In a society increasingly marked by division and conflict, due initially to the struggle for Civil Rights and then to the slowly gathering campaign to stop the War, the US Administration is keen to ensure that alternative voices to the those on the radical Left can be heard. For although Lyndon Johnson, from taking office in 1963, has been  a reforming president, introducing large-scale social programs to alleviate poverty, end racial discrimination and improve educational opportunity, he is in danger, as a result of his military interventions in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, of losing the support of a significant segment of the nation’s liberal intelligentsia</p> <p>Intellectuals have often given governments a hard time. From Jonathan Swift to Harold Pinter, they have served as the proverbial thorn in the flesh of the powerful. Yet, political leaders have also not been slow to recognise the potential value of art and artists to their cause, especially at times of crisis. Going back a hundred years to 1914-18, the British government, for example, was quick to co-opt several leading authors to write in support of the country`s war effort and recent revelations indicate that the CIA was keen to use the arts, including Abstract Expressionism, to promote Western values and interests during the Cold War of the 1950s.</p> <p> The 1965 White House Festival of the Arts, held on Monday June 14<sup>th</sup>, is also designed with a political agenda in mind, in this case to win over America`s cultural elite. The occasion would support community arts certainly, it would help most probably counter the President`s image, in contrast to that of his predecessor, JFK, as a rough-cut Southerner with little interest in music, art and books, and most importantly it would recruit potential influential opponents or doubters of his foreign policy to his cause. As the decision to escalate the War by systematic bombing gets closer and as student hostility to the War gathers pace, so the attraction of having at least some of the nation`s intellectuals on side grows. If the Government cannot count on the support of America’s students, then perhaps it can rely on the backing - implicit or explicit - of a few well-respected writers or artists.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2lbjfestival.jpg" style="height:407px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>So, with the First Lady`s enthusiastic support, preparations begin. Letters are sent, phone-calls made, art-works requested and schedules drawn-up.  Many want to be invited, leading chief-organizer, Eric Goldman, to say, `I never experienced anything like the assault for an invitation to this event.’ And whilst there are obstacles - an in-demand female actor for a performance of a scene from Arthur Miller`s <em>Death of a Salesman</em> can`t immediately be found, museum directors need persuading to loan paintings and questions are raised about the absence of Indian art - everything seems to be going relatively smoothly until a letter, addressed to the President, arrives.</p> <p>Robert Lowell  is certainly a well-known public figure in 1965, having published both <em>Life Studies</em> and <em>For the Union Dead,</em> two of the century`s most important collections of poetry, and had already been ‘outraged’  by the US’ nuclear policy and its interventions in far-off countries. Perhaps then, the surprising thing is that he should have initially agreed to a poetry reading on the 14<sup>th</sup><sup> </sup>June  rather than the fact that a few days after accepting, having listened to the opinion of his friends, including Philip Roth, he should join Edmund Wilson and E. B White - two other prominent writers of the time - and change his mind.</p> <p>The carefully-chosen words of Lowell`s letter, with their reference to his uncertainties and indecision, express not so much his anger at the War but his anxious sense of the dangers of this `anguished, delicate’ moment - `We are in danger of becoming an explosive and suddenly chauvinistic nation, and may even be drifting on our way to the last nuclear ruin’- and his difficulties as a `private and irresolute man’  to make a public stand. And it is these difficulties that make the poet’s hard-won decision to absent himself - a decision he sticks to in spite of Goldman’s lengthy attempts to change his mind - the more telling. How much more powerful is his conflicted and reluctant refusal to sup at the President’s table - a refusal soon to be published on the front page of the <em>New York Times</em> - than the slogans and polemics of other opponents of the War.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3lbjfestival.jpg" style="height:516px; width:415px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>If Lowell represents one response of the artist to the temptations of official favors and flattery from above, his contemporaries make different choices. Saul Bellow, for example, accepts his invitation in spite of his hostility to US military interventions, arguing that the Festival should not be regarded as a political occasion; by accepting ,Bellow believes he is  merely honouring the president’s  office, not supporting his foreign policy.</p> <p>John Hersey, best known for his non-fiction book, <em>Hiroshima</em>, also agrees to attend the Festival  but will not, in spite of considerable pressure from organizers, particularly from Mrs Johnson - `The President and I do not want this man to read these passages in the White House’ - succumb to the demands to read only from his novels.  For Hersey, the event is an opportunity to gain Johnson’s attention and confront him with the horrific human costs of modern warfare and, as with Lowell, to emphasise the dangers of escalation - `Let these words be a reminder,’ he prefaces his reading, `the step from one degree of violence to the next is imperceptibly taken and cannot easily be taken back. The end point of these little steps is horror and oblivion.’</p> <p>Unable to spot the President in the audience - LBJ had decided, as an expression of his anger at the way the Festival is unfolding, to only attend the reception - Hersey directs his readings at his wife, sitting stony-faced in the front-row.  Selecting two passages from his book  - one about the suffering  produced by the bomb and one that presents, in cold statistics, the terrifying potential of nuclear weapons - he succeeds in graphically bringing home to his cultured listeners, modern warfare`s brutal effects on human beings in a far off land. If ever there was an example of speaking truth to power, then surely this is it. </p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4lbjfestival.jpg" style="height:444px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Another guest who is strongly opposed to Johnson’s policy in Vietnam is Dwight Macdonald - a well-respected writer on culture and society. Invited to the Festival just before he, along with several well-known artists and writers, had put his name to a telegram expressing support for Lowell’s stand -` We would like you to know that others of us share his dismay at recent American foreign policy decisions ‘- MacDonald thinks about following the poet’s example, only deciding to attend the Festival when friends suggested how he might turn his attendance into a form of activism.</p> <p>Writing about the occasion is one option but organizing a petition in favour of Lowell’s position amongst fellow guests, strikes Macdonald as a potentially more effective move. As with Hersey, here is a chance, he sees, to campaign against the War in the very place from which it is being waged - the White House.  So, when accused by Charlton Heston of lacking `elementary manners’ , Macdonald stands firm; for him the issue of Vietnam trumps the issue of etiquette. Embarrassment and Presidential rage - LBJ denounces his critics as `sonsofbitches` - are the necessary price to be paid for taking a stand.</p> <p>Not everyone, however, is so steadfast in the face of pressure - however charming and light-touch is this pressure.  Chair of the Festival, the literary scholar, Mark van Doren, redrafts his speech, after a lengthy conversation with Goldman, to play down favourable reference to Lowell’s decision to stay away and to play up his praise for President Johnson’s hospitality to members of the art world. Reassured that he could say whatever he likes, he says what Goldman likes, providing a clear reminder of the soft-power exercised by the well-meaning servants of liberal democracies.</p> <p>Arguably, it is the strength and reach of this soft-power that is at stake in the case of the 1965 Festival of the Arts. Flattered to receive an invitation to the occasion from the White House, only five out of the 102 people who are asked, choose to say no on political grounds, for the temptation to accept the warm embrace of authority, whether in the form of invitations or honors or prestigious roles was not easy to resist fifty years ago and is not easy to resist now. An argument can always be made that it is better for everyone, not least yourself, to stay on side and silent.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/5lbjfestival.jpg" style="height:418px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Yet, in retrospect, who can say that Robert Lowell, by refusing to attend the Festival on June 14<sup>th</sup>, and John Hersey and Dwight Macdonald by attending but not following the rules, were mistaken? Here, were three intellectuals and artists who, in their different ways, believed that they had a responsibility to leave their respective studies to take the fight to their political masters. Saul Bellow, and others, may have thought it right to draw fine distinctions between the President as institution and the President as policy-maker and risk committing Julian Benda’s `trahison des clercs’. However, for Lowell, Hersey and Macdonald the moral case for making a statement about the Vietnam War by their actions is too powerful. Sometimes, they would argue, intellectuals do have to bite the hand that feeds them.   </p> <p>Although President Johnson did not change his foreign policy as a result of the opposition from the world of the arts that he encountered on June 14<sup>th</sup>, the White House Festival of the Arts is nevertheless a significant moment, even looking back at it fifty years on. Afterwards, no one has any illusions about the huge gulf that had opened up in the culture between the politicians and America’s liberal intellectuals. Having failed engage in a proper dialogue with his critics, as Goldman wished for - a dialogue which might have created a pause for reflection and compromise - and angered and humiliated by the rebuffs he had received, Johnson believed there was now no alternative than to further escalate the War.</p> <p>All critics of his policy became unpatriotic, required to answer the question of whether they are helping `the cause of the country’ and suspected of being Soviet tools. The idea of the Great Society, which had inspired the president and his followers falls by the wayside and almost all energies are focused on achieving a military victory. Thus, while still aware of voices advising caution and of the danger of public opinion turning against him, Johnson does nevertheless, in the days and weeks after the Festival, decide to use US B-52 aircraft to undertake saturation bombing of North Vietnam and to send an additional 100,000 troops to the battlefield. The time for looking at pictures, watching plays and listening to poets was over.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><br /> <strong><em>Mike Peters is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lyndon-johnson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lyndon Johnson</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lbj" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">LBJ</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/festival-arts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">festival of the arts</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/1965" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1965</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/white-house-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the white house</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/robert-lowell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">robert lowell</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/dwight-mcdonald" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">dwight mcdonald</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mark-van-doren" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">mark van doren</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/arts" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the arts</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Mike Peters</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 12 Jun 2015 17:44:22 +0000 tara 6088 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5062-temptation-intellectuals-lbj-and-festival-arts#comments The Vietnam War 40 Years Later: How Capitalism Trumped Ideology https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4981-vietnam-war-years-later-how-capitalism-trumped-ideology <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 05/01/2015 - 13:54</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnam40_0.jpg?itok=UeqHt8Gl"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnam40_0.jpg?itok=UeqHt8Gl" width="480" height="268" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/04/vietnam-40-years.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Forty years have passed since the Vietnam War ended, and a parade was staged in Ho Chi Minh City, formally Saigon, to commemorate that date. Yet despite the fanfare debates rage on both sides of the Pacific as to who really won and who lost that war. While the hammer and sickle and Uncle Ho’s image may still adorn T-shirts it sells to foreign tourists, Vietnam’s heart throbs for all things American, especially Apple. In 2014, in fact, Vietnam became its hottest market. In the first half of the 2014 fiscal year alone, iPhone sales tripled in this country, far surpassing sales growth in India and China.</p> <p> </p> <p>But it is not just iPhones, of course, that exemplify America’s powerful presence in Vietnam 40 years after the war ended. Facebook entered Vietnam’s market four years ago and at one point was adding a million signups a month. As of October, it had 30 million users, and that’s out of 40 million Vietnamese who have access to the Internet.</p> <p> </p> <p>On television too, America has managed to seduce its former enemy. One of the country’s favorite shows is “Vietnam Idol” (in addition to “The Voice of Vietnam” and “Vietnam’s Got Talent”). You don’t need to understand Vietnamese to follow the plot. A rural teenager appears; she’s nervous, full of self-doubt. When she sings, however, we hear a golden voice. Judges swoon. Soon, a few weeks later, she has been transformed, grows in confidence and beauty. See her studied gesture of shyness, the chic skirt, the professional hair and makeup and the flawless performance. </p> <p> </p> <p>From corporate investments to tourism, from military engagements to products, from social media to entertainment media, from the Vietnamese-American expats who return in droves to invest heavily in their homeland to a horde of Vietnamese foreign students coming to the U.S. for a much coveted American education, Vietnam is falling quickly back into America’s orbit. In 2014 the U.S. overtook the European Union to become Vietnam’s largest export market, buying nearly $29 billion worth of goods, and it sold more than $5.5 billion worth of products to Vietnam.</p> <p> </p> <p>Last October, to deepen ties, Washington eased a ban on weapons sales to its former enemy, mainly to upgrade Vietnam’s naval defenses. It also performed its fifth joint military exercise with the Vietnamese military, despite China’s objections. China has reasons to be nervous. It now claims 90 percent of the South China Sea, all the way to Borneo, amid international protests. This vast stretch of water provides shipping lanes for more than half of world trade. And for the U.S. alone in 2012, an estimated $1.2 trillion worth of goods transited through it. Under that sea, too, lie untold oil pockets and natural gas, the stuff that could make or break an empire for the next 100 years. But by claiming control over this international body of water, Beijing is spurring a warming of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.</p> <p> </p> <p>Much of that cozy relationship can be attributed to Hillary Clinton who, as secretary of state, visited Hanoi in July 2012. “Clinton’s visit paved the way for the establishment of the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership, which was formally laid out a year later in Washington at the July 2013 summit meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang,” noted The Diplomat, an Asia-focused news website.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2vietnam40_0.jpg" style="height:625px; width:416px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>How important is this breakthrough? Very. Less than a decade ago, Hanoi had considered China as its strategic ally, but not anymore. Vietnam is asking to buy more weapons from the U.S. so it can defend itself from China. Clinton, who’s running for president in 2016, considers the Pacific region the top priority.</p> <p> </p> <p>In “America’s Pacific Century,” an essay written for <em>Foreign Policy</em> in 2011, she noted, “One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will … be to lock in a substantially increased investment — diplomatic, economic, strategic and otherwise — in the Asia-Pacific region.” All this is to say Vietnam will continue to be a big blip on America’s radar for years to come.</p> <p> </p> <p>But beyond geopolitics, the Vietnamese have for decades been fascinated with America, thanks in large part to Vietnamese-Americans. An unexpected but crucial consequence of the Vietnam War was the subsequent mass exodus of its people in the aftermath. The largest, wealthiest and most educated Vietnamese overseas population now resides in North America, and in the post–Cold War period, they began to exert powerful influences in Vietnam’s economic and cultural life.</p> <p> </p> <p>Remittances sent from the Vietnamese Diaspora average about $12 billion a year, that’s almost double compared with the average $7 billion annually sent by international donors. On top of remittances, however, “overseas Vietnamese have invested in about 2,000 projects, generating about $20 billion annually” notes the Voice of Vietnam, the national radio broadcaster. The combination of overseas Vietnamese remittances and investment amounts to about 18 percent of Vietnam’s GDP.</p> <p> </p> <p>What this means on the ground is that a sizable population of Viet Kieu — Vietnamese expats, former boat people and their children — now wield considerable leverage in their homeland. From opening wine shops to creating startups, from running high-tech companies to working as executives for major foreign companies in Vietnam, from starting art centers to making movies or teaching at universities, expats have become active agents in changing Vietnam’s destiny.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3vietnam40_0.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Epitomizing the trend is Henry Nguyen, 41, who fled Vietnam as a child with his parents and spent months in a refugee camp in Thailand. Eventually he became a Goldman Sachs associate in Virginia. Now he is back in Vietnam, famous for bringing McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and venture capital to his homeland. To top it off, the former boat person who became an U.S. entrepreneur married the daughter of Vietnam’s prime minister in 2006. The war “forced people who shared common values and culture to pick sides,” Nguyen told Reuters recently. “It’s kind of like a tragicomedy.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Tragicomedy, indeed. The 6000 or so marchers who walked about downtown Saigon to celebrate North Vietnam’s victory over the capitalistic South and its imperialist U.S. ally forty years ago, also marched by an array of Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King and Apple stores that line the streets. Military victories aside, it sort of gives the spectator an idea as to who is actually winning the peace.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Andrew Lam is editor at New America Media and author of "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," "East East West: Writing in Two Hemishperes," and "Birds of Paradise Lost."  Another version of the above story appeared in Al Jazeera.</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/04/vietnam-40-years.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/anniversary-vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">anniversary of vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/ho-chi-minh-city" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ho chi minh city</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnamese" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnamese</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">americans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 01 May 2015 17:54:03 +0000 tara 5962 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4981-vietnam-war-years-later-how-capitalism-trumped-ideology#comments Documenting a Changing Vietnam Through Photographs https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4945-documenting-changing-vietnam-through-photographs <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/photography-art" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Photography &amp; Art</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 04/09/2015 - 14:44</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1karnow.jpg?itok=SXXvgisC"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1karnow.jpg?itok=SXXvgisC" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/04/catherine-karnows-vietnam-documenting-a-changing-country.php">New America Media</a></strong>:</p> <p> </p> <p><em>To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, the prestigious Art Vietnam Gallery in Hanoi, Vietnam, is showing “Vietnam: 25 Years of Documenting a Changing Country,” a photo exhibition of National Geographic photographer Catherine Karnow’s lifelong work in that country. In his introduction to the exhibition, Andrew Lam writes that the photographs capture a country that has many versions of itself. The show opens April 10 and is up until May 8, 2015. The photos below belong to Catherine Karnow.</em></p> <p> </p> <p>If you want to know what it’s like to wait, take a look at Catherine Karnow’s photo of people at the dock of Saigon in 1990. There’s something so solitary and stoic in their postures as they wait for their ferry that the tableau comes to represent Vietnam itself writ large.</p> <p> </p> <p>A few years after that picture was taken, change came, and it came roaring. One photo in particular is most telling: men squatting on the ground painting Coca-Cola logos on a dozen signboards that announced the opening of bars, restaurants, and hair salons. Vietnam had just revised its constitution to allow the practice of “private capitalism" and small businesses sprang up seemingly overnight.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2karnow.jpg" style="height:417px; width:625px" /></p> <p>In another decade or so those signs will have turned into gigantic billboards that line rivers and boulevards in major cities, telling citizens to buy Tiger Beer, Honda Dream motorcycles, Toyotas, Sony TVs and, if they can afford it, a new condo. So much so that they will have overshadowed old slogans romanticizing laborers and farmers and the virtues of a socialist paradise.</p> <p> </p> <p>Dramatic, too, was that now famous photo of Phuong Anh Nguyen, a returning Vietnamese American who owns a stylish bar called Q Bar in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. She is wearing dark shades, a bikini top and tight black shorts, sitting astride a vintage Vespa motorcycle holding a live chicken by its neck. In Vietnam the photo sparked controversy when it first appeared in the book Passage to Vietnam. So daring on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. So bold. LA style. “We know she’s a Viet Kieu [Vietnamese expat] because Vietnamese don’t hold live chickens by their necks but by their legs,” one woman quipped. Soon thereafter, daring young women, like Phuong Anh, would wear bikini tops to go out drinking, and voilà, a fad was born.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3karnow.jpg" style="height:416px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Though the country remained under a one-party rule, Vietnam has since the late 1980s eased its once-iron grip on the economy and cultural life, moving from a socialist to a free market economy. Gone are the days when citizens were required to discuss Marxist-Leninist doctrines at weekly neighborhood sessions. Gone too are the permits needed to buy rice from state-run stores, or to move from one city to another.</p> <p> </p> <p>The drab, impoverished and immobile nation that Catherine saw when she first visited in 1990 quickly shifted under her lens. And fascinated, she kept coming back. After all, unlike Albania, Russia or Italy, or dozens of other exotic locations that the famed National Geographic photographer has visited over the years, Vietnam is deeply personal, and a kind of inheritance.</p> <p> </p> <p>Her father, Stanley Karnow, who passed away in 2013, was a Pulitzer prize-winning author and celebrated journalist who spent the bulk of his career covering the Vietnam War. He served first as bureau chief for Time-Life and then as foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. Having witnessed the first American killed in 1959, he watched the war escalate, then end ignominiously: Americans troops withdrawing, South Vietnam abandoned, North Vietnam reigning supreme. He went on to write the masterful Vietnam: A History, an exploration of the root causes of how America ended up in one of its most lamentable overseas ventures. He also served as chief correspondent for the 13-hour series Vietnam: A Television History for PBS that won six Emmys and a Peabody award.</p> <p> </p> <p>There’s a saying in Vietnam: “Cha truyen, con noi,” which can be translated to something along the lines of “Father transmits, child progresses.” It speaks to the Vietnamese understanding of how a legacy—be it a profession, passion or family tradition—can be passed down, as if fated, through the generations. In the Vietnamese sense of progression, since father bore witness to the war in Vietnam, it should only be natural that daughter, too, should bear witness to the country’s emergence from behind the bamboo curtain into the bright light of globalization.</p> <p> </p> <p>What Catherine’s photos capture is a country that has many versions of itself.</p> <p> </p> <p>In one version, there’s a nation still bound by the past. General Vo Nguyen Giap, who led the North Vietnamese communist army against the French and the Americans, is greeted with pure joy when he visits Dien Bien Phu 40 years after the French were defeated. The general was in good form as seen in Catherine’s portrait of him back in 1990, but the memories of war were all there, still raw, in his eyes.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4karnow.jpg" style="height:417px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>The past continues into the future in the form of Agent Orange, dropped along the Ho Chi Minh trail and parts of South Vietnam, where its appalling effects have continued to express themselves in the form of birth defects.</p> <p> </p> <p>Or take a look at the shirtless, mixed-race young man with a faded black and white photo of his parents: a handsome American GI and his Vietnamese bride. The young man’s expression is both that of resignation and longing. Will his father ever return? Will he and his mother be allowed to emigrate to America? And if he does reach fabled America, will he find his American father?</p> <p> </p> <p>But there’s another version of Vietnam, a nation freeing itself from war memories and rushing forward. And it’s growing younger and younger. The country’s population, passing 90 million, has more than doubled since the Vietnam War ended. Two out of three Vietnamese have no direct memory of the war. Everyone instead is in the grip of modernity.</p> <p> </p> <p>Vietnam’s society has become complex, with many different social strata, and increasingly expressive: filmmakers, artists, fashion designers and singers are pushing the cultural envelope daily. It is no wonder that a young gay couple in Catherine’s photo have no qualms hugging each other in a club. Although same-sex marriage isn’t legal, Vietnam is at the forefront of gay rights the region and gay weddings are not uncommon.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/5karnow.jpg" style="height:417px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Along with a fledgling civil society, there is a growing middle class, and a slow erosion of the government’s control over people’s lives as pressure rises for reform, transparency and pluralism. The return of Viet Kieus to the homeland, too, is bringing something new: Some bring back financial investments and technological know-how while others, like bar owner Phuong Anh Nguyen and the artist Dinh Q Le, with his woven photographs of layered memories of the U.S. and Vietnam, bring new ways of looking at art and self expression.</p> <p> </p> <p>But to the discerning eye, there is a widening gap between the haves and have-nots. The land where the super-wealthy play golf was once green rice paddies that belonged to poor farmers, often driven out by powerful developers. A crocodile leather Gucci bag in that new luxury store is worth the price of half a dozen girls in the Mekong Delta, often sold for as little as $400 dollars by their impoverished, debt-ridden farmer parents to traffickers who take them across the border where many end up in brothels.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>There's a Vietnam that is moving toward a conspicuous consumerist culture, a new upper class living a grand life with armies of servants waiting on them hand and foot. And there's a Vietnam that remains mired in poverty, one in which many families live hand to mouth. Underneath that gorgeous photo of a gleaming metropolis of Saigon, an army of vendors and laborers are trying to get on the right side of the economic divide.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/6karnow.jpg" style="height:417px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Vietnam keeps changing and it keeps drawing Catherine back over the years. Her parents are gone now, her family home sold. But if there’s a place where she remains connected to her father (and her mother, who lived in Vietnam in the ‘50s), it is this country where both their careers blossomed.</p> <p> </p> <p>Stanley Karnow recorded the nightmares of the Vietnam War with words, and Catherine Karnow has managed to chronicle Vietnam’s long night’s journey into day with her photos.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Photo credits: Catherine Karnow</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora and East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres. His latest book, Birds of Paradise Lost, a short-story collection, was published in 2013 and won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014.</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/04/catherine-karnows-vietnam-documenting-a-changing-country.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/catherine-karnow" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">catherine karnow</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/national-geographic" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">National Geographic</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/photography" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">photography</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/photos-vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">photos of vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Catherine Karnow</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 09 Apr 2015 18:44:47 +0000 tara 5899 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4945-documenting-changing-vietnam-through-photographs#comments The Many Casualties of LBJ’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4196-many-casualties-lbj-s-gulf-tonkin-resolution <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 08/06/2014 - 10:48</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/3LBJ%20%28wiki%29.jpg?itok=gmS2K8PP"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/3LBJ%20%28wiki%29.jpg?itok=gmS2K8PP" width="480" height="321" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From <a href="http://punditwire.com/2014/08/04/war-liberalism-trust-in-government-the-many-casualties-of-lbjs-gulf-of-tonkin-resolution/">PunditWire.com</a></strong>:</p> <p> </p> <p>Fifty years ago, on August 10, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed what is known as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_Resolution#mediaviewer/File:Tonkin_Gulf_Resolution.jpg" style="line-height: 1.6em;">Gulf of Tonkin Resolution</a>. It is a day that should live in infamy.</p> <p> </p> <p>On that day, the President gave himself the power “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed forces,” to fight the spread of communism in Southeast Asia and assist our ally in South Vietnam “in defense of its freedom.” Or as former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it decades later, it gave “complete authority to the president to take the nation to war.”</p> <p> </p> <p>History has shown that the resolution was built on a foundation of misinformation, fabrication, and willful evasion of the truth. Contrary to what the President claimed, there was no unprovoked “act of aggression” against the American destroyers that were patrolling the Tonkin Gulf, and a second alleged incident never even took place.</p> <p> </p> <p>But the Johnson administration was looking for a pretext to escalate the war. “We don’t know what happened,” National Security Adviser Walter W. Rostow told the president after Congress passed the resolution, “but it had the desired result.”</p> <p> </p> <p>The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution may have had the desired result, but the war it unleashed didn’t.</p> <p> </p> <p>By the time Lyndon Johnson left office more than four years later, we had amassed over half a million troops in Vietnam, lost nearly 37,000 soldiers, dropped more bomb tonnage than we had in all of World War II, released chemical weapons – Napalm and Agent Orange – throughout Southeast Asia, and burned thousands of South Vietnamese homes and villages to the ground. Yet it was increasingly clear by then that we could not win the war.</p> <p> </p> <p>Rather than stopping any dominoes from falling in Southeast Asia, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution set in motion a series of dominoes in our own country that would profoundly alter our politics, economy, and culture for years to come.</p> <p> </p> <p>Perhaps the most significant decision President Johnson made beyond using his newly authorized power to escalate the war was to hide the cost of the war and resist any tax increase to pay for it. Johnson feared that any congressional debate over funding the war would come at the expense of his Great Society program.</p> <p> </p> <p>He wanted both guns and butter, but he worried that Congress would choose guns over butter. So once again he resorted to obfuscation and deception to get his way.</p> <p>What resulted was a cascading series of economic consequences that would transform our nation and undermine the Great Society he so dearly wanted to protect.</p> <p> </p> <p>To pay for the war without gutting his robust domestic agenda, Johnson resorted to deficit spending, which fueled an already overheating economy that was now being asked to divert its productivity away from consumer goods and toward the war effort.</p> <p>Consumer demand began to outstrip supply, and that let the inflation genie out of the bottle. Less than five years after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed, <a href="http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx" target="_blank" title="http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/HistoricalInflation.aspx">inflation more than quadrupled.</a></p> <p> </p> <p>Johnson couldn’t hide the rising cost of the war for long, and by 1968 he asked for a 10 percent tax surcharge on all but the poorest Americans. But it came at a cost: Congress demanded, and he had to accept, a 10 percent reduction in domestic discretionary spending. Barely three years after birthing the Great Society, he began to starve it to pay for the war. It never fully recovered.</p> <p> </p> <p>To middle and working-class Americans, the backbone of the New Deal coalition, the war’s economic impact was taking a toll. Though inflation meant pay raises once a year, prices for food and consumer goods were rising every month, which then ate away at any increase in their wages.</p> <p> </p> <p>Their standard of living began to stagnate. Nor were taxes indexed to inflation in those years, so every pay increase risked pushing them into a higher tax bracket, which took even more money from their pockets in addition to the tax surcharge they would have to pay.</p> <p> </p> <p>These were largely Democratic voters who generally supported the president and the war – many had their own boys fighting in Vietnam – so if they were looking for blame they weren’t about to point the finger at a deceptive and misguided war policy.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/4war%20%28wiki%29.jpg" style="height:533px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Instead, they saw higher taxes, higher domestic spending, and lots of fanfare for a Great Society that didn’t seem to include them. They also saw domestic unrest and urban riots.</p> <p>To them, they were hard-working Americans who played by the rules yet were now forced to tread water just to keep from falling behind while government seemed to be giving everything away to the poor. That domestic programs themselves were getting squeezed by the war was a detail that got lost in the heat of the moment.</p> <p> </p> <p>Couple these growing resentments with the fact that it was their boys, not the children of the well-educated, who were being sent off to war. From their perspective, the liberal elites were taxing them to coddle the poor, yet when it came to defending our nation these same liberal elites sheltered their sons in colleges and universities.</p> <p> </p> <p>Those seeking to understand the rise of Reagan Democrats and white working-class Republican populists – and the corresponding demise of the New Deal majority – need look no further. The cultural and political divide that began in the Sixties was a direct result of the deceit that brought us the Vietnam War.</p> <p>And what was then a still fragile liberal consensus that government could mitigate the hardships of poverty – a consensus that enabled passage of the Great Society legislation – began to erode.</p> <p> </p> <p>That an administration could dissemble us into war would lead to another cultural and political repercussion of Vietnam: our growing and seemingly permanent distrust of government.</p> <p> </p> <p>Trust in government peaked at 76 percent in 1964, not coincidentally the same year as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and declined precipitously in the years thereafter, reaching what was then a low of 25 percent in 1980, according to the University of Michigan’s <a href="http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/toptable/tab5a_1.htm" target="_blank" title="http://www.electionstudies.org/nesguide/toptable/tab5a_1.htm">National Election Studies</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Not all of this decline is due to Vietnam, but a war built on the original sin of deception, fiction, and illusion deserves a good deal of the blame.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/1antiwar.jpg" style="height:625px; width:455px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Almost daily, Americans were treated to an official version of the war that had us winning. The  Johnson administration trumpeted body counts and bombing raids and assured us, in the famous words of General William Westmoreland, that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.”</p> <p> </p> <p>But there was no light. The dark reality we saw every night on television contradicted what our leaders were telling us. We saw bloodied soldiers, troops burning villages, body bags, fear and despair and little of the triumphalism that was emanating from the Pentagon.</p> <p> </p> <p>When the Vietcong launched their Tet Offensive in January 1968, striking at the U.S. Embassy and other key sites in the heart of Saigon, Americans had a hard time reconciling the official version with what they were witnessing.</p> <p> </p> <p>Thus was born the credibility gap between the American government and its citizens.</p> <p> </p> <p>And nowhere did it grow wider than among journalists, who were greeted with untruths during the daily military briefings in Vietnam – known as the Five O’clock Follies – and saw through such euphemisms as “pacification,” which in truth meant torching Vietnamese huts and shooting those who resisted, and “collateral damage,” which in reality meant civilian deaths.</p> <p> </p> <p>Reflexive skepticism of government remains a defining characteristic of contemporary journalism.</p> <p> </p> <p>Watergate, which calcified the credibility gap, also grew out of Vietnam when President Richard Nixon authorized his secretive White House Plumbers to retaliate against Daniel Ellsberg, whose leak of the Pentagon Papers laid bare the duplicity behind the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the U.S. prosecution of the war.</p> <p> </p> <p>Years later Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of two who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/13/pentagon-papers-daniel-ellsberg" target="_blank" title="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/13/pentagon-papers-daniel-ellsberg">told Ellsberg</a> that if members of Congress had seen the evidence from the Pentagon Papers in 1964, “the Tonkin Gulf Resolution would never have gotten out of committee, and if it had been brought to the floor, it would have been voted down.”</p> <p> </p> <p>What Lyndon Johnson saw as a ploy to grant him war powers ended up harming so many and transforming our nation in ways the President surely never intended. It would end up engulfing the liberalism he so loved. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the hubris behind it were the linchpins of Johnson’s Shakespearean Vietnam tragedy – and ours as well. </p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2nixon%20%28wiki%29.jpg" style="height:390px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p><em>Also published in the</em> <em><a href="http://hnn.us/article/156384" target="_hplink">History News Network</a>.</em></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>Author Bio:</strong></em></p> <p> </p> <p><em><strong>A former speechwriter and strategist for causes, candidates, and members of Congress,</strong></em> <em><strong><a href="http://punditwire.com/contributors/leonard-steinhorn/" target="_blank">Leonard Steinhorn</a></strong></em> <em><strong>has written on American politics and culture for major print and online publications, and is currently a professor of communication at American University.</strong></em></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From <a href="http://punditwire.com/2014/08/04/war-liberalism-trust-in-government-the-many-casualties-of-lbjs-gulf-of-tonkin-resolution/">PunditWire.com</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/tonkin-resollution" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">tonkin resollution</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gulf-tonkin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gulf of tonkin</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lbj" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">LBJ</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/lyndon-johnson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lyndon Johnson</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/communism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">communism</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/north-vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">north vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/saigon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Saigon</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Leonard Steinhorn</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Wikipedia Commons; Google Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 06 Aug 2014 14:48:30 +0000 tara 5042 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4196-many-casualties-lbj-s-gulf-tonkin-resolution#comments Iraq Replaces Vietnam as a Metaphor for Tragedy https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4098-iraq-replaces-vietnam-metaphor-tragedy <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Thu, 06/26/2014 - 12:39</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnamiraq.jpg?itok=hAtePaPx"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1vietnamiraq.jpg?itok=hAtePaPx" width="480" height="437" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner New America Media:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>A few years ago in a New York subway train I witnessed a scene that will always serve for me as an important marker of sort. A man in ruffled clothes walked up and down the aisle and panhandled in a loud voice. "Can you help a Vietnam Vet? I've got issues and I've been out of work. Folks, can you help?" All of a sudden a young man, who had been watching him, stood up and exploded: "You f'***g liar. You're too young to fight in NAM. Want to know issues? I've got issues. I just came back from Iraq."</p> <p> </p> <p>There was a collective hush, and some people fled to another car.</p> <p> </p> <p>For almost three decades after U.S. helicopters flew over a smoke-filled Saigon, Vietnam served as a vault of tragic metaphors for every American to use. In movies, in literature, someone who went to 'Nam was someone who came back a wreck, a traumatized soul who has seen or committed too many horrors to ever return to normal life. In politics, Vietnam was a hard-learned lesson that continued to influence U.S. foreign policies. It was an unhealed wound, the cause of post-traumatic stress, the stuff bad dreams were made of.</p> <p> </p> <p>Then came Iraq. Many comparisons have been made about the two wars. But what Iraq may have finally done is not so much remind us of Vietnam as ultimately usurp it from our national psyche.</p> <p> </p> <p>Fighting the Vietnam War brought a multitude of symbols and icons to the American mind. A new set has been acquired with the war in Iraq. One can almost imagine one era being replaced by another in the way that two kids might trade cards: "I'll take My Lai for your Haditha"; "I'll take 'Hearts and Minds' for 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'"; "Let's have Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh for Muqtada al-Sadr and Osama Bin Ladin"; "I'll take Tiger Cage for Abu Graib"; and "Let's have your Gulf of Tonkin for my WMD."</p> <p> </p> <p>Two-and-a-half years after the U.S. pulled out of Iraq the country has crumbled into a bona-fide failed state, with Baghdad under siege by ISIS (jihadist militants from the Islamic State), who are having a run of Iraq, and some analysts now worry that ISIS will commit mass genocide against Iraq's Shi'a population if Baghdad falls.</p> <p> </p> <p>The war in Iraq started with Operation Shock and Awe but ended in a fizzle and, some would argue, in an epic exercise in human futility. Here are some facts: Iraq claimed 4,487 American lives, and left 32,226 Americans wounded, according to Pentagon statistics. According to Iraqbodycount.org, the number of Iraqis who died from violence ranges between 103,000 and 114,000 during the U.S. occupation. Though Congressional Research Service has estimated the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom at around $806 billion dollars, President Obama has said that the cost of the war is over $1 trillion.</p> <p> </p> <p>Yet, for a long time, Vietnam functioned as a benchmark for spectacular American failure, it remained a deep, searing wound. It took some time after the war's end before movies were made and books sold on the topic. There was a willful repression of America's only military defeat, followed by a flourish of Vietnam novels and movies. Together they constructed a mythic reality around the nation's experience in Vietnam that challenged our old notion of manifest destiny and examined our loss of innocence.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>In the 1980s, conservatives began to claim that the Vietnam Syndrome -- which they saw as an undesirable pacifism on the part of the American public and the U.S. government -- has been "kicked." Most famous of them all was George Bush Sr., who declared in 1991 after victory in the Persian Gulf War that "the ghosts of Vietnam had been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert."</p> <p> </p> <p>But Bush Sr. spoke too soon. The glory of winning did not translate into a second presidential term, and Vietnam continued to haunt our national psyche. When President Clinton withdrew troops from Somalia after 18 soldiers were killed in Mogadishu in 1993, diplomat Richard Holbrooke called it the new "Vietmalia syndrome."</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediumIraqWar_0.jpg" style="height:279px; width:500px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>What we are learning now with the enormous failure of Iraq -- the lies and deception from the George W. Bush White House, the images of Iraqis wailing beside their dead loved ones, the shattered homes, bloody sidewalks, tortured prisoners, body parts in market stalls, burnt-out cars, roadside bombs, downed helicopters and horribly maimed American soldiers, the 2 million refugees, the unending sectarian violence -- is that tragedy cannot simply be overcome with some military victory, but with another tragedy of equal if not greater proportion.</p> <p> </p> <p>In another generation, when a future U.S. president sends troops to occupy some intransigent country on a dubious objective, American pundits will most likely ask this familiar question made new: "Will it be another Iraq?"</p> <p> </p> <p>Indeed, the unfinished violence in Iraq is showing us that the so-called Vietnam Syndrome cannot be "kicked," as it were, by winning but by losing, as it forces us to face our collective grief and guilt anew. For all the horrors committed in the name of democracy, and all the soul-searching Americans did after the Vietnam War, we failed to alter the bellicose nature of our nation. And, as if a reflection of our collective amnesia, the only obvious winner is the ever-growing military industrial complex.</p> <p> </p> <p>Going back into Iraq is an option unimaginable to the American public, and suicidal for any sitting president. But what will we do if the war between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims engulfs the Middle East? How do we reconcile with the lives imperiled by our direct intervention? What moral obligations do we have toward other nations that went up in flame due to our own meddling?</p> <p> </p> <p>Carl Jung, who made great inroads into man's collective psyche, once noted that, "It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished."</p> <p> </p> <p>That observation can be applied to the fate of nations as well. For a country unable to confront and reconcile with its own heart of darkness is a country fated to repeat acts of barbarism. A war is waged, then there follows a period of reckoning. But then, like clockwork, amnesia settles in. And another war, and along with it, new tragedies, would begin.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><em>Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and author of the "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," and "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres." His latest book is "Birds of Paradise Lost," a short story collection, was published in 2013 and won a Pen/Josephine Miles Literary Award in 2014 and a finalist for the California Book Award and shortlisted for theWilliam Saroyan International Prize for Writing.</em></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/vietnam-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Vietnam war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-iraq" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war in iraq</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/iraq-war" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Iraq war</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-foreign-policy-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">us foreign policy</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/us-soldiers-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">us soldiers</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Andrew Lam</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 26 Jun 2014 16:39:56 +0000 tara 4901 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4098-iraq-replaces-vietnam-metaphor-tragedy#comments