Fw: One last attempt?

[Doug Millison]

Quail :
>>And now you are just personally insulting me on
>> a level that I would find shameful, if I were to do so to you.

You don't consider calling me anti-American to be insulting?  I am a
pacifist, but I also know that way too many American soldiers have been
wounded and died in wars they were convinced (generally by lying bastards
like those in the current Administration) would serve the cause of freedom
and justice and which instead served to further the cause of tyranny and
profits for suppliers to the armed forces involved in those wars, and I
honor what they have done; they didn't know any better and most of them
didn't have any choice. I lost high school friends who fought and died in
Vietnam. Many veterans have gone on to become outspoken opponents of war,
and critics of US foreign policy -- out of their love of this country.
Calling critics of the war anti-American is precisely what the "love it or
leave it" crowd did back in the '60s.

Quail:
>>  Come on, I
>> have said numerous times how sick it makes me, and how my decision
>> causes me conflict.

It's hell, isn't it.  I do sympathize.  I let myself get drafted because
although I felt conflicted about the war in Vietnam, I wasn't ready to
fight against the draft,  nobody in my family or circle of friends
considered resisting the draft to be within the realm of possibility.  The
US Army and my service in Korea radicalized me, however,  beginning on the
first day on the rifle range in boot camp, when they had us shooting at
human silhouette targets on which the drill sergeants had painted faces
with Asian features, slanted eyes.  "Kill that fucking gook!" they'd scream
in our ears as we fired our rounds.  It was almost as sick as the boot camp
stuff in Heavy Metal Jacket, although the Marines, as my ex-Marine friends
remind me, have their own brand of madness, plus that was the movies, a
little too polished and buffed up and choreographed, although we also had a
guy get driven around the bend -- a GI in the training company in the
barracks next to ours cracked under the pressure and shot the soldier next
to him on the rifle range, spilled his guts all over.  All of our drill
sergents had just rotated Stateside from combat duty in Vietnam, and the
stories they had to tell about killing and mutilating the "enemy" pushed me
further in the opposite direction.  I lucked out and didn't have to go to
Vietnam, got orders instead to Korea; the day I was to ship out from
Oakland Army Base a group of officers came through the facility looking for
clerks, cooks, and carpenters to send to Vietnam that day, early in January
'73. I kept one step ahead of them all day and had to physically hide from
time to time to avoid being shanghaied.  When I got to Korea, and saw the
way the U.S. military oppressed the people there, in the camp towns around
the army bases up along the DMZ where I was and in the low-life GI bars of
Seoul, and from fellow GIs who had served in Vietnam, I got a better
understanding of what was happening over there --  add a shooting war to
the kind of nasty footprint the U.S. was making in Korea, but still I can't
really understand combat without having been there, and I remain grateful
I've never had to be.  "It has happened before but there is nothing to
compare it with now -- I read that to mean, in this instant, in this
madness of rockets falling and people suffering and dying, the present is
all-consuming, no past and no future, only the destruction and chaos of
this moment, the existential reality of  life in total war.

But  I managed to get over the worst of  that uneasy, conflicted feeling.
I learned all I could about what the U.S. was actually doing in Vietnam, I
started talking about it with the people I knew in the Army, and I started
working to convince other GIs that our policy in Vietnam was wrong.  I
connected with local people in the village next door to our base, and in
Seoul on the weekends, and tried to get to know them as human beings and
understand where they were coming from.  I started to act on the knowledge
that U.S. foreign policy was wrong in many respects:  I talked about what I
was learning with my fellow GIs, and I've done what I can in the cause of
peace and justice in the 27 years since I got out of the Army. I don't
pretend to have the final answer, and I respect anybody who struggles
authentically and in good conscience, prior to taking action with regard to
supporting war or serving in war, but I do sincerely believe that promoting
alternatives to violence is a good thing.  I sincerely believe it is right
to question authority, to criticize our leaders if they are taking us down
the wrong path, to do what I can do to try to change course.

I suggest you do the same.  Learn what you can about this War, why it's
being fought, who's profiting from it, what the alternatives might be.
It's quite natural for war to make people feel bad, it's violent and cruel
and senseless, it shows us that we can turn our fellow human beings into
bloody chunks of meat. Ordinary people resist it and, unless pushed into
it, generally avoid it. But,  Bush took advantage of the emotional jolt to
the US on September 11, he started whipping up war fever from his very
first comments to the American people that same day, he did not pursue any
serious alternative to the aerial bombardment of Afghanistan, he pushed us
into this war.  A compliant corporate media started beating the war drum
right along with Bush. There has yet to be any serious debate at the
national level about alternative ways to deal with the September 11
attacks. And, the closer you look at what's actually happening, the more it
looks like the kind of situation Pynchon comes back to again and again in
his work:  people hypnotized by leaders who themselves are under the
influence of the companies that make profits from the war, and by the
culture they have helped to create, go along with a war they never really
had a chance to discuss or debate, convinced that in so doing they will
help make the world safe for democracy (WWI, still looking for democracy),
defeat the fascists (WWII, more fascists than ever), contain Communism
(Cold War, Vietnam, all the while the so-called Communist states were
collapsing from corruption and an apathetic citizenry).

Quail:
>>your own agenda?

My agenda, in general, with regard to the post-9/11 situation,  is to speak
out about this war, to counter pro-war propaganda with facts that are being
suppressed or otherwise ignored, to make the case for non-violent
alternatives to war that have a chance to produce real justice and a
lasting peace.  In this Pynchon-L forum, I'm trying to make this case
within the context of our shared interest in a writer who is clearly
anti-War and a harsh critic of America (and other embodiments of authority
which foster war and profit from it).


Quail :
>> I have a thing for nuclear reactors. (It's the blue glow.)

Tell Homer Simpson I said hello.




Doug Millison - Writer/Editor/Web Editorial Consultant
millison at online-journalist.com
www.Online-Journalist.com