A Tinker in Thailand

Maybe 50 years from now another generation will be able to experience Mesopotamia as I did Vietnam – disfigured war crime victims turned souvenir handicraft-makers, American tanks, artillery and fighter jets preserved in museums, IED production facilities made into a tourist attraction documenting the heroic resistance of indigenous people against unprovoked aggression. Maybe 50 years from now my grandson will travel to Baghdad and writhe with the visceral realization that his government committed unfathomable atrocities against a people struggling to survive – a people still struggling to survive only now by providing for his every need and want. Or maybe 50 years from now we’ll still be at war in Iraq.

I have great hope after visiting Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) and Reunification Palace (Independence Palace), the rough Vietnamese equivalents of Baghdad and the “Green Zone” in Iraq. The Vietnamese people are healing, as are the Vietnamese economy, state and ecosystems. The resilience I witnessed in my six short days in Vietnam are an inspiration and a testament to the toughness of humankind.

Baffling American military planners, the Viet Cong resisted modern weaponry with simple technologies, ingenuity and grit – much as Iraqis of various stripes are doing today. While US forces have upgraded their standard gear many times over, added GPS guided weaponry, conventional bombs that pack more punch than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, networked the battlefield so it can be controlled like a video game, developed stealth technology and adopted a doctrine of overwhelming force, the current “enemy” of the US still uses AK-47’s and homemade explosives, and the “enemy” is still winning.

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are armed largely with weapons left over from the CIA arming the Mujahadeen to fight Russians, the Viet Com made land mines with unexploded American bombs and deadly “American traps” with re-worked shrapnel from bombs that did explode. IEDs in Iraq are detonated with cellular phones – an icon of western culture encroaching on the strict way of life some Muslim fundamentalists seek to preserve.

For all the parallels between these wars – unprovoked American aggression, widespread war crimes, targeting of civilian populations and facilities, successful low-tech guerrilla resistance to modern military might, racist nationalism, undemocratic decision making – there are a few things that keep me from believing Iraq in 50 years will be anything like Vietnam today.

Vietnam now feeds its people with less than half the world average of agricultural land. America destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres with agent orange during the war – a war crime, environmental catastrophe and a nightmare in terms of food production. But we didn’t used depleted uranium to harden anti-tank munitions back then, as we do now. Remember all that talk of a “dirty bomb,” a low-grade nuclear weapon that terrorists could build if they got their hands on some nuclear material? That’s essentially standard issue for American anti-tank guns. The depleted uranium hardens the shell enough to penetrate thick armor. The rate of birth defects in Iraq has skyrocketed since America invaded, and while the Vietnamese still suffer the lingering effects of American chemical warfare, the effects of American nuclear warfare in Iraq will certainly far outlast those of Agent Orange.

The other factor stacked against Iraq is that it actually has strategic significance, even without the “war on terror” propaganda. In the realist and neo-conservative schools of thought, maintaining a strong presence in the gulf is critical to America’s geopolitical position. As oil supplies dwindle, it becomes ever more important to keep the Middle East’s oil flowing out of wells, through the straight of Hormuz and into American automobiles (and weaponry). As the story goes, it isn’t that we need to be dominant in the region, rather we need to make sure no one else is, for if a less benevolent power were in control of all that oil it would be disastrous for the world economy. This is the Carter Doctrine, and has been the underpinning of US policy towards the region since the Iran hostage crisis.

For these reasons, I am not hopeful that Iraq will be a popular vacation destination in my lifetime or my daughter’s. I went to Vietnam hoping to reach that conclusion – and all things in Vietnam pointed in that direction. While it is astute to compare the battlefield challenges of American in Iraq and Vietnam, the gross waste of resources and human toll, the complete disregard of the “democratic” American government for the will of its people and the world’s and the impressive might of fighters effectively defeating the world’s greatest superpower, it is naïve to envision a future for Iraq that is anything like Vietnam’s.

I’ll keep on dreaming for Iraq despite this. Keep on protesting and speaking out against the new American empire, keep on trying to convince Republicans that voting for R’s generally means voting for war and for squandering the next generations’ future. I’ll keep up hope that Iraqis will be free someday.

And though I’m no Buddhist, as I have at every temple and shrine where I have prayed so far here in Thailand, at every moment where I pause to focus energy on the future, I will continue to ask for peace, health and longevity for all my friends and family – which includes all the inhabitants of this planet.