1971 Winter Soldier Hearings: "What are we Doing to Vietnam?"

AlterNet. Posted March 13, 2008.

Iraq Veterans Against the War is holding a new round of "Winter Soldier" hearings in Washington, DC, March 13-16. Selections from the original hearings, held in Detroit in 1971, are published here for interested readers.

MODERATOR. I'm Wilbur Forrester, former 1st Lt. in the United States Marine Corps. During my 13 months in Vietnam, I spent five months as a Civil Affairs Officer on the regimental level. The topic of our panel tonight will be "What We Are Doing to Vietnam." Certainly testimony that we've had previously in this Winter Soldier InveStigation has shown very well the effects to the ecology, the land, and the atrocities performed on the people, physically. We will not go into that type of testimony on this panel: we will focus our attention primarily on the cultural aspects. I'd like at this time for the panel to introduce themselves and give you a brief background.

SPELLMAN. My name is J.W. Spellman, and I'm a teacher.

JIM CLARK. My name is Jim Clark. I was in Vietnam from 1966 through 1969. I was there originally with the Agency for International Development. I resigned from that organization 1968 and took a position with Catholic Relief Services. I coordinated a project dealing with social welfare and the training of social workers in Vietnam under that. With AID I was a refugee officer for a year on the central coast and I spent a little over a year in Saigon as a special assistant for voluntary agencies. The remarks I will make will be primarily related to refugees and the problems associated with the generation of large numbers of refugees in Vietnam.

MARY EMENY. My name is Mary Emeny. I was in Vietnam in 1967-68 with the American Friends Service Committee. Home was a Buddhist orphanage in Da Nang and after the Tet offensive, or the Tet whatever-you-call-it in 1968, I spent a large amount of time in Hue, some in Quang Tri and Cam Lo in refugee camps and mostly working with refugees and Buddhists in Central Vietnam.

JAY CRAVEN. I'm Jay Craven. I'm a student at Boston University and I was recently on a student delegation to Vietnam. I was in North Vietnam between December 4th and December 20th just this past year.

MODERATOR. Okay, we'll open the panel with Dr. Spellman.

SPELLMAN. I should begin by saying that I make no claim to any special expertise in the field of Vietnamese studies. I may have some knowledge of Asian societies in a more general context and it is in this regard that I speak. The United States presence in Vietnam is only one aspect of American involvement in Southeast Asia which is related, in my judgment, to its cultural imperialism throughout most of the traditional societies of the world. At no time in previous human history has the cultural integrity of so many millions of people of the world been threatened as it is today by the United States. This issue this evening touches not merely questions of national self-determination or the right to decide one's own self interest, it involves, if I may say so, matters of the gravest importance regarding the quality and the quantity of the life of this species. We are not very old as far as a species goes.

By our own proclamation, we are the most intelligent, the most powerful, the most creative, and the best of all life that this planet has seen. Indeed, the Book of Genesis tells us that after creating this world, with its apex as man, God gave man dominion over it. Now, we have been around for approximately two million years and our future is reasonably uncertain. Even the dinosaurs, whom we classify as rather dumb creatures, managed to survive for about 12 million years. There are many who question the likelihood of this species surviving for that long a period. The experiments of Darwin on the Galapagos Islands and the work of other scholars have shown that adaptation to environment is crucial to survival.

As I understand these lessons, they mean that each society has its own integrity, physical and cultural. As a consequence of its adaptation, according to its past experiences, its judgment and self-interest, values which may be desirable for one society, cause the gravest physical and mental harm when imposed on another. And it is in this light that I wish to view what we are doing to Vietnam. The bulk of Western values are based on the historical experiences of the Judaic-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures. Of prime importance in that value system has been the role assigned to the importance of belief, and this concept of belief occupies a cardinal role, particularly in Christianity.

Unless, we are told, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you shall not have eternal life. And in this sense I wish to contrast that statement with the statement of the Lord Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text: "Whatsoever divine form any devotee with faith seek to worship, that same is divine." But the beliefs of Christianity were understood as exclusive and excluding beliefs. And it was part of our heritage, and it is part of our heritage to this day, that what is good for us ought to be universal and it ought to be good for everyone.

Earlier in our history we found that those who held a different perspective than we did on religion, and we made our ultimatum very clear, after we had poured scorn and ridicule on these people, calling them heathens and pagans and superstitious polytheists, we then killed them in the name of our religion. And the Crusades and witchcraft and the religious persecutions followed. Later (and this continues today), we felt that we had the righteous responsibility to condemn those who believed in political systems (rather than religious systems) that were different from our own. Thus it became quite legitimate to kill Communists and others simply because they were Communists, and because they believed in a different form of government from ours. There are still those today who believe with all the fervor that righteousness often summons, that we ought to continue on this path of killing those who disagree with us. I believe that we are now on the threshold of a new killing crusade.

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