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By Steve Halpern
Recently
a new Vietnamese restaurant opened in our neighborhood called Main Street Pho. Judi and I found the
food to be excellent. The savory flavors of beef were mixed with the light
tastes of cilantro, lemon, and other spices with noodles in a broth. This is a
relatively small restaurant that is already popular.
Eating
the food, I couldn’t help but think of the war the United States government
carried out against the people who live in Southeast Asia. While patrons of all
ages come to sample Vietnamese cuisine, just a few decades ago the United
States government invested literally hundreds
of billions of dollars to murder millions of people who lived in that
country.
One
of the worst bombing campaigns in the history of the world took place against
the people of Vietnam. It wasn’t enough to kill people, but defoliants were
used to destroy vast areas of woodlands. In the process, the government in this
country ordered millions of young people to carry out this immense destruction.
Over 50,000 died in the process.
So,
the question is: How is it possible that the food from Vietnam is so popular,
but the government in this country chose to carry out this immense destruction?
There is a clear answer to this question, but first I would like to mention a
conversation I viewed between Anthony Bourdain and the former President Barack
Obama. This conversation took place in a small restaurant in Vietnam.
The Bourdain – Obama interview
Anthony
Bourdain has a popular television series where he goes all over the world and
samples an immense variety of foods. Bourdain says that Vietnam is one of his
favorite countries. He has also talked about the horrendous effects of the war
and how he sees that war today as unconscionable.
President
Obama lived in Indonesia in his youth between the ages of six and ten. This was
a significant period in the history of that nation. In the year 1965, the
military of Indonesia organized to murder hundreds of thousands of supporters
of the huge communist party of that nation. The United States government
actively supported this military coup. The goal of this horrendous military
action was to put in place an Indonesian government that would be slavishly
subservient to the capitalist interests of the United States.
Both
Anthony Bourdain and President Obama were with aware of the horror stories of
Vietnam and Indonesia. However, their conversation revolved around the food of
those two nations.
Clearly
there is nothing wrong with talking about food. However, Barack Obama wasn’t
just someone who likes to talk about food. He was the President of the United
States. Obama could have said that the war against Vietnam and the U.S. policy
in Indonesia were crimes against humanity. He didn’t, but clearly liked talking
about the food of those two nations.
While
Anthony Bourdain spoke out against the U.S. war in Vietnam, he didn’t press
Obama on that issue. Bourdain made it clear that he liked Obama and found him
to be personable. However, the facts are that President Obama is a democrat and
that party organized the horror story that was the war against Vietnam.
My education
I’m
a few years older than former President Obama. While he was living in
Indonesia, I was going to high school in Newark, New Jersey. In the year 1967
in Newark, there were rebellions in the city against police brutality as well
as systematic racial discrimination. The governor ordered out the National
Guard and the guard proceeded to murder about twenty people in the city. Newark
was one of many cities in the United States where the National Guard mobilized
to suppress popular rebellions.
I
attended Arts High School that is located in the center of the city. I took a
bus to school and witnessed the burned out rubble of the city because of the
rebellions of 1967. I also was aware of the immense disparity between this
environment and the suburban schools that resembled country clubs. I learned
that the national guard came to Newark to maintain this immense disparity. The
people of the city justifiably found this disparity to be unacceptable.
We
might also consider that the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in education
is against the law. This was in their 1954 decision of Brown vs. The Board of Education. While the complexion of most
Newark residents is Black, the suburban schools are mostly caucasian. While
segregation in education is supposed to be illegal, the reality demonstrates
that the government has no intention of enforcing this law. This was a part of
my education that the educational system refused to teach.
The
approach by President Obama reflected the kind of education offered in the
schools of this country. In my school days, teachers didn’t include in their
lesson plans the hundred years war against Native Americans, or the decades of
profits derived from chattel slavery, or the mass lynchings where numerous
murderers were never prosecuted by the government. My teachers never taught me
about the profits derived from horrendous child labor, or how women went to prison
just because they demanded the right to vote. My teachers never informed me
that while I viewed destroyed buildings on my way to school, the United States
armed forces ordered soldiers to bomb Vietnam and create even more ruins.
No,
I didn’t learn these things in school, but every morning my teachers asked me
to stand up, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to a flag, they
claimed represented liberty and justice
for all.
Fortunately
I was one of those who began to see through the mythology portrayed as history
in the schools of this country. I first protested against the war in Vietnam,
and then I’ve supported the struggles of working people from all over the
world.
Understanding
this background, we can now talk about why the government carried out the war
against Vietnam.
The myth and reality of the “domino theory”
One
of the initial reasons for the war against Vietnam was the “domino theory.”
This was the idea that if Vietnam fell to the communists, then nations from all
over the world would fall to the communists.
It
isn’t very difficult to expose the mythology around this argument. First, we
can say that the United States of America became a nation because of a
revolutionary war of independence. The Vietnamese people have a much longer
history of struggle for their independence. They defended themselves against
domination from China, Japan, France, and then the United States. So, to object
to the Vietnamese desire for independence is to also question the idea that the
thirteen colonies ever had a legitimate reason to become independent of
Britain.
A
more persuasive reason for why the U.S. government went to war against Vietnam
has to do with the needs of the capitalist system. The First and Second world
wars were about what capitalist nation would dominate the world. Britain was
the old world power and Germany, Japan, and the United States when to war to
determine what nation would replace Britain’s world supremacy.
After
the Second World War the United States went to war against Korea and Vietnam
because those nations refused to be subservient to the United States
government. After the U.S. had supported the regime of Saddam Hussein for about
thirty years, they went to war against his government because it pursued a
course not to Washington’s liking. Recently President Trump ordered the bombing
of Syria because both Russia and Iran have been working to influence that
nation.
Conclusion
Today
when we think about the seeming madness of the war against Vietnam, we can also
consider that the government of this country is at war against the vast
majority of citizens who go to work every day.
While
Barrack Obama was President he gave literally trillions of dollars to some of the most affluent people in the
world in his quantitative easing program.
Obama also cut the food stamps program of $8.7 billion. President Trump has
merely followed in Obama’s example.
Today
while supermarkets are brimming with food, the Department of Agriculture
estimates that about one out of every six people in this country doesn’t have
enough food to eat.
In
our day-to-day lives, we make plans for our future. We think about the expense
of raising children. We think about having the resources to have food, a place
to live, education, transportation, and health care. We would also like to have
the ability to retire one day.
However,
the capitalist system doesn’t care about any of this. This system runs on a
life-blood of corporate profit. History has given us many examples where
capitalist economic systems collapse.
This
almost happened in 2008. President Obama gave the banks trillions of dollars in quantitative easing in order to temporarily
divert that crisis. Since that time the stock market has skyrocketed from about
10,000 to about 25,000. There are no new industries that in any way justify
this huge jump in the stock market. When the stock market begins to reflect
it’s real value, the consequences of that occurrence will be unimaginable.
All
of this means that working people have no interest in the wars advanced by the
United States government. The only way to end these wars is to put in place a
new government that makes human needs more important than profits. That kind of
government wouldn’t be going to war against nations like Vietnam. No, the top
priority of that kind of government would be to improve the standard of living
in the United States as well as for working people all over the world.