Eating Out at Main Street Pho

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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.