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Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996
Sender: •••@••.••• (Joe Ferguson)
Subject: Re: cj#425> Valis on Vietnam
The other day I realized I came "this close" to not being able to
live with myself for the rest of my life. When I was sixteen, I wanted
to be an Air Force fighter pilot. Thank God my eyesight is so bad I
could not qualify for such a position. I drew a 12 in the draft lottery
in 1972, but fortunately after four years of growth from the time I had
those misguided dreams, I had learned enough to understand I needed to
flunk that physical!
I'm a guy who still feels bad about not giving more love to a sick
kitten I had adopted, before it died in my apartment in the night sixteen
years ago. I'm a guy who will do anything to comfort my daughters if they
are upset or hurt in any way. What kind of shape would I be in now if I
had napalmed Vietnamese villages?
This question leads me to acknowledgement of twin responsibilities:
1) I must try to do something to help my contemporaries - who were not
as fortunate as I was in escaping the Vietnam War draft - to appreciate
they were victims, not criminals. I guess all of America could and can do
better to help these men and women heal. I guess we can only hope that
late is still better than never.
2) I must try to do something to oppose the next "Vietnam War."
Valis' post was a jolt. My God, there it is, Chiapas and Guatemala! We
have been waging covert war in Guatemala for at least half a century, and we
have been arming the Mexican military for God knows how long ... doing a
real good job of it in the last decade or so. Are we going to sit around,
and let our sons, daughters, nephews, nieces and neighbor kids get sent there
to commit realtime genocide? Or are we just going to make big paychecks
supplying the hardware? Will we still be debating how to balance the budget
while taxes leaking through the cracks help fund the genocide of two Central
American indigenous populations?
Thanks for that post, Valis. Please tell William that all America
shares the guilt for what we did in Vietnam, equally no doubt in most cases,
with most of the soldiers; more of it no doubt, in the case of the civilian
barons of the weapons industries and the demagogues who championed war.
Please also thank him for that excerpt from the letter to Bundy. The
comparisons between the Craspers and the McNamaras is extremely instructive.
One universal truth emerges:
We're fools to do their dirty work!
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Posted by Richard K. Moore (•••@••.•••) Wexford, Ireland
•••@••.••• | Cyberlib=http://www.internet-eireann.ie/cyberlib
Materials may be reposted in their entirety for non-commercial use.
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