Rethink Interview with Daniel Ellsberg

Jonathan Kim has interviewed Daniel Ellsberg about the upcoming documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

His post at the Huffington Post is worth a visit. There are several video clips from the interview such as Why Ellsberg calls the current Afghan war "Vietnamistan"

A primary source from a key player.

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McCain you've done it again!

I was thinking of doing a satirical video about John McCain's support of an ongoing occupation of Iraq. Found this little gem that reflected what I had posted earlier, especially the Kissinger connection and Nixon's phony "peace with honor". It turned out to be from McCain's own Channel.

You'd think this was an endorsement he could do without. Kissinger and Nixon were experts on "character".

For a non-partisan view of Iraq after 5 years of war, I recommend this piece by the BBC's John Simpson:

Some people - for instance Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate for the White House - will no doubt call this rearguard action a success. He may even be tempted to call it a victory.

Yet at present it is hard to think of it as particularly successful. On Monday, Vice-President Dick Cheney came to Baghdad and talked about "the phenomenal improvement in security". That day more than 60 Iraqis were killed in bomb attacks.

He had to travel with unprecedented numbers of bodyguards, even though he never left the heavily defended Green Zone. Two mortar rounds hit the Zone while he was there.

None of this feels like a phenomenal improvement in security.

He makes the broader point that the international standing and credibility of the United States has beena very high price of this war:

Iraqi friends of mine who once hated the fact that the Americans were here now praise them for driving the militants from the streets. That is a real success.

But it is small compared with the damage which the war has done to America's reputation. The US state department finds it much harder nowadays to be taken seriously when it criticises other countries for their use of torture and arbitrary arrest.

...Above all, we have seen how hard it is for the Americans to deal with a few thousand lightly armed volunteers.
Iraq war shows limits of US power (BBC News19 March 2008)

Anyday now I expect Bush to announce the Iraqisation of the war to enable a withdrawal of some kind. More echoes of Vietnam. It will not be a military solution which gets the US out of this latest quagmire. Any hope may rest with Barack Obama's oft claimed ability to get people together.

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War Reflection #1: The My Lai Massacre

On 16 March 1968 U.S. forces killed between 300 and 500 Vietnamese civilians in what came to be known as the My Lai (My Son) massacre. The military covered up the atrocity and President Richard Nixon and the Pentagon ignored it at first. Lieutenant William Calley who led the slaughter was eventually charged and convicted of murder but served only a few months in prison.

It was only weeks after the politically disastrous Tet Offensive and seven years before the Vietnam conflict ended. It was 30 years before helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and two other soldiers were honoured for stopping the killing.

There are hundreds of thousands of websites that mention My Lai. I would recommend another source for some understanding of the dark side of humanity that perpetrates such barbarity: Tim O’Brien’s 1994 novel In the Lake of the Woods. He served 'in country' as a draftee in 1969-70 with the same division as Calley.

It is not an easy read. Its structure is very complex and it uses multiple voices. It is anything but a straightforward narrative. It is a mixture of many elements: war story, political intrigue, murder mystery and a tale of psychological magic.

O’Brien has written other novels based on his Vietnam experiences, such as If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried, which are well worth reading.

In October 2003 O’Brien spoke of similarities of Vietnam with the Iraq war. Even then he remarked, “Just the doubletalk of it all reminds me of Vietnam, “lights a glow at the end of tunnels,…” We can only hope that recent progress is not illusory.

Stay tuned for "Peace with Honor".

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Kangaroo in Austin, Texas

In October 1980 I visited Larry, a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. The history of photography was his specialty. In June that year we had met on a train from Lisbon to Paris. His Spanish saved me when immigration officials discovered that my visa for Spain was not multiple-entry and wanted to arrest me. I wasn’t getting off the train so they were uncharacteristically flexible. We shared a room in Paris while Larry was exploring second-hand shops and markets for antique photographic equipment and memorabilia.

It was only days before the 1980 Federal election in Australia and weeks before Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter. Somewhere I still have a photo drinking Lone Star beer on my 33rd birthday and a Stop Reagan T-shirt that I picked up from a Democratic campaign office in Austin.

UTA is well known in the USA for many things:

* The 1966 shooting massacre (14 killed, 31 wounded) by Charles Whitman
* The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
* The Longhorns football team
* The Harry Ransom Center which has a Gutenberg Bible, a replica of mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner's study (of Perry Mason fame), and the Art by English and American Authors collection amongst many others.

This collection has art works by William Blake, George Bernard Shaw and Henry Miller and several others. When I was looking at some of the self-portraits a curator called me over to a display draw. She was trying to identify and catalogue some sketches that contained illustrations of kangaroos, clearly my area of expertise. The DHL initials were a clear giveaway, especially since there were other works by D.H. Lawrence on display. They were obviously related to his time in Australia in 1922 when he wrote the novel, Kangaroo . You didn’t need to be Perry Mason to work that one out. They are properly catalogued now.


In 1980 Austin was a relatively small city despite being the State Capital. The University was the biggest industry with what seemed like half the population either staff or students. There were a significant number of African Americans around town but very few visible at the university itself. Larry explained that all would be revealed on Sunday. When we watched a telecast of the Longhorn’s gridiron game almost all the team were black. He pointed out that there were more at the uni. On the basketball and track teams. Let’s hope things have changed.

At the LBJ Library and Museum there was an exhibition of political cartoons that Johnson had collected throughout his long career. The collection has an amazing four thousand original editorial cartoons. His Presidency is mostly remembered now for the Vietnam War debacle. Naturally the museum also presented the positive side of his political life such as his civil rights legislation and the Great Society program. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’

If you’re ever in that part of god’s own country, Austin is a must.

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Tet Offensive: 40 years on

It’s forty years since the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive. Three images persist. The US Embassy in Saigon during its capture, the devastation of the Ancient Imperial Capital at Hue and the summary execution of a VC by the National police chief.

It was a political disaster for Lyndon Johnson and his allies such as Australia. Not
a great beginning for John Gorton’s government. The US military has always claimed that it was a crushing defeat for the communists. It was certainly the beginning of the end for the Indochina war but not before Richard Nixon spread the carnage to Cambodia and Laos.

Nixon was the beneficiary of LBJ’s political self-destruction and Robert Kennedy’s assassination in his campaign to win the presidency and end the war. I clearly remember watching Johnson’s “I shall not seek, and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your President” speech. It was a moment of optimism that did not last long. Australian troops, including conscripts, would continue to fight and die for another four years. 50,000 Americans would die before their ignominious defeat in 1975. Countless millions of Vietnamese, both military and civilians, perished.

I was not conscripted but others of my age started their compulsory military service in 1968. The war changed all our lives. At Monash University, home of the most radical anti-war activists, thousands would spend their lunchtimes listening to the infamous Albert Langer and others debate Australia’s participation. Draft resisters began to openly defy the government, burning their conscription papers and taunting the Federal police and government to come and find them.

It brought the moratorium movement that would transform local politics and help to change the government as well.

For more about the year I turned 21, reached voting age and watched the world turn upside down, visit Remembering '68 an online Facebook history group.

You can contribute by adding photos, by writing on the wall, by posting items such as videos or web links or by starting or joining discussions.

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