"BATTLE FOR LIFE"

 “BATTLE FOR LIFE”

This week marks the 51st anniversary of the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in what was then South Vietnam in 1975.  It was the final, collapsing ending of the Vietnam War, which cost 58,220 American lives over a ten-year period – two of my friends from Helena were among those lost.   The chaos of the photos associated with the fall of Saigon reminded us of the great chasm that had been opened in American society because of the Vietnam War, a chasm which still permeates our culture.  We gained very little in that war, and we lost, oh so much.  At least the war had been approved by Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in August, 1964, the same month that the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were found in shallow graves in Neshoba County, Mississippi.  

Caroline and I were pastors in St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia when Saigon fell.  We had just arrived there as the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Presbyterian Church (US) in the South.  We were not aware that soon several Vietnamese families would be arriving at Robin Hood Apartments, where St. Columba Church was located.  We would get involved with several of those families as they encountered poverty and a new system of family life.  The Vietnam War was also the war which led me to seek conscientious objector status, which I received in the fall of 1970.  I did my alternative service at Opportunity House in Nashville, where I was director of a halfway house for men getting out of prison.  I participated in many protests about the Vietnam War, and I joined millions in those protests.

The Trumpster brought up the Vietnam War last week in talking about his war of choice in Iran.  When he got questions about the length of the Iran war, he noted that it had not nearly been as long as the Vietnam War.  In bringing up the Vietnam War, he also inadvertently reminded many of us that both wars are similar in that there never was any clear motive or objective or even national interest in these wars.  While we were told that the Vietnam War was being fought to protect us from communism, we are being told now that the Iran war is being fought to protect us from a nuclear Iran.  One big difference – with the new technology, we can drop bombs on people without having to use ground troops.  However, like Vietnam, if we want a “victory,” we will need troops on the ground, and if we go there, it will be Vietnam all over again – or, at least the Iraq War all over again.  The Viet Cong were not overwhelmed by our “shock and awe” demonstration of the bombing campaigns, and as we are seeing now, neither are the Iranians.  Let no one hear that I am defending the Iranian government – they are brutal and inhumane.  Yet, they play the long diplomatic game rather than the short, social media game at which we are accustomed in the West.

Like Lyndon Johnson with Vietnam, the Trumpster seems out of his depth with the war in Iran.  It is a war run by political Americans who have never been in a war, and who - because of that – seem to glorify war and the killing culture that it brings.  Like the hubris that brought us down in Vietnam, there is a similar hubris in the Trumpster and in the Secretary of Defense.  Do we have lethal power? Yes.  But will it win us this war? Using Vietnam and Iraq as guides, there is no “winning” this Iran war, and that is why the Trumpster has been so equivocal in his goals on the war.  He did not know what he was getting into, and he does not know what “winning” would look like.  The Vietnam War brought down the great presidency of LBJ, after he had ended neo-slavery in 1965 with the passing of the Voting Rights Act.  Though I am ready for the Iran war to be over, I’m also aware that it may be a turning point in the support for the Trumpster.  As Sweet Honey in the Rock put it in their song “Battle for My Life,”: “Your hunger for war is nothing new, Cowboy.”

The connecting dots are that we believe in the power of death, and we now have a president and a Congress that use this power of death to seek to deepen power and a hold on our hearts.  Let us hear a different song in our battle for life.  And, if you haven’t picked up your implement of resistance which I mentioned a few weeks ago, please do so now.