05/15/05

As the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continue down their bloody paths, we should study the lessons of The Vietnam War. Vietnamese refer to that period between the early 1960s and April 1975 as 'The American Phase.' They suffered periods of foreign domination by Chinese, Japanese and French occupiers who, unlike the Americans, learned the painful lesson of trying to subdue and occupy that land. US leaders adamantly refuse to learn that some people, like Koreans, Vietnamese and Iraqis, for examples, do not submit to force and brutality. How to teach that simple lesson? Teachers will have shared the experience of trying to educate students who have not ingested their own history. Instead of inculcating historical context from first grade on, US students learn a kind of patriotic mythology disguised with words like 'unbiased' as if along with critiques of US behavior in Vietnam or Iraq -- one had to present the good side of torture, mass murder and the napalming of villages...

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau05142005.html

from CounterPunch, by Saul Landau


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp