In the Year of the Pig

I am currently watching a documentary that shows the "other side" of what happened during the Vietnam war and my eyes have been opened.

I apologize to those out there who believe that America was justified in going to war in a country that we had no place in. The French had been trying to occupy South Vietnam. So, we gave North Vietnam more weapons and artillery to defend themselves. Well, they started to get less and less popular with South Vietnam and miscommunication and misunderstands ensued.

The young American men in the service were at times "brainwashed" for lack of a better word. They were told that the Vietnamese were "gooks, no good slant-eyed gooks". American leaders used Holy Writ against themselves as they proposed to be the "peacemakers" as Jesus Himself defined. The only way that America at times tries to be a peacemaker is through violence.

In this film, there were government officials and the president of the United States all testifying to the people that the prisoners and the civilians who were taken captive were not mistreated. This is simply not true. For about 5 minutes, the film showed raw footage captured during the war of the horrible mistreatment of civilians and the murderous acts cast upon the Vietcong prisoners. They were shot point blank and the villages, homes, food storage and lives of the civilians were ruined forever.

"What we have been doing in Vietnam is what, as some Americans call it, the arrogance of power" (Harry S. Ashmore, Demo Instructions for the United States).

We went in, and we began to bomb, with no prescience. Letters to stop the bombing written by leaders in the United States to Ho Chi Minh and agree to a negotiation were "intercepted" if you may, by another letter written to Ho Chi Minh by President Johnson, speaking of the cessation of the bombing and the absolute negation of a negotiation. Many people working closely with the State Department came to create a law called, "Fulbright's Law" which is: Never trust the State Department.

I trust the American Government and the president of the United States. But, sometimes, I don't trust the way warfare is carried out.

In conclusion, I beleive, just as a prophet of God in ancient times, that "the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them..." Alma 31:5. I do not mean that we need to go preach the word of God to the Iraqis or to the people of Afghanistan. I just think we need to always consider, very heavily, the consequences of our actions against other nations. Our quest for power has brought immense amounts of arrogance to the United States.

The film ends with footage of American soldiers, dead, dying and being carried away wounded with the hymn, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" going on in the background. Was this what the composer foresaw while he wrote that enchanting hymn? Death, fear and hatred? I do not think so. What he saw was the American republic, being just that, "a nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all". It's sad that we Americans think we have to force others to beleive that as well. And if we continue in our journey for never ending power and keeping our level of arrogance dangerously high, we will never have a free nation. We will never have liberty and justice for all, we will only have a nation that is sinking further and further into ruin all because we have the drive to become the best country in the world.

What a sad, sad quest. Arrogance is our demise, and it's killing us.