Last month, I was invited by a colleague from Augustana College (Illinois) to meet with a group of her students who were in Vietnam on a short-term study abroad program. The students had spent five weeks at Augustana, followed by another five weeks in southern, central and northern Vietnam. The website describes the program as follows: Vietnam is an exciting destination for a U.S. college student. This international learning community draws upon multiple disciplines – political science, literature, economics, business, and history among them – offering students a rich interdisciplinary context in which to study Vietnam.
One of the assigned readings was a co-authored book chapter of mine entitled “Developing Globally Competent Citizens: The Contrasting Cases of the United States and Vietnam” (with Duong Thi Hoanh Oanh) that appeared in The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (2009). Frankly, I was surprised and delighted to learn that undergraduates were reading this chapter in a book that is probably read mostly by graduate students and academics. Here’s a brief description:
The aim of this chapter is to consider global citizenship and intercultural competence, widely debated and often overlapping concepts, against the backdrop of nationalism and patriotism, “isms” that are rarely discussed in the same context. Yet they are the proverbial elephant in the room, towering issues that profoundly influence the methods and means by which global citizenship and intercultural competence are transformed from theory to practice.
This chapter explores ways in which global citizenship and intercultural competence complement and conflict with the national identity of two diametrically contrasting cultures—the United States of America and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. What U.S. Americans and Vietnamese share, according to anecdotal evidence, the binational experience of both authors, and the results of World Values Surveys, is a deep national pride. Yet as we shall see, this national pride is radically different qualitatively for reasons that are rooted in history. Thus, we examine barriers in both cultures that may inhibit the development of globally competent citizens, as well as factors that may smooth the way.
What are the implications of global citizenship in an interconnected world in which nationalism is still very much a force to be reckoned with? To what extent is global citizenship problematic in countries in which nationalism in its more virulent incarnation forms the mind-set of the majority of citizens? We posit that the path to becoming a global or globally competent citizen may be strewn with more obstacles in some societies than in others as a result of potent historical and cultural forces that have shaped national identity and the dominant ideology, the psychic glue that holds societies together.
Differences Between Patriotism and Nationalism
According to a standard dictionary definition, the distinction between patriotism and nationalism is clear. Patriotism is defined simply as “love for or devotion to one’s country.” This is generally thought of as a benign, sentimental, and inward-looking form of national pride. As such, it does not exclude an openness to and even embrace of other cultures, their values, and the concerns and needs of their members.
In a 2003 essay titled A Kinder, Gentler Patriotism, (the late) U.S. historian Howard Zinn speaks of the need to redefine patriotism and notes that “if national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade—we call it globalization—should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity? Should we not begin to consider all children, everywhere, as our own? In that case, war, which in our time is always an assault on children, would be unacceptable as a solution to the problems of the world. Human ingenuity would have to search for other ways.” Patriotism, as defined above, does not preclude the globalization of compassion and generosity.
In contrast, nationalism is described as loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. It is the second italicized part that distinguishes nationalism from its less strident and bellicose cousin, patriotism. Exaltation of one nation over another automatically assumes a degree of cultural superiority, a lack of openness and objectivity, and the assumption that “others” wish to be like us and, by extension, the desire to mold them in our image (i.e., missionary nationalism).
Discussion
Most of our discussion in the engaging 1.5 hours that I spent with them and their professors on a rainy February morning in Hanoi revolved around these concepts as they apply to both countries and how to create globally aware and competent citizens, especially given the fact that most young people do not have the opportunity to study overseas. (Study abroad is no guarantee that this transformation will occur.) The students asked a range of thoughtful and thought-provoking questions.
Nationalism is a type of ideology, defined as “a: a systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture; b: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture.” Irrational and rooted in emotion, it consists of seemingly unchallengeable and commonsensical assumptions, “eternal truths,” believing in something that does not exist or does not reflect reality and empirical facts. To question the precepts that form that basis of US nationalism, or any nationalism for that matter, is to challenge a very potent ideology, a black/white world view that resists contradictory facts and conflicting views that could begin to dissolve this psychic glue. In this respect it represents a formidable obstacle to the development of global competence and citizenship.
While I’m well aware that these students are certainly not representative of most US Americans in terms of social class (tuition, fees, housing and meals for the 2012-2013 academic year at Augustana are $43,398), education and world view, I was encouraged by the thought and reflection that many had invested in these important issues.
As a side note, I noticed that most were women, a trend described in this 19 February 2012 Chronicle article entitled In Study Abroad, Men Are Hard to Find.
As a bonus, check out this 19 February 2012 essay entitled The American Century Is Over—Good Riddance by Prof. Andrew Bacevich, who has written extensively about the notion of American exceptionalism and the origins and effects of US nationalism.
MAA
Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam
14/01/2013It’s about a horrible truth that Nick Turse tells his fellow citizens and the world about the murder of civilians as official policy during the American War, as it’s known in Vietnam, in Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (KATM). KATM, which will be released tomorrow, is unlike any book that’s ever been written about the war. It brings to light what survivors, perpetrators and eyewitnesses know but rarely, if ever, talk about. Below is a related excerpt from an article by Mr. Turse entitled A My Lai a Month that appeared in the 1 December 2008 issue of The Nation (the bold is mine):
In late 1969 Seymour Hersh broke the story of the 1968 My Lai massacre, during which US troops slaughtered more than 500 civilians in Quang Ngai Province, far north of the Delta. Some months later, in May 1970, a self-described “grunt” who participated in Speedy Express wrote a confidential letter to William Westmoreland, then Army chief of staff, saying that the Ninth Division’s atrocities amounted to “a My Lay each month for over a year.” In his 1976 memoir A Soldier Reports, Westmoreland insisted, “The Army investigated every case [of possible war crimes], no matter who made the allegation,” and claimed that “none of the crimes even remotely approached the magnitude and horror of My Lai.” Yet he personally took action to quash an investigation into the large-scale atrocities described in the soldier’s letter.
I uncovered that letter and two others, each unsigned or signed only “Concerned Sergeant,” in the National Archives in 2002, in a collection of files about the sergeant’s case that had been declassified but forgotten, launching what became a years-long investigation. Records show that his allegations–of helicopter gunships mowing down noncombatants, of airstrikes on villages, of farmers gunned down in their fields while commanders pressed relentlessly for high body counts–were a source of high-level concern. A review of the letter by a Pentagon expert found his claims to be extremely plausible, and military officials tentatively identified the letter writer as George Lewis, a Purple Heart recipient who served with the Ninth Division in the Delta from June 1968 through May 1969. Yet there is no record that investigators ever contacted him. Now, through my own investigation–using material from four major collections of archival and personal papers, including confidential letters, accounts of secret Pentagon briefings, unpublished interviews with Vietnamese survivors and military officials conducted in the 1970s by Newsweek reporters, as well as fresh interviews with Ninth Division officers and enlisted personnel–I have been able to corroborate the sergeant’s horrific claims. The investigation paints a disturbing picture of civilian slaughter on a scale that indeed dwarfs My Lai, and of a cover-up at the Army’s highest levels. The killings were no accident or aberration. They were instead the result of command policies that turned wide swaths of the Mekong Delta into “free-fire zones” in a relentless effort to achieve a high body count. While the carnage in the Delta did not begin or end with Speedy Express, the operation provides a harsh new snapshot of the abject slaughter that typified US actions during the Vietnam War.
The substantiated assertion in bold forms the basis of KATM, which consists of archival research and interviews with survivors of US attacks in Vietnam and Cambodia, as well as interviews with US veterans. Efforts to “achieve a high body count” are summed up in this slogan on the walls of the U.S. Army’s Ninth Division helicopter headquarters during Operation Speedy Express (December 1968-May 1969): Death is our business and business is good.
The Truth Shall Set You Free?
If the truth can sometimes hurt, the truth revealed in KATM is excruciatingly painful and traumatic. It is one of the reasons why PTSD afflicts so many US veterans who fought in Vietnam. One clinical psychologist found that one in three soldiers reported killing the enemy (my italics), others found that one in five acknowledged killing a civilian; two in three handled or uncovered dead bodies, and the same number saw wounded and sick women and children they were unable to help. (This applies to Vietnam and Iraq.)
Most US Americans don’t have a clue as to the scale of killing carried out in their name in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s and many don’t want to know the truth because it doesn’t mesh with the image they have of their country and its place in the world. They obsess over the 58,000 US Americans who lost their lives and are shocked to hear about the estimated 3 million (as in 3,000,000) Vietnamese who were murdered. (That’s the modern-day equivalent of about 22 million US Americans, in case you’re counting.)
I often ask those who have been to the “Vietnam Veterans Memorial“ in Washington, D.C. to close their eyes and imagine, just for a moment, The Wall X 50 with the inscription of 3 million Vietnamese names on it: mothers & fathers, sons & daughters, brothers & sisters, aunts & uncles, grandmothers & grandfathers, lost generations who died at the hands of the US military and its client state, South Vietnam, which together turned large swathes of Vietnam into a charnel house.
“…If They Learn About the Wartime Suffering of People in Vietnam, Do You Think They Will Sympathize?”
Here’s a quote from one of the many interviews that Nick Turse conducted with Vietnamese survivors of US military attacks. It was excerpted from a 8 January 2013 article entitled “‘So Many People Died’ - The American System of Suffering, 1965-2014.”
As I was wrapping up my interview, Pham Thang asked me about the purpose of the last hour and a half of questions I’d asked him. Through my interpreter, I explained that most Americans knew next to nothing about Vietnamese suffering during the war and that most books written in my country on the war years ignored it. I wanted, I told him, to offer Americans the chance to hear about the experiences of ordinary Vietnamese for the first time.
“If the American people know about these incidents, if they learn about the wartime suffering of people in Vietnam, do you think they will sympathize?” he asked me.
Soon enough, I should finally know the answer to his question.
He is, of course, referring to the reaction to KATM. What do you think the answer(s) to Mr. Thang’s question will be, dear reader?
Thanks to Nick Turse for telling the stories of those who perished and those who survived, and to Henry Holt (under its Metropolitan Books imprint) for publishing KATM. While I would very much like to see this book translated into Vietnamese, I won’t hold my breath given the political sensitivities involved and less than favorable “market conditions.”
MAA
P.S.: Be sure to read the letters in response to The Nation article, including these two:
To the veterans who are offended by this article, look harder. We need more scrutiny into how we were used as a military force. Most of my fellow C7 cargo pilots would be offended, no doubt, by my assertion that we laid waste to terrain and populace. The urge to conformity and mainstream honor is the greatest barrier to the truth about the Vietnam War. The abuses of military power we brought down on many innocents, who were no threat to America or the world.
and
This is more detail than I have ever seen before about Operation Speedy Express, but the basic outlines of this story have appeared in various books, all citing Kevin Buckley’s story. (I’m thinking of The First Casualty, Fire in the Lake and various books by Noam Chomsky.) But it goes completely unmentioned in many books on the Vietnam War. It’s amazing that people think we live in a self-critical society, when an atrocity like this can remain unknown to the vast majority of Americans for forty years, even though the basic facts are available if you happen to stumble across them.
Categories: Books, Commentary
Tags: american war, US-Vietnam relations, vietnam, vietnam war, war crimes
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