Maine Owl

Notes on the bombing of innocents

The "Bill Ayers issue" against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is now out in full bloom. Here was Republican veep candidate Palin yesterday:

Gov. Palin: There's been a lot of interest in what I read lately. Well, I was reading my copy of today's New York Times, and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago. Turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to the New York Times, was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.' These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. ...

[Barack Obama] is not a man who sees America as you and I do -- as the greatest force for good in the world.

So, guilt by association will be the McCain-Palin Hail Mary. Can't say I find that surprising.

But I believe there is a lot more to look at about this than its nature as a political attack. Especially ripe would be an examination of American use of war as an instrument of policy.

An old friend of Maine Owl put it like this:

In a televised interview last spring, Senator John McCain asked, "How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?"

What branch of the military did Mr McCain serve in??? WHAT DID THEY DO EVERY DAY DURING THE VIETNAM WAR? "ENGAGE IN BOMBINGS THAT COULD HAVE OR DID KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE." What does our air force currently do,well, we don't really know how often now, do we? Weekly? daily? hourly? "ENGAGE IN BOMBINGS THAT COULD HAVE OR DID KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE."

Whew, had to get that out. At least Bill Ayers has gone on to become an education prof and a powerful advocate in defense of children ...

Military bomber pilots often have caring post-war careers too, like serve in public office and run for president. Well, we respect their service, don't we. So, at some level, there is a moral milieu in which bombing innocent people under justifying euphemisms like "collateral damage" is regarded as a "force for good," the true-blooded American thing to do.

Here's my take. First, a quote:

Here is one of them, LCMDR John Sidney McCain, service number 624787 ... USS Oriskany, speaking of the treatment he has been receiving. (Male voice with American accent) I was a U.S. airman engaged in the crimes against the Vietnamese country and people. I had bombed their cities, towns, and villages and caused more injury even death for the people of Vietnam. After I was captured I was taken from a hospital in (?Da Nang) where I received very good medical treatment. ..."

That's from a Pentagon transcription of broadcast, Radio Hanoi, June 2, 1969.

I don't think very many people realize that McCain was in fact highly cooperative with his captors. Yes, they did have huge leverage against him because his leg was close to having a case of deadly gangrene. Sure, he turned down early release. That would have been an extremely traitorous act.

But he did launch his career as a talk show personality on Radio Hanoi and French television--as an asset for North Vietnamese propaganda--while he was a POW! Not the image he wants out there today. And there is no way the Democrats would touch that in order to undermine McCain as "a man who sees America as you and I do," preferring to allow McCain to build any myth he wants and hammer them over the head with it.

Not that I'm unsympathetic towards anyone who was caught up in that godawful mess--both the people who bore the brunt of the bombing (though functioning as propaganda, what McCain said about that undoubtedly was true), and the service people tasked with killing by the wise authorities prosecuting the war.

I personally abhor the notion of taking violent measures to stop war. I do not approve bombing for protest or for any other reason. However, I think the issues involved make assigning "guilt" for what happened in the sixties and seventies a lot less an open-and-shut case than Palin makes it out to be. Obviously, from the military perspective, bombing innocents does not make you "guilty" of anything. It was just an unfortunate aspect of your job, approved as a political right by the highest military and civilian officers of our country.

I look at the situation of the 1960s and 70s as something that fucked everyone up in the head, persisting even today for younger people who didn't live through it, but who get schooled by rhetoric of the kind Palin reads. Would not it be healthier instead if we could have people like Ayers get up with all sorts of surviving Vietnam-era people--including military and law enforcement--under full forgiveness and no threat of prosecution, to reflect on motivations and policies that led to their actions? This would be a sort of "truth commission." Wouldn't that be better than constant use of the past as a wedge?

No way in America today. That wedge is in deep and informs the broad hostility towards the scattered activism against American militarism and global domination that struggles to exist. I'd say it's so bad now, even after the ongoing hyper-destruction and multi-trillion-dollar costs of the Iraq & Afghan wars, that the only debate on the political level seems to be whether or not the "surge" worked. Extremely sad.

The bubble of unreality people seem to prefer these days indicates that not nearly enough common-narrative building has been done over the four decades since Vietnam.