Even from 5,000 feet up, I found evidence of American arrogance.
The U.S. Army's First Division, the famous Big Red One, had been
stationed at Lai Khe, the base near An Loc, until shortly before
my arrival in Saigon. From my vantage point inside the helicopter,
I looked down and discovered, carved out of the thick forest,
a huge "1" surrounded by the outline of a shoulder patch; it was
the Big Red One's insignia, cast on a Brobdingnagian scale.
The Army apparently used bulldozers to cut a swath many yards wide;
the insignia must have covered several square miles. It infuriated me
more than most killing did. It was simple defacement, the ultimate in
graffiti, made by a division of Kilroys.
>From page 70 of "The Mark" (New York / London: 1995) by Jacques Leslie,
LA Times correspondent in Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-3.
Just one outrageous thing that happened when private adolescent storms
were harnessed to a murder machine and a highly simplified agenda.
The final cost of all that is something I'm still trying to discover.
About a year ago I posted Victor Perlo's $518B figure (1960 dollars),
but there were no takers, pro or con. Now, anybody?
There are lots of vets today who ought to be reminded that switching off
one's brain can cost as much as the welfare bill and achieve far less.
The work of reminding has been occurring in-house. For instance, in 1991
the Maine VVA Quarterly published the full text of General Smedley Butler's
classic 1935 bean-spiller "War is a Racket," with a front page biographical
lead. Butler made all too clear who it is that picks up the tab after
the banners and bugles are stashed away and the old men have made their
dirty deals at the conference table. (In the same issue is the seditious
sermon that earned Martin Luther King his bullet. Has something been
overlooked here?)
The general's divine blasphemy should be scanned and sent without apology
to every war dog site on the Net.
valis
Occupied America
