Henry Kissinger once pointed out that there has always been an obvious contradiction in U.S. foreign policy: on the one hand, no country is "more pragmatic than the United States in its day-to-day diplomatic activities." On the other hand, no country has "wishful thinking" as the United States does.
"As its national power expanded, the United States began to push its own values outward, first the 'Monroe Doctrine' of the 19th century, to the Americas; In the 20th century, the 'Truman Doctrine' began to spread to the whole world. Xu Yan, a professor at the Strategic Teaching and Research Department of the National Defense University, told the Global People reporter, "In this process, the United States has fostered a pro-US regime, subverted a regime that does not conform to its values, intervened militarily if it can, intervene militarily, and intervened through containment or peaceful evolution if it cannot." There have been successful cases of military intervention, such as armed invasions of Grenada and Panama, but there have also been times when they have been mired in the quagmire, such as in North Korea and in Vietnam. ”
Chuck Cersei was a Vietnam War veteran who served on the battlefields of Vietnam from June 1967 to June 1968. Pictured below right, he (center) in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1967
In 1965, former U.S. President Johnson gave a speech at Johns Hopkins University, holding high the banner of "liberal democracy" and generously stating why we should continue to increase military investment in vietnam, a distant country, "If we are to live in a world where every country can shape its own destiny, we must fight." Only by living in such a world can our own freedom be finally guaranteed. It was during Johnson's presidency that the United States sent a massive increase in troops to Vietnam. In 1966, Johnson met with South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Nguyen Promised to enact a "democratic constitution," including an electoral law, on the basis of which an elected government would be formed to promote constitutional democracy. Two years later, the two met again in Honolulu, where Johnson highly praised South Vietnam's efforts to form a constitutional representative government: "A constitution has been drafted and adopted, and the institutions are established through free elections." This is truly remarkable progress. In a country ravaged by war and aggression, this is almost unprecedented progress. ”
Behind the enthusiastic speech, under the "assistance" of a large number of US troops, what did the South Vietnamese people get? "I see poverty, corruption, homelessness, death and destruction happening every day." Chuck Cersei, an American veteran who fought in the Vietnam War, recalled to Global People. In the narration of a veteran, we can see the cold reality under the aura of "democracy".
"This war is wrong, very wrong"
I was born in 1944, grew up in a small town of 8,000 people in Georgia, and entered the University of Georgia in 1962. When I was in college, I dropped out of school to work in broadcasting, so I lost my qualification for deferred student service and was drafted into the army.
In March 1965, a U.S. military helicopter formation flew on the ground in Ninh Province, Vietnam, to cooperate with the carpet search of ground troops.
My family had a tradition of joining the army, my brother was already in the Navy, all my uncles had served in the Army, Navy or Marine Corps, and my father had fought in World War II. Now it was my turn, and although I didn't want to go to war, I didn't resist. If I escaped military service, I would go to jail or flee abroad. This is unacceptable to a patriotic family. When I left home, my mother cried and said goodbye.
I received 8 weeks of basic training and 10 weeks of specialized guidance and became a military intelligence analyst. After serving in the United States for a year, I arrived in Vietnam in June 1967. I was assigned to the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, working at the Vietnam Joint Intelligence Center in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City). It was a low, sturdy bunker-like building with no windows. There are many maps in the center, as well as large computers for tracking the war in southern Vietnam. We compile various reports and assessment documents based on material captured by field forces, and this intelligence is sent to General Westmoreland, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, and sometimes to senior officials in Washington, and even to Congress and the White House. For the most part, though, our job was routine, checking food supplies, investigating the loyalty of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops to their missions, and the attitudes of the Vietnamese people.
When I first joined the army, I didn't have a strong opinion about the right and wrong of the war, and I think President Johnson and the U.S. Congress knew more than I knew, and there must be a reason to start this war. I was taught that communism was an evil force in the world, that Americans were sent to Vietnam to protect Vietnamese from communism, and that defeating communism would allow democracy to flourish in Vietnam.
In 1967, American soldiers stationed in South Vietnam captured vietnamese they believed were anti-American.
But two or three months after arriving in Vietnam, my view of the war changed. I began to question everything I was told about Vietnam, I began to question the reason why the United States was fighting in this faraway country, and I didn't understand why we were going there or why we were fighting. Instead of seeing the friendship between the Americans and the Vietnamese that I had expected, I saw the arrogance and contempt that many American soldiers had for the Vietnamese. Few Americans made Vietnamese friends, and some soldiers were even more mean and hateful. Once, I was riding a U.S. military truck to a troop station. Because it had just rained heavily, the streets were full of water. The driver laughed and rushed left and right, splashing water. Splashing water hit an old woman carrying a basket in the face and wet her. She looked at us sadly and seemed to be saying, "Why are you doing this?" Did you get joy out of it? The driver continued to accelerate, laughing and making a fuss. It's a small thing, one of many similar little things.
Americans are condescending, and all decisions are made by Americans, but we know nothing about Vietnam's history, culture, and customs. Because of my work, I had access to a lot of magazine books, as well as confidential and non-confidential reports, and I began to read everything I could find, including Ho Chi Minh's speeches, documents signed by Vietnam and France, and so on, to learn as much as I could about Vietnam's history, culture, and politics. I've found that our intelligence is based on a lot of misinformation, and we're also distorting information from field troops to make it look like the United States is winning the war. This is not true.
I realized that I had been deceived by the U.S. government and had become part of a huge lie beyond my control, and that the American people were not allowed to know the truth. It goes against all the beliefs I've been taught as a young man, an Idealistic American. I felt sick and angry.
I have some Vietnamese friends, and as we get to know each other better, I realize that they don't trust the Americans and aren't happy that the Americans are fighting in their country. After a long period of invasion and occupation by foreign armies, they saw us as the latest invading army. Although I am a personal friend of them, they still want the U.S. military to leave Vietnam so that they can make their own decisions and find their own path to freedom and independence. As my Vietnamese friend said, "This is the only way we can get peace." Vietnamese can talk to each other and peace can be achieved. But the Americans will not let us have peace. ”
My conclusion is that this war is wrong, very wrong.
In 1972, a child in Vietnam's Jang Phuong area escaped an exploding napalm bomb when a little girl was badly burned and ran out naked.
"There is terrible death and destruction everywhere"
Everyone in my unit was armed with weapons, mostly M14 rifles. We didn't think about using it at first, we felt safe in Saigon and wouldn't be attacked until February 1968. At that time, the Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese troops launched the Spring Festival Offensive, the major cities of South Vietnam were fighting, there were street battles in Saigon, the Americans immediately returned fire, and occupied the advantage of force, air bombardment and heavy artillery caused a large number of casualties and damage.
The place where our troops were fed and stayed was a former French factory, about 10 km from the center of Saigon and where we worked. When the fighting was fierce, we were isolated for about two weeks because the road was impassable. Fortunately, we have hardly been directly attacked. But while standing guard, we could see the devastation of the fighting, with much of the neighborhood outside the courtyard destroyed by bombs and rockets dropped by fighter jets and helicopters, and the houses blown up beyond recognition, leaving only rubble. There was terrible death and destruction everywhere, ordinary people were filled with uncertainty and fear, they tried to escape the fighting, and the streets were chaotic.
I will never forget this offensive. Although the United States eventually regained some stability in southern Vietnam, the Spring Festival Offensive had a huge impact on us and the American people, convincing most people that the United States would never win the war. I also lost two American friends. One was killed by a landmine, and the other was accidentally blown up by our own helicopter. Helicopters attacked more than a dozen of our troops, thinking they were Viet Cong personnel operating on the ground.
During the entire Vietnam War, 58,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam, which is a great pain, but we must remember that Vietnamese suffered even more, with an estimated death of more than 1 million soldiers and about 2 million civilians. The United States also lost weapons, equipment and infrastructure, but these losses were not worth compared to the loss of lives or the destruction of Vietnamese houses, roads, bridges, railways, crops and forests.
Although I was not directly involved in the fighting, the work I did was to help determine the operational and strategic intentions of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces, coordinate bombing missions, and ultimately kill them or inflict terrible harm on them, and I still feel responsible for the war.
I spent a full year in Vietnam, and when I left Vietnam in June 1968, I was very angry, nervous, bitter and confused. I went back to the U.S. for a two-week sabbatical, but I was uncomfortable at home. I had a hard time talking to my parents and friends, and that year in Vietnam had a profound impact on my life, but the people around me didn't really care, they didn't seem to understand what I was going through, how could they possibly understand? I received some counseling and was diagnosed with PTSD. The damage of the war still affects me today, and it is a shared experience among thousands of veterans.
My last year of service was spent at the headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe in Heidelberg, Germany. This year has calmed me down, and I have transcended anger and figured out what to do, which is to return to the United States, join the anti-war movement, try to convince my compatriots and the U.S. government that war is wrong, that war does not bring liberal democracy, and that it must stop.
When I returned to the United States, I was re-enrolled at the University of Georgia. Soon after, a classmate invited me to speak at an anti-war event. Because of that talk, I got together with a dozen Vietnam Veterans who didn't know each other and formed a branch of the Vietnam Veterans Anti-War Association. We began speaking in history classes, at student groups, clubs, church gatherings, and in radio and television interviews to deliver our message of peace. We continued to do so until the end of the war in 1975.
"We continue to make the same mistakes"
I have always wanted to take responsibility for what I did as a U.S. soldier and find a way to help the Vietnamese recover and rebuild from the damage caused by me and my comrades-in-arms and the U.S. government. Fortunately, the door of opportunity was open to me.
During the war, in Nha Trang, in southern Vietnam, a U.S. official tried to prevent Vietnamese from boarding a plane that was already crowded with Vietnamese refugees trying to flee.
In 1995, I returned to Vietnam and launched a humanitarian project to help children with disabilities in Vietnam. I worked with Vietnamese to provide orthosis in hospitals in Hanoi to help children with disabilities walk again. Some of them had limited mobility due to diseases such as polio and cerebral palsy, but I soon realized that the bigger problem was the legacy of the war. After the end of the Vietnam War, more than 100,000 Vietnamese were killed and injured by mines or unexploded bombs and shells, and new accidents occurred every week. In 2001, with the support of another veterans organization, we launched the "Rebirth" project, which aims to help Vietnamese protect themselves from bombs and landmines.
Since then, my Vietnamese colleagues — now more than 180 — have worked with other organizations to safely clear more than 750,000 bombs and guide local residents such as children, farmers and others to avoid accidents and injuries. In the past three years, in Guangzhi Province, where the "New Life" project is located, there has not been another accident. In addition, we help families who suffered from the chemical agent Agent Orange in the Vietnam War in an attempt to make their lives better and alleviate their suffering.
When I came to Vietnam in 1995, I wasn't prepared to stay long, but it turned out that I had been staying here for more than 26 years. The war brought a lot of pain, sadness and heartbreak and continues to this day. Many Vietnamese and Americans have come together to face the trauma of war, and we are determined to create a better world from the ashes, starting with healing ourselves and building friendships.
I hope the Vietnam War will give the United States some of the necessary humility to recognize that we cannot find answers for everyone in every situation. American democracy is a flawed system, and the world knows it after seeing the turmoil that this U.S. election has brought. The idea of democracy itself is good, and it should be improved and practiced by our efforts. But whether it is beneficial to other countries is not something that the United States can decide, but must be decided by each country and culture itself.
After defeating the United States, the world's most powerful military power, the Vietnamese won the right to choose their own system. They borrow from other countries and institutions that are good for their development, rejecting what they deem inappropriate. I also learned a lot from the Vietnamese, we should respect and listen to the opinions of others, the earth has limited resources, we share a home, we should share, and be responsible for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, for our countries. Above all, respect for peace and do everything possible to avoid hostility, conflict and war.
Chuck Cersei ( left ) talks to "New Life" project staff in Quang Phu Thieu province, Vietnam, in July 2013.
But sometimes I'm very pessimistic that after the Vietnam War, the Americans didn't learn their lessons, but continued to make the same mistakes in Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries, and I despaired. When I see the enormous influence that companies that manufacture weapons and armaments, and the control they exert over the governments of the United States and other countries, I realize that we cannot stop trying, we want to put an end to this deadly and destructive madness. It's hard, and often discouraging, but we have to go ahead. If we are to keep the planet alive and prosperous for future generations, we have no choice.
In the name of democracy
As Cersei feared, the United States had not learned its lessons from past experiences. According to the Chongyang Institute of Finance at Chinese Min University, since the first foreign military intervention was launched in 1880, as of 2017, the United States has carried out a total of 392 foreign military interventions. After the end of the Cold War in 1991, the UNITED Military Intervention in foreign countries did not decline but rose. In the 44 years from 1948 to 1991, the United States launched 46 foreign military interventions, and in the 26 years from 1992 to 2017, this number rose to 188.
In May 2007, at arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, a woman, accompanied by her mother, came to mourn her boyfriend who died in the Afghan war
The United States has also been increasing its military investment, spending $778 billion (about 4.96 trillion yuan) in 2020, accounting for 39% of the world's total military spending. As of 2017, the U.S. military has more than 1.3 million active personnel, of whom more than 450,000 are stationed overseas. As of October 2021, the United States maintains about 750 overseas military bases.
"The United States achieves its hegemonic goal through war, obtains geographical and resource benefits in certain countries and certain regions, and achieves control by supporting proxy regimes. Diao Daming, an associate professor at the School of International Relations at Chinese University, told the Global People reporter, "After the United States gradually became a rich country and a powerful country, they had a strong self-confidence in their own set of democratic ideas, and hoped that values would spill out, so that more countries could share values, become allies and partners of the United States, and help the United States achieve its goals." However, from the formation to the development of the American democratic system, it is more of a particularity than universality, and at this point, the United States has misinterpreted it. ”
Diao Daming believes that this kind of military intervention by the United States in the name of democracy is itself anti-democratic. "Allowing any country to freely choose the path of development is the embodiment of international democracy, and arbitrarily judging other countries by their own standards or even using force to intervene is very undemocratic in itself and violates the fair and just international order." The forces that the United States supports in other countries in the name of democracy are often the forces that can maximize the interests of the United States, not the so-called progressive and democratic forces. The presence of the US military often leads to further turmoil in the countries concerned, and the natural path to peace, stability and even democracy in these places is ruined. ”
Since 2001, U.S. wars and military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have killed hundreds of thousands, injured millions, and displaced tens of millions. In the Middle East and North Africa, where the United States has been involved for a long time, about 1/5 of people still live on the brink of conflict. Taking the war in Afghanistan as an example, in the 20 years of military operations, more than 30,000 civilians in Afghanistan have been killed by the US military or died due to the war brought by the US military, and more than 60,000 civilians have been injured and about 11 million people have become refugees. Years of war have led to a devastating Afghan economy, with about 72 percent of the population living below the poverty line and unemployment at 38 percent.
In addition to casualties, "Gulf syndrome", "fear of death", "combat tension", "suicide schizophrenia" and other "war diseases" plague US soldiers, making it difficult for them to integrate into normal society after retiring. In addition, high military investment wastes the financial resources of the United States. "These military expenses are also taxpayers' money, and they should have invested more in the economic, social, people's livelihood and other related fields of the United States." The wanton involvement in war can only benefit special interest groups such as arms dealers, and the basic demands of ordinary people are not met, exacerbating the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. The technical differences between the Democratic and Republican parties over the war have further torn apart the United States and hijacked the democratic agenda in the United States. Diao Daming analyzed.