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               | Another Vietnam July 31, 2002 -- Hartford (APJP) -- A startling exhibit of photographs is currently on view at the National Geographic headquarters, located a block off the Mall in Washington, D.C. and just a few blocks from the closest thing our nation has to a wailing wall-the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The exhibit is called "Another Vietnam," and it's comprised of combat and home front photographs made by members of the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong-those combatants our troops referred to variously as Charlie, Charles, Chuck, Victor Charles, VC, slopes, dinks and gooks. The exhibit is startling for many reasons, not the least of which is that it appears now, at a time of heightened alert and suspicion of foreigners, in a city that is under the iron heel of the right wing and cordoned off with cement barriers, barbed wire and loaded guns, and in an institution that, frankly, has never been known for being progressive. The idea behind the exhibit is not, as some conservatives might be tempted to conclude without seeing the exhibit or reading the extraordinary publication based on it, to denigrate America's war effort or extol the virtue of "Commies." Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Indeed, the overriding sense one gets from the exhibit, is best summarized by Henry Allen, an ex-Marine and Vietnam vet, who wrote the introduction to the exhibit catalog: "The trick, here, is to see beyond the propaganda of the pictures into a different culture, a different war...We rarely saw Viet Cong the way you see them here...we only saw the faces of the Viet Cong when we killed them or took them prisoner. By then you couldn't see what their faces really looked like anymore. Dead faces looked dead, a universal quality of fly-specked anachronism. And the humiliated faces of prisoners-ours, theirs, anybody's, anytime-tend to remind you of sheep-killing dogs." Here you see startling shots of women fighting barefoot alongside barefoot men; propagandistic shots of Ho Chi Minh looking inscrutably noble seated at a desk, Fidel Castro hailing a North Vietnamese victory and "Hanoi" Jane Fonda charming a group of NVA soldiers (guaranteed to raise the hackles of conservatives); shots of Viet Cong guerillas in the Mekong Delta planting American-made Claymore mines (an indication of the international armaments market that will insure that Iraqis will kill Americans with their own weaponry); Viet Cong activists meeting with KKK-like masks so that they would not know the identity of their comrades in case they are captured and tortured; medics in Haiphong treating a naked 4-year-old girl after U.S. bombers hit a civilian neighborhood; mangrove forests denuded by Agent Orange (the residual effects still decimate Vietnamese people); and shots of downed or crashing U.S. airplanes, captured U.S. airmen, and interior shots of "Hanoi Hilton," the prison where they were kept. The photographs are so rich with previously unseen detail, as well as human suffering and heroism, that one does not simply jump from one to the next. Rather, one visits the exhibit with a sort of gasping deliberateness, sitting down occasionally to ponder what one has seen or to recover from the horror. Given that we are currently employing Vietnam-like strategies in Afghanistan (bomb the hell out of an area, sort through the dead, tally how many were actually combatants) and are on the brink of going to war in Iraq, where an unimaginable scenario involving biological, chemical and nuclear weapons is entirely possible, it is worth seeing this exhibit or procuring a copy of this book. If nothing else, it might serve as a much needed cautionary tale, and a reminder of the one valuable lesson that was learned from Vietnam: it was a horrible, tragic, terrible, godawful mistake that was begun on a fake pretext (Gulf of Tonkin "incident") and compounded across four presidential administrations (Republican and Democratic). It is also a wound on our body politic that has still not healed. Consider this, as well: Among those who are rattling their sabers for war with Saddam at the moment, most if not all were of age during the Vietnam War to serve in the military. Few of them did serve. In fact, most of them did not. Had they gotten out of military duty for reasons of conscience, or had they served their nation in some other capacity (say, the Peace Corps), this would at least give them a leg to stand on. However, most of them simply had-in Dick Cheney inimitably feeble explanation for his own avoidance of military duty-"had other priorities." Their lack the experience about the horrors and barbarity of war would, in a country that valued its citizens' rights and lives, render their current hawkish rhetoric moot. In addition to the increasingly creepy Cheney, these hypocrites include Trent Lott, Tom Delay, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm, Andrew Card, Don Evans, Harvey Pitt, Paul Wolfowitz, Antonin Scalia, Bob Barr, Ken Starr, Jeb Bush, Pat Buchanan, Spencer Abraham, Rudy Guiliani, Mitch McConnell, Dennis Hastert, Don Nickles, Rush Limbaugh (he got out due to "anal cysts"), Marc Racicot ("psoriasis"), Tommy Thompson, Brit Hume and Dan Quayle. George W. Bush would say that he served in the military during the time of the Vietnam War, but that would be a lie on many levels. Through family connections-the story of his life-Bush got a cushy assignment in the Air National Guard. He did not always show up for his assignment and sometimes he simply went AWOL. The Boston Globe examined his deplorable military record in detail in a June 2000 story that the media chose to ignore, as they chose to ignore the fact that Al Gore DID serve in Vietnam. We will never know the full extent of Bush's checkered military record, just as we won't have the details on his drinking, drugging, whoring, abortion getting, corporate crimes, and God knows what else, because he has sealed these public records away from the public. When terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, Bush went AWOL again, hightailing it on a series of military jets until late in the day, when he snuck back into Washington DC aboard Air Force One. In case you hadn't noticed, everything with Bush is TOP SECRET, including this war with Iraq that nobody but him and his inner circle of droogs seems to want. The only member of his inner circle-whose influence is waning as does his political career for every day longer he remains in Bush's employ-is Colin Powell, and he is conspicuously tight-lipped about his feelings toward attacking Iraq. We will take that as an indication that he is ambivalent at best and, at worst, deeply troubled by the prospect of the ensuing carnage. Are you willing to send your child to die so that George W. Bush can impress his daddy and score more oil for his financial backers? This is what our impending war will boil down to. - - - - - - - - - - Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate and author, most recently, of "Famous Last Words: Apt Observations, Pleas, Curses, Benedictions, Sour Notes, Bons Mots, and Insights from People on the Brink of Departure" (Pomegranate).   Copyright © 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, American Politics Journal Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Read our privacy policy. Contact us. ISSN No. 1523-1690 | |||