What Could We Be Thinking?

Earlier this month, the L.A. Times reported about
Dang Thuy Tram, a Vietnamese doctor who, during the war, lived in the
countryside and treated Vietcong soldiers fighting the Americans. She wrote an
extensive diary, recently discovered and now quite popular in Vietnam.
We read of her loves and her suffering. She ran with soldiers, she fled with
villagers, and raged against the American “pirates” that were destroying her
nation. She died in an American assault on the central costal district of Duc Pho, her diary at her side.

Those were the days, huh? When an enemy had the good taste to stay put and
die, to submit meekly and poetically to the slaughter, and not for one second,
consider flying over here and paying us tit for tat. Heaven knows they had
reason to. Below Tram’s story was an article revealing that American atrocities
in Vietnam
were far more extensive than the Mai Lai massacre. In the
1970’s, information on such events was hard to come by. Unlike Abu Ghraib, there wasn’t a computer full of photos brazenly
cataloging the torture. But for whatever reason, the Vietcong never arrived on
our shores to correct our misperception.

The Vietnamese reaction to our invasion set a very bad precedent in America’s
thinking.  In short, we actually think we can get away with leveling
entire nations. Recently, we read in the paper about Israel’s surprise at Hezbollah’s
strength. Yes, the Lebanese villages fought back. Fancy that. These are not
rock-throwing Palestinian boys willing to exchange a few minutes’ rage for
years in Israeli detention centers. These are people who know very well the
kind of extermination Israel
and America
have in mind for them, and will respond accordingly.

Among my friends of Middle Eastern origin, there’s been a recent change of
attitude. Before the invasion of Lebanon,
many were willing to just let the Israel thing go. What’s done is
done. No sense nursing the same grudge again and again. Got
to move on sometime. But as Israel began its current course,
all have returned to that familiar teeth-gritting rage. Some are old enough to remember
Israel’s destruction of Lebanon in the 1980’s, and some only hear it
from elders, but all understand that Israel has set out to destroy an
innocent nation. You may or may not know that, thanks to Israel, Lebanon is plagued with unexploded
cluster bombs, ready to go off at the touch of a child’s hand who thinks he’s
found a toy.  The rest of the world
knows, though.

Here’s what else the rest of the world knows: Israel
could not have undertaken such a broad invasion without Washington’s blessing. Most often, when Israel starts
one of these, the sitting American President lets it go on a few days, then
clears his throat, and troops return to their barracks. In that regard, Israel has no
choice. They are the largest recipient of US military and economic aid in the
world. If America were to
cut off the pipeline and look the other way for a  few
weeks, Israel
would cease to exist.

Thus, the world knows that America
is allowing, if not encouraging Israel’s
destruction of Lebanon.
The world knows that the American public overwhelmingly supports the current
course, even if it means thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands
of refugees (as it did in the ‘80s).

The real questions is, have Americans lost their
minds? Do we really think we’ll get away with such open belligerence against
the entire Muslim world? What do we think we’re doing? We’ve made enemies. Strong ones, angry ones, indeed, the wrong ones. Years from
now, you won’t be reading about some kindly Iraqi doctor going quietly to her
grave as the Americans rain terror on her village. The epitaph will be quite
different. It will be our own.