In The Year Of The Pig
Having watched a brilliantly edited documentary "In The Year Of The Pig"(1968), I realised how poorly educated and short-sighted we still are. It was about the events and background leading to the official start of the Vietnam War in 1968. People realise that they are colonise once they are become empowered to see how their country is being run by the ruling administration. The French realised that they could not keep a grip on a country that was awakening to a new nationalism inspired by the other struggles in Asia and Africa, and by exposure to ideologies such as Marxism and Confucianism. Outside influences soon enough polarised the north, with the Vietcong, a Chinese supported movement with a nationalistic emphasis on power to the village folk. It was headed by the enigmatic and fearless leader, Ho-Chi Minh. The south was still tainted with a puppet administration that soon became more American than French.
Even though a treaty was signed in 1954, with a demarcation of the 17th parallel between North and South Vietnam, there were repeated breaches with border skirmishes involving the colonial army degenerating into a full war with the elections of the South being annulled by the people and an assassination of Diem, the puppet of the south, and his corrupt administration. The US's initial involvement was to supply arms, goods, technology and advice to the colonised South and as became evident at this stage in the Cold War, to supply anti-communist propaganda. In what Ho-Chi Minh described as the downward spiral of American policy, there reached the situation in 1968 where there was indeed US troops committed to Vietnam for peacekeeping purposes. This was Kennedy's policy, which was flouted by the Johnson administration. The Vietcong advancement in Saigon and continuous resistance brought about a new kind of war, that of which we are familiar with, bombing military targets. In this case it was in dense rainforests and the targets were surrounded by numerous villages. Innocent civilians died as a result thus fuelling more ambushes and the US had no choice but throw their full military might into the proceedings to save face. The interesting thing is despite the voices of reason from the political think-tanks and religious institutions in the US and Europe, the US military went ahead with the napalm bombing, the village ambushes and demolishing of structures in an effort to quash the Vietcong, well hidden and organised in dense foliage. Tainted with racism, hypocrisy and dehumanisation it brought a new dimension to warfare: live media coverage. The events of 1968 bare the trademarks of the Iraq situation.
Once again the US administration have us believe that there is a singular enemy when the reality is that the real enemy is the failure to protect its own interests and the people it has claimed to liberate. Already nothing has been learnt from Vietnam as the costs have sky rocketed and the daily fatalities are a norm. The opposition to the occupation is even more complex and has loose connections to the Palestine crisis. Regional instability as a result of a unilateral action makes eventualities harder to assess. Who knows how the long the slog to a democratic Iraq transition will take. There is no people leader in Iraq at the moment, no singular symbol of hope. Either the US/UK cop out and submit to the will of the UN and admit that their judgement was flawed and their intentions atrocious or else 2004 shall indeed be the Year of the Rat.
K.M.N. (2004)
Labels: The Year of the Pig
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