On being an American

During the opening plenary, I was pained to hear speaker after speaker, including and especially our own Marjorie Cohn, condemn actions of the US government. I was saddened to recognize that the catalogue of condemnation was only a partial list of my country's transgressions. And I was angered to be reminded so graphically that the United States has been, and remains, the world's most dangerous rogue state. We are a country that has much to offer the rest of the world, but that must start with admission of how much we have taken from the rest of the world.

Of course, being in Vietnam brings that home to those of us of a certain age, whose lives and politics were formed by the Vietnam War protests. But the video about the victims of Agent Orange -- both American and Vietnamese -- drives home the point that the effects of US imperialism in this country that is hosting us are still with its people and ours. The chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange have made payments to American victims and GI's who were exposed to it are able to collect some disability benefits, but the Vietnamese continue to suffer the ravages of dioxyn poisoning generations later while the US has failed to abide by the commitment of aid it made when the peace treaty was signed and the chemical companies successfully defeated the suit brought against them. It was no secret back in 1969 that Agent Orange poisoned people. I recall Rennie Davis talking about it on more than one occasion.

But I was reminded of other things, great and small, that demonstrate Vietnam and Agent Orange were not aberrations, but the fundamental character of post-World War II America.

I worked for the NLG's Military Law Office in Japan and Okinawa in 1974. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, the provision renouncing war, had been imposed by the US and Douglas MacArthur after the war. But, even back when I was there, that was changing. The Nixon Doctrine called for local regional partners to protect US "interests" around the world and, with China looming, Japan was the designated Asian junior partner. Its "Self-Defense Forces" were large and growing, with US blessing. Now, it is being encouraged to scrap Article 9 altogether and the dominant Liberal Democratic Party has signed on willingly.

In Okinawa, US bases covered virtually the entire island. They included a Coast Guard station because even the coast of Okinawa was to be guarded by the US. All the land had been stolen from the Okinawans who had farmed it for generations and had been forced to serve as baseworkers. But they formed a militant union whose principal demand was return of their land, but which also fought for better wages and working conditions. Ultimately, they were all fired and replaced by military "dependents," so were force to scrounge for work in service to the occupiers, mainly in bars and as prostitutes, or to be the last hired, first fired, most menial workers (along with Koreans) on the Japanese mainland. With Okinawa being returned to Japan (the right of Japan to Okinawa is questionable, but another story), control of some of the bases went to the Self-Defense Forces, but none went back to the people from whom it was stolen.

Being here, meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones from around the world, reminds one of what our responsibility is in the belly of the beast. The world is too small and fragile for us to be complacent or parochial. We are obligated, not just to change US policy, but to change the very nature of the US. We owe it not just to the rest of the world, but to all those suffering at home, victims too of a rapacious system that has converted every wonder it has wrought into a means of enriching a few at the expense of the further impoverishment of billions around the world. I realize this can sound like empty rhetoric, then you meet those victimized and impoverished and you realize the rhetoric doesn't do the condemnation justice.

David Gespass