Greenwald on Boston bombings: Same level of anger is warranted when US is the attacker

[deurbano]

16. The American War

When I was young, and would see the terrible images of the Vietnam War on television, I didn’t really identify with the Vietnamese. While I felt sympathy for them, I also thought they were “used” to this sort of tragedy, so in a different category of humans. I grew up in a very white (at the time), middle class area, and until high school, knew very few non-white, non-middle class people. I viewed the Vietnamese as “other”—both racially and in terms of class. I had the idea that poor people of color could “take” things better than “my” people could, so what was happening to “them” (and this included famine in Africa, etc.) was not as devastating for “them” as it would be for “us.”

By 8th grade, my world view had (thankfully) begun to expand, and I was quietly (since my parents were very authoritarian, politically involved Republicans-- who had formerly been Southern Democrats) supporting RFK’s presidential campaign. Even so, it wasn’t until I saw one of those educational films about WWII as a freshman in high school that I definitively turned against the Vietnam War. And it was the footage of the impact of extensive bombing on WHITE European civilians that finally moved me. THAT I could relate to. MY innocent children getting bombed…

Now, I have a daughter who was born in Ho Chi Minh City… and when I look at her beautiful (and so familiar) face, it is very painful to remember thinking of the Vietnamese as “them.”

(It was when I was in Vietnam for my daughter's adoption that I first heard the horrific conflict- the one that had initially had so little impact on me- referred to as the “American War.”)