The Vietnam War and the theft of homes, farms and forests
The Vietnam War is near to my heart because I am just old enough to remember when the war was occuring. In school, I was indoctrinated into the belief that we, the United States, were legitimately defending ourselves against a “monolithic and ruthless empire,” in the words of John F. Kennedy.
I have since discovered that the US was, by far, the biggest aggressor and the biggest bully in the Cold War, the war on communism. The communist countries mainly just wanted to govern their own affairs and to be left alone.
I have also concluded that war is among the most environmentally destructive of human activities and that we have no hope of saving the climate or the biosphere unless we end war, or at least reduce it by 90%.
I will talk about the impact of the Vietnam war on agriculture and the impact of displacement of human populations.
The following information is from “Year 501” by Noam Chomsky: “Crop destruction programs from 1961 had a devastating impact including aerial distruction by chemicals, ground operations to destroy orchards and dikes and land clearing by giant tractors (called Rome plows) that obliterated agricultural lands, often including extensive systems of paddy dikes and entire rural residential areas and farming hamlets, leaving soil bare, gray and lifeless. In the south, 9000 of 15,000 hamlets were damaged or destroyed along with some 25,000,000 acres of farmland and 12,000,000 acres of forest.”
Vietnam represented massive firepower brought down on a peasant population. People were not only bombed, but their forests were destroyed by the defoliant Agent Orange. This was toxic to living humans and caused birth defects, and is still causing birth defects.
But also, you have displacement of rural populations. People were herded into concentration camps. They lost their homes. These were people who had lived stable and sustainable lives. The US caused their farms to be unfarmable. So they had to move to cities.
This a massive disruption to people’s lives, quite apart from the loss of human life.
Here’s how this relates to our environmental problems today:
Today, we have a limited amount of time and limited resources to solve problems like climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss. We don’t have the resources to squander. But when we bomb people, their homes, their farms and their forests, and when we make their land unlivable, we are squandering precious resources.
We don’t have unlimited time, money or resources. We must make intelligent use of the resources we have.
I like saying that nature is resilient, but not when you’re making war on it. As much as I grieve the loss of every ecosystem and the loss of clean air, water and food, I believe the natural world will quickly recover if and when we stop making war on it. But we haven’t done that yet, have we?
We make war on people militarily, economically and culturally.
There is a lot of vitriolic debate these days about socialism and capitalism, but I can summarize my political philosophy in three words: “Stop the theft.” Stop stealing from people what is theirs. Stop taking their land. Stop taking their families, their communities, their lives and their health.
By stealing from people, we are ensuring that they will always be struggling. Quite apart from the misery we cause, we are squandering the earth’s scarce resources.
Stop that!!
We don’t have time for this!!
And stop taking away their right to self-determination. Our Declaration of Independence says that governments derive their just powers from the “consent of the governed.” We need to act like we mean that. We need to stop stealing people’s political rights. In other words, stop the theft of people’s political rights as well as their lives, communities, families and properties. Only then will we be able to save the climate and the biosphere.