Comment by Willy Bach
BRISBANE — On August 17 former Australian soldiers who served their country in Vietnam marched proudly through the streets here — at last expunging the shame and indignity of the past 19 years. Finally the Australian public have realised the bravery and patriotism of these fine men and women.
Having served their ruling class in the destruction and rape of Vietnam, ordinary workers like ourselves, disillusioned men and women, returned from the war bewildered at the ingratitude and vilification which they met in Australia. They had witnessed the massacre first hand — some had helped to perpetrate it. My Lai was not an isolated incident. The issue of whether they are "war heroes" is only now being decided.
However, what really matters is whether military intervention was ever capable of producing a good outcome. Like the Gulf War, this one made an awful mess of the environment, productive resources and lives of millions of human beings.
Large tracts of Indochina's rainforests and agricultural land were laid waste. Large numbers of people, mainly civilians, were needlessly killed, maimed, displaced, their lives shattered, the dirt poor driven into famine. No-one talks about the compensation due to Vietnamese civilians for the teratogenic and carcinogenic effects of Agent Orange and other defoliants.
They don't talk about the grotesque experiments to test new and barbarous weapons. The widespread use of napalm and other chemicals is hardly mentioned. The secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos by the CIA's surrogate air force, Air America, manned by mercenary pilots (some of them Australian) remains shrouded. Military coups were engineered by the CIA in Laos three times.
War destroys democracy. Robert Menzies lied to parliament about the so-called request which the puppet regime in South Vietnam sent to the Australian government, bringing about this country's involvement. The sobering thought for us all is that our fellow workers could be so easily deceived (as they were again recently — this time by a Labor government) that they had a duty to go to Vietnam and massacre people they had never met.
These people now want to strut around demanding respect from the rest of us. After the march there was a feeling in the city area — a feeling that there was at last respectability in being a "vet". It was an ugly, assertive, drunken and sinister feeling which imperils the very limited and fragile toehold we have on democracy in Australia.
For those of us who want a better world, sustainable, just and free of exploitation, achieved democratically, it makes it that much harder.
There was no issue in Vietnam worth a single drop of workers' blood on either side. Let us not be deceived into supporting any conflict brought about by existing or ascendant ruling classes.