30 June 2020

A Heretic Born on the Fifth of July


As we are in high-patriotic season when it comes to the American liturgical calendar I thought it apropos to recall this speaker I heard being aggressively pushed on local Christian radio stations in 2019.


Thankfully this heretic has been silenced for the present in 2020 – gagged by Covid-19 as it were.
His 'testimony' and 'gospel' presentation is especially egregious as he ties in the gospel with his patriotism and 'service' in Vietnam – a conflict fomented by the US in the aftermath of WWII. The French had lost control of their Indochina colonies during the war as the region had fallen under Japanese administration and then domination. After Japan's utter defeat in 1945, Paris sought to re-assert its authority but was met with sustained local resistance. The people of the region were glad to be rid of the Japanese but they did not want their former French masters to return either.
Economically ailing the waning French Empire looked to Washington for help and (as was later revealed in the Pentagon Papers) Washington funded the French attempt to re-conquer the region. The French attempts ultimately failed, culminating in the defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 – at which point the Americans began to directly intervene and under the cover of the United Nations – the nation was split between the ostensibly communist North under Ho Chi Minh and the newly created American satellite of South Vietnam led by the US-installed dictator Diem.
Diem's pro-Western, pro-Catholic policies upset the majority population in the South and the North under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh resisted Western political control and political manipulation of their nation. A new phase of war was brewing and by the early 1960's it had become a hot war – leading to instability in neighbouring Laos and Cambodia and the US would certainly become involved in these nations as well.
While the US didn't officially send 'combat' troops in until the year after the deceitful 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, the truth was the US had already been engaged for nearly twenty years prior to the insertion of actual combat units in 1965. 'Advisors' and other military and intelligence figures had already been involved, playing a significant role in the brutalising of the local population – ultimately driving many of them into the arms of the communists and membership in the paramilitary resistance also known as the Viet Cong. And of course as was seen in other Cold War proxy theatres, communism was often worn lightly – often serving as a veneer for anti-colonialism and nationalism. It became an organising principle, a means to access a larger political bloc with its money and arms but for the average fighter in the African bush or the jungles of Indochina – the ideas of Marx, Lenin and even Mao were of little import or consequence. They were fighting an invader, a power that would dominate and exploit them and would destroy their culture.
Supported by the North Vietnamese Army, the Viet Cong waged an unrelenting guerilla war against the American occupiers and the puppet regimes which ruled South Vietnam. It turned into a meat grinder with the Americans pursuing a mathematical strategy based on 'body counts' – the notion put forward by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that if enough Vietnamese soldiers and resistors would be killed – eventually they wouldn't be able to replace them and field viable resistance. The math would become inevitable. The Hanoi regime would see this and acquiesce, dropping their support for the Viet Cong resistance in the South – allowing the Americans and their Saigon satellite to stabilise the country and proclaim victory.
It was ivory tower driven 'whiz kid' or 'bureaucratic' war and the ignorant and immoral policy would prove devastating.
Needless to say the strategy failed. Under the leadership of McNamara and General Westmoreland the 'body count' strategy became an excuse for wanton slaughter. The dehumanisation of the Vietnamese, reckoned as mere 'gooks' only exacerbated the climate of murder, rape, massacre and general exploitation. Though it is popularly perceived as such, My Lai was no isolated event but the evil result of the policy and the outworking of the theatre's military ethos. And such massacres happened on many occasions – but in most cases the Pentagon was able to keep it quiet.
Indeed, even years after the war the disgraced and maddened General Westmoreland argued that the US tactically won almost every battle but the Vietnamese continued to throw away lives out of some kind of defect – something rooted in their Oriental character that made life cheap. The truth is that they were defending their land and way of life and were willing to die for it. They didn't have modern Western weapons and their power of indiscriminate destruction, so they literally fought with their very bodies and blood and proved to be made of much sterner stuff than the decadent Americans who sought to dominate them. Did Vietnamese generals such as the infamous Giap throw away many lives? He was determined to win and for him victory meant the Americans leaving. Westmoreland's charges of immorality and a lack of character and integrity are just staggering given US conduct in the theatre and the fact that Westmoreland (a professed Christian) schemed and conspired to use nuclear weapons in the conflict – demonstrates just whose character is lacking and drives one to conclude that it was the defeated and rightfully disgraced American general that truly devalued human life.
Strategic Hamlets became euphemisms for forced labour concentration camps. Operation Phoenix provided a bureaucratic cover for what was little more than large-scale assassination by means of death squad – tens of thousands dying as a result.
The conflict which was meant to focus on South Vietnam quickly became a regional war. Due to the Cold War, the US command felt that it could not directly invade North Vietnam, fearing an attack on Berlin, Taiwan or a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But that didn't stop them from bombing. Indeed the bombing campaigns that took place in Indochina make World War II look like child's play. In Cambodia the bombing accompanied by US political machinations so destabilised the country that it created the conditions for the genocidal Khmer Rouge to come to power – an evil and despotic regime that once ousted by unified communist Vietnam in 1979, the US would go on to support throughout the 1980's as it continued to wage its low-scale war against the Hanoi puppet regime installed in Phnom Penh – perpetuating America's evil Indochina policy and crimes into the 1990's.
Additionally a long and terrible proxy war was waged in neighbouring Laos which in addition to ripping that society apart and leaving many destitute, the war was in part financed by the drug trade which continues to affect the larger region, US military members, US domestic society and the global community at large.
The war has left a legacy of orphans, widows and the maimed. Unexploded ordnance still kills hundreds a year and because of heavy American use of Agent Orange and other chemicals, people are still being born with deformities some forty plus years after the fighting stopped. More could be said about the US government's betrayal of its own troops in Vietnam and other conflicts but that's another complicated story.
Altogether while 58,000 Americans died, something on the order of 3 million died in the larger Indochina theatre. The whole episode was a disgrace. From 1945-1975 (and even after) in places like Cambodia and Thailand, US policy resulted in large-scale destruction – and in the years after the war as the stories and history would be revealed – an honest assessment can only conclude the entire operation was rooted in lies, willful misperceptions, schemes and manipulations and rank profiteering. It is literally disgusting and anyone who would wish to associate or affiliate themselves with that war demonstrates either their obscene even staggering ignorance or utter lack of conscience.
The idea that the efforts of American soldiery in this war had anything to do with 'our freedoms' is preposterous.
Many have asked how the American population would respond to a fascist government, to a Nazi-like administration. While the Vietnam era administrations engaged in sinister domestic policies, they were unable to exercise a great deal of authority within the United States itself. Part of the reason for this was due to widespread resistance to the war. As the public learned more about the war and the lies that undergirded it, public opinion began to change and turn against the conflict. Others, conscious of what America was actually doing in Vietnam took the activist route and sought to resist (in some cases with violence) a state that they believed (with some cause) that was behaving in Indochina in a very Nazi-esque manner.
Some rightly saw US actions as imperialistic and evil. Others whose patriotism and emotional commitment to the United States would not allow them to see the full reality – but at least they began to see that the US was not 'standing by an ally' but had manipulated and misread a situation and found itself caught in the middle of an internal and regional conflict that it did not understand and had no chance of winning. In the meantime people were dying on all sides and they wanted the US out.
And though the US military did all it could to keep the rumours quiet, word was getting out. The US armed forces were near to collapse. Mutinies were breaking out and the military was forced to take action – restricting access to weapons and taking other measures to protect officers from being attacked and in some cases murdered by their subordinate troops. By 1970 and 1971 there was a mutiny almost every single day. Drug use was open and defiant as soldiers in theatre came to understand the conflict was a quagmire-lie and that the US was simply trying to get out and save face. Why would they risk their lives or kill others for such a cause – lies upon lies? And yet that history has been swept under the rug and now the veterans of that war want to be called heroes and stopped and praised on the streets and in airports. I realise not every American soldier in Vietnam was a mutineer, refusenik, druggie, rapist or baby killer – but let's be honest, many were. War is not glorious – it is debasing. It is the Fall turned loose and given license to run riot. Men cease to be human and trample on the image of God – and become bestial. It is sheer apostasy to turn New Testament Christianity into a system that supports, encourages and even glorifies war.
From a Christian perspective all wars are immoral – results of the Edenic Fall never to be gloried in. And as a rule they are built on lies and are an excuse for theft and murder. Because done on a massive scale and with societal sanction these actions (which would be condemned on an individual basis) are embraced and justified.
But even by the world's standards, especially for those who (right or wrong) embrace the values of liberal democracy and in light of all that took place in World War II – Vietnam was an abomination and a travesty in every way.
Conscientious objectors and conscripts that fled to Canada were right to defy the orders of the state. They saw what was happening and acted morally. The orders should have been rejected. Again, even from a non-Christian perspective, a thinking moral person would want to understand the conflict they are being called to participate in. An examination would have led them to not only doubt the Washington narrative but to ultimately question the veracity and moral authority of the American state. 'My country right or wrong' is an expression of rank idolatry and is an ethos no Christian can embrace or even entertain.
As I've repeatedly said, I understand an 18 year old getting drafted, going over to Vietnam out of a sense of patriotic duty and social pressure – but then if that same person is moral and if at all reflective, he would be filled with regret and would not want to call attention to his participation in those events. He certainly wouldn't want them celebrated. And indeed not a few Vietnam veterans hold that view.
But others such as Tim Lee embrace the glory narrative. Usually this indicates they're either phonies or literally moral reprobates that (handed over to some form of idolatry) can no longer differentiate between right and wrong – a clear sign of the unregenerate heart.
Anyone involved in Vietnam should be ashamed – some more than others to be sure. But for a professed Christian the sacralisation of the conflict and to present one's injuries as something of a martyr narrative is blasphemous heresy – a functional apostasy and rejection of Christ and His Kingdom.
And if you have any doubt just how phony and lost Mr. Lee is, just consider the financial angles of his so-called 'ministry' – in addition to hawking patriotic geegaws and other filth, he weds himself to the FOX channel, proffers the writings of Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North and happily affiliates himself with the corrupt Falwell organisation and its Dominionist propaganda mill.
Between him and his wife (as the ministry's form 990 reveals) they pull in nearly $200,000 a year which of course does not include the numerous perks associated with such ministries. The truth is, as far as you and I would be concerned their income is significantly higher that what they're officially paid. Altogether they have nearly a million dollar a year organisation. Not a few people would give up their legs to have that.
Did Lee give his legs to America? Hardly, he gave his legs to his real god – mammon.
I hope he enjoys his reward because it's the only one he's ever going to receive.
I don't say this out of a spirit of cruelty but men like Lee literally make me tremble. The terrible judgment episode reported in Matthew 7 literally jumps from the page and echoes in my mind. And I tremble for I cannot imagine a worse place to be – a more awful moment than to believe you serve Christ but then to discover you were deceived and ultimately a deceiver.
There is no salvation without a living repentance and Lee like the president I'm sure he loves – despite whatever claims to the contrary, knows nothing of it. There is no brokenness or humility in a man that would pursue wealth by such means and atop the graves of the people he helped to kill.
He has titled his biographical account – Born on the Fifth of July – a deliberate contrast with Ron Kovic's famous 'Born on the Fourth of July'. Kovic of course was also disabled in Vietnam and returned to the states eventually becoming one of the most famous veteran war protestors and the subject of an Oliver Stone film. Kovic's story is sad but compelling and I consider it tragic when we've reached a point that lost people have a greater conception of ethics and integrity than what is found in the Christian community. I'm not suggesting it's our duty to go out and march in the streets and get into tangles with the police in order to stop the imperial war machine. But rather the conscience of Kovic regarding US policy and war in general puts many Christians and certainly Mr. Lee to shame.
That's a sign of judgment to be sure. When the lost have a stronger moral compass than those professing Christ – the Church has lost its way and risks utter apostasy.