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By Root 2798 0

(International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) concluded that the ecology is not only refusing to heal but is worsening, so that a “catastrophe” may result unless billions of dollars are spent to “reconstruct” the land that has been destroyed, a “monumental” task that could be addressed only if the United States were to offer substantial reparations, a possibility that cannot be considered in a cultural climate of abysmal ignorance, chauvinism, and the self-righteous pursuit of self-interest. Destruction of forests has increased the frequency of floods and droughts and aggravated the impact of typhoons, and war damage to dikes (some of which, in the South, were completely destroyed by U.S. bombardment) and other agricultural systems has yet to be repaired. The report notes that “humanitarian and conservationist groups, particularly in the United States, have encountered official resistance and red tape when requesting their governments’ authorization to send assistance to Vietnam”—naturally enough, since the United States remains committed to ensure that its achievements are not threatened by recovery of the countries it destroyed.163

There is little hint of any of this, or of the similar Carthaginian devastation in Laos and Cambodia, in mainstream U.S. media coverage. Rather, with remarkable uniformity and self-righteousness, the problems of reconstruction, hampered further by the natural catastrophes and continuing war to which the United States has made what contribution it can, are attributed solely to Communist brutality and ineptitude. The sole remaining interest in postwar Vietnam in the U.S. media has been the recovery of remains of U.S. personnel presumed to be killed in action, the Vietnamese preoccupation with other matters serving as further proof of their moral insensitivity.

In one of his sermons on human rights, President Carter explained that we owe Vietnam no debt and have no responsibility to render it any assistance because “the destruction was mutual,”164 a statement that elicited no comment, to our knowledge, apart from our own—a fact that speaks volumes about the prevailing cultural climate. Some feel that there may once have been a debt but that it has been amply repaid. Under the headline “The Debt to the Indochinese Is Becoming a Fiscal Drain,” Bernard Gwertzman quotes a State Department official who “said he believed the United States has now paid its moral debt for its involvement on the losing side in Indochina.” The remark, which also passed without comment, is illuminating: we owe no debt for mass slaughter and for leaving three countries in ruins, no debt to the millions of maimed and orphaned, to the peasants who still die today from exploding ordnance left from the U.S. assault. Rather, our moral debt results only from the fact that we did not win. By this logic, if the Russians win in Afghanistan, they will have no moral debt at all. Proceeding further, how have we paid our moral debt for failing to win? By resettling Vietnamese refugees fleeing the lands we ravaged, “one of the largest, most dramatic humanitarian efforts in history” according to Roger Winter, director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees. But “despite the pride,” Gwertzman continues, “some voices in the Reagan Administration and in Congress are once again asking whether the war debt has now been paid . . .”165

The media are not satisfied with “mutual destruction” that effaces all responsibility for some of the major war crimes of the modern era. Rather, the perpetrator of the crimes must be seen as the injured party. We find headlines reading: “Vietnam, Trying to Be Nicer, Still Has a Long Way to Go.” “It’s about time the Vietnamese demonstrated some good will,” said Charles Printz, of Human Rights Advocates International, referring to negotiations about the Amerasian children who constitute a tiny fraction of the victims of U.S. aggression in Indochina. Barbara Crossette adds that the Vietnamese have also not been sufficiently forthcoming on the matter of remains of American soldiers, although