The question of who will succeed Osama bin Laden as the leader of Al-Qaida has been answered. It is Ayman al-Zawahri, the #2 man in the international terrorist organization.
As with most of Al-Qaida's leadership, al-Zawahri is living somewhere in Pakistan. And that should tell you something about our so-called "ally" in the fight against terrorism. Along with al-Zawahri four other key members of Al-Qaida are believed to be in Pakistan:
• Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian believed to be a top-ranking member of Al Qaeda. The US is offering $5 million as a reward for his capture. Like al-Zawahri, Adel was indicted by the US for an alleged role in the African embassy bombings in 1998.
• Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an Egyptian with a $5 million reward on his head, Abdullah is supposedly a member of Al Qaeda’s top council. US intelligence thinks he is in Pakistan after fleeing Nairobi following the embassy bombings.
• Rashid Rauf, a dual British-Pakistani citizen, Rashid Rauf is considered a key Al Qaeda operative and is suspected of involvement in a 2006 attempt to blow up aircraft leaving London with liquid explosives. He is also wanted in Britain as a suspect in the 2002 murder of an uncle. He was in Pakistani custody at one point, but "escaped" in 2007 when his guards allowed him to say prayers in a mosque.
• Ilyas Kashmiri, a Pakistani from Kashmir. While not on the FBI’s most-wanted list, he is believed to be behind some of the deadliest attacks in India and Pakistan, including a 2009 suicide attack on Pakistan’s spy agency and cross border attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.
Al-Zawahri and his cronies are like the arsonist who is invited to stay in the neighbor's house.
"Aren't you worried that he will burn down your house?" asks a concerned friend.
"Why would he burn down a house of the person that is giving him shelter?" responds the homeowner.
"Because he is an arsonist."
The homeowner dismisses the neighbor's concern and not long afterwards his house burns to the ground.
Allowing al-Zawahri and his cohorts to remain in Pakistan is just about as foolish--especially since al-Zawahri is on record as saying that he wants a jihadist takeover of a Pakistani state or territory so al-Qaida can have a permanent base of operations.
Al-Zawahri has allied himself closely with Pakistani extremist groups and married into a local tribe along the Pakistani-Afghan border, thus cementing his ties to like-minded Pakistanis.
And there are apparently many who support al-Qaida and its mission to destroy the democratic nations of the West, eliminate non-Muslim religions and bend the world to its iniquitous will.
Al-Zawahri, 59, who carries the title of "emir," assumes power of al-Qaida at a time when Pakistani-U.S. relations are at their lowest point in decades.
That was evident when Pakistani authorities arrested five persons it says aided the CIA and the U. S. Navy Seal team in their successful raid on the compound where Osama bin-Laden was hiding just a short distance from a Pakistani military base.
Why Pakistan would arrest individuals who aided in the capture of the world's most wanted terrorist has left many U.S. officials scratching their heads.
There is little doubt that Pakistani military authorities were piqued that Washington did not inform it of its plans to raid the bin-Laden compound. In fact, the Pakistani government remains embarrassed by the incursion of the Seal team and the killing of bin-Laden. Pakistan considers the raid a violation of its sovereignty and many Pakistanis are angry with their own Army - the country's pre-eminent institution - for failing to intercept the US Navy SEALs who carried out the raid.
American officials have said privately that telling the Pakistanis about the raid would have led to bin-Laden's escape.
"There are too many people in the Pakistani military and government who sympathize with al-Qaida," one CIA analyst said. "Over there, many people are in bed with al-Qaida. They are radical Muslims first and political allies second."
Top Pentagon officials say the U.S. military will capture and kill al-Qaida’s new leader and that he will meet the same fate as Osama bin Laden. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters at the Pentagon al-Zawahri will face challenges as al-Qaida’s new leader, saying he lacks what Gates referred to as bin Laden’s “peculiar charisma.”
However, authorities in Pakistan have failed to expedite the entry of CIA officers into the country, despite agreeing two weeks ago to form a new joint intelligence-sharing team to hunt al-Qaida. The joint team was intended to rebuild trust on both sides that was badly damaged by fallout from the May 2 raid deep inside Pakistan.
The recent arrests of CIA informants has further eroded whatever trust exists between the U.S. and Pakistan.
Just back from Pakistan, House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. said it is "time to start putting more pressure on Pakistan to do the right thing," and he predicted the US would set new "benchmarks" for Pakistan to prove it is holding up its end in counter-terror cooperation.
Rogers said he'd had "frank discussions" with Pakistan's intelligence chief, as well as Army chief Gen. Asfaq Parvez Kayani over his suspicions that elements of the Pakistani army and intelligence service had helped shelter bin Laden, though he said there was no evidence the leadership was aware.
Rogers also questioned them on reports that the US shared the location of two bomb-building sites in Pakistan's frontier provinces with bad results. Two US officials told the Associated Press in early June that they'd shared the satellite information of the location of two Haqqani network bomb-making factories as a confidence-building measure while working on the formation of a joint intelligence effort with the Pakistanis.
But within 24 hours, the officials say they watched the militants clear out the sites - proof to the Americans that the Pakistanis had shared the information with US enemies, the officials said.
Despite such obvious treachery the U.S. continues to funnel some $2.5 billion a year into Pakistan--almost $20 billion since 2001.
Given the kind of duplicity we are seeing from our so-called Pakistani allies in the fight against al-Qaida one has to wonder how much of that money is actually being used in the war on terror.
Perhaps it is going into an al-Qaida pension fund.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Should Al Jazeera English be available to American TV Audiences?
A few years ago I was among the chorus of Americans who would not have supported the idea of allowing the Arabic-language, Qatar-based satellite news channel or its sister network, Al Jazeera English, to broadcast in the United States.
Who can forget the skewed coverage after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington? I can still see Al Jazeera footage of Palestinians cheering wildly in the streets after those attacks killed some 3,000 people. I can recall how Al Jazeera seemed to be in bed with Al Qaeda when it allegedly broadcast the beheadings of Americans such as Daniel Pearl and Nick Berger.
Like many Americans this was the last straw for me. Al Jazeera deserved nothing less than a black out in the U.S.
Today, we know that in fact, Al Jazeera never did broadcast beheadings of Americans or of anybody else.
And now, in hindsight, those video feeds of Palestinians whooping it up probably were not a bad thing for Americans to see. For one thing, they drove home to us just how polarized much of the Arab world is vis-à-vis the United States. For another, it was only doing its job--providing post 9/11 coverage from the Middle East.
And while much of that coverage may not have been what we as Americans wanted to see, it was nevertheless, a case of a news organization doing what it should be doing in a part of the world that American news organizations largely ignored for years except when there was a war or a terrorist attack.
As a journalist it is problematic for me to say that any news organization should be banned or censored in the United States. That runs counter to the First Amendment which guarantees, among other things, a free press. And by the way, the First Amendment was not created to protect the press; it is there to protect the public from government censorship.
For the same reason, I find it wrong when people talk about "hate speech." I agree with the ACLU (not something I often do) when it says there is no hate speech, only free speech--and the way to defeat what some consider hate speech is to push for more free speech.
Yet there are many Americans representing the Political Correctness police who want to ban anything that they feel smacks of hate speech--including, of all things, Mark Twain's classic 19th Century novel Huckleberry Finn. They are upset because the book has the word "nigger" in it multiple times--a word, distasteful as it may be, that was part of the lingua franca when Twain penned his novel. For that reason, they insist, the book is unsuitable for use in schools unless the offensive "N" word is stricken from its pages. Never mind that Huckleberry Finn is an American classic, if not The Great American Novel, and condemned slavery throughout.
Sanitizing Huckleberry Finn in this manner is akin to forcing the Louvre Museum in Paris to put a bra on Alexandros of Antioch's Venus de Milo statue or the Academia Gallery of Florence to put jockey shorts on Michelangelo's statue of David because one shows a woman's breasts and the other a man's penis.
But let's not stop there. What about Uncle Tom's Cabin published in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe which contains many stereotypes of black people but which was an anti-slavery tome that did much to create the abolitionist movement? Or Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': A Tale of the Sea about a West Indian black sailor aboard a ship called The Narcissus who is cared for by white sailors when he falls ill on a voyage from Bombay to London? Both of these masterpieces have already been purged from some school libraries by the PC police.
Where does this kind of censorship stop? Think about that for a minute. There are thousands, if not millions of books that contain passages the PC police deem offensive. Ironically, it is the liberal left that appears to be pushing this agenda the most, not the conservatives among us.
Which brings me back to Al Jazeera. In the United States, Al Jazeera English is available through the Galaxy 19 (and Galaxy 23 C-band) satellites. However, it is unavailable to cable viewers in the US, with the exception of those in Toledo, Ohio; Burlington, Vermont and Washington, D.C. This is effectively a "black out".
I am sure there are editorial positions that Al Jazeera takes that I am opposed to. And I may not like some of the stories it does out of the Middle East. But I am convinced that the more information Americans have regarding this troubled part of the world, the better off we will be.
We don't have to agree with the editorial commentary, but the fact is, some 1.6 million viewers in the U.S. streamed Al Jazeera English online when hundreds of thousands of people jammed Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising against the Mubarak regime. Why? Because Al Jazeera was providing some of the most consistent coverage of this historic event.
I believe there is no "bad information," just a "lack of information." In other words, when faced with propaganda the best way to counter it is to provide more information just as the most effective way to deal with so-called "hate speech" is to allow more free speech.
The problem for Al Jazeera English seems to be its Arab-language sister network's journalism which has generated a broad base of anxiety, if not outright enmity among Americans.
I am not sure what you can do about that. Does Al Jazeera have an Arab predisposition? Quite probably. Should it be banned because of that? Should we ban Spanish language broadcasts or Korean, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese broadcasts because someone on air speaks critically of the United States?
The answer to those questions is "no" for the same reason that the PC police should not be purging literary classics from school libraries and thus depriving students of the opportunity to understand the realities of their country and its history.
Similarly, Americans understand too little about the Middle East. That was apparent when Benjamin Netanyahu provided President Obama and the nation with some perspective about Israel and its Palestinian nemesis during his U. S. visit recently.
Not all Americans may have agreed with the Israeli prime minister and his perception of the Middle East, but one thing his visit did is make me realize that Americans need a lot more information from this part of the world--even information provided by Al Jazeera English.
And it strengthened my conviction that censorship of any kind is a slippery slope that will lead us all to a place we don't want to be--a country where we are afraid to disparage authority, write critically or speak our minds openly.
Who can forget the skewed coverage after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington? I can still see Al Jazeera footage of Palestinians cheering wildly in the streets after those attacks killed some 3,000 people. I can recall how Al Jazeera seemed to be in bed with Al Qaeda when it allegedly broadcast the beheadings of Americans such as Daniel Pearl and Nick Berger.
Like many Americans this was the last straw for me. Al Jazeera deserved nothing less than a black out in the U.S.
Today, we know that in fact, Al Jazeera never did broadcast beheadings of Americans or of anybody else.
And now, in hindsight, those video feeds of Palestinians whooping it up probably were not a bad thing for Americans to see. For one thing, they drove home to us just how polarized much of the Arab world is vis-à-vis the United States. For another, it was only doing its job--providing post 9/11 coverage from the Middle East.
And while much of that coverage may not have been what we as Americans wanted to see, it was nevertheless, a case of a news organization doing what it should be doing in a part of the world that American news organizations largely ignored for years except when there was a war or a terrorist attack.
As a journalist it is problematic for me to say that any news organization should be banned or censored in the United States. That runs counter to the First Amendment which guarantees, among other things, a free press. And by the way, the First Amendment was not created to protect the press; it is there to protect the public from government censorship.
For the same reason, I find it wrong when people talk about "hate speech." I agree with the ACLU (not something I often do) when it says there is no hate speech, only free speech--and the way to defeat what some consider hate speech is to push for more free speech.
Yet there are many Americans representing the Political Correctness police who want to ban anything that they feel smacks of hate speech--including, of all things, Mark Twain's classic 19th Century novel Huckleberry Finn. They are upset because the book has the word "nigger" in it multiple times--a word, distasteful as it may be, that was part of the lingua franca when Twain penned his novel. For that reason, they insist, the book is unsuitable for use in schools unless the offensive "N" word is stricken from its pages. Never mind that Huckleberry Finn is an American classic, if not The Great American Novel, and condemned slavery throughout.
Sanitizing Huckleberry Finn in this manner is akin to forcing the Louvre Museum in Paris to put a bra on Alexandros of Antioch's Venus de Milo statue or the Academia Gallery of Florence to put jockey shorts on Michelangelo's statue of David because one shows a woman's breasts and the other a man's penis.
But let's not stop there. What about Uncle Tom's Cabin published in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe which contains many stereotypes of black people but which was an anti-slavery tome that did much to create the abolitionist movement? Or Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the 'Narcissus': A Tale of the Sea about a West Indian black sailor aboard a ship called The Narcissus who is cared for by white sailors when he falls ill on a voyage from Bombay to London? Both of these masterpieces have already been purged from some school libraries by the PC police.
Where does this kind of censorship stop? Think about that for a minute. There are thousands, if not millions of books that contain passages the PC police deem offensive. Ironically, it is the liberal left that appears to be pushing this agenda the most, not the conservatives among us.
Which brings me back to Al Jazeera. In the United States, Al Jazeera English is available through the Galaxy 19 (and Galaxy 23 C-band) satellites. However, it is unavailable to cable viewers in the US, with the exception of those in Toledo, Ohio; Burlington, Vermont and Washington, D.C. This is effectively a "black out".
I am sure there are editorial positions that Al Jazeera takes that I am opposed to. And I may not like some of the stories it does out of the Middle East. But I am convinced that the more information Americans have regarding this troubled part of the world, the better off we will be.
We don't have to agree with the editorial commentary, but the fact is, some 1.6 million viewers in the U.S. streamed Al Jazeera English online when hundreds of thousands of people jammed Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising against the Mubarak regime. Why? Because Al Jazeera was providing some of the most consistent coverage of this historic event.
I believe there is no "bad information," just a "lack of information." In other words, when faced with propaganda the best way to counter it is to provide more information just as the most effective way to deal with so-called "hate speech" is to allow more free speech.
The problem for Al Jazeera English seems to be its Arab-language sister network's journalism which has generated a broad base of anxiety, if not outright enmity among Americans.
I am not sure what you can do about that. Does Al Jazeera have an Arab predisposition? Quite probably. Should it be banned because of that? Should we ban Spanish language broadcasts or Korean, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese broadcasts because someone on air speaks critically of the United States?
The answer to those questions is "no" for the same reason that the PC police should not be purging literary classics from school libraries and thus depriving students of the opportunity to understand the realities of their country and its history.
Similarly, Americans understand too little about the Middle East. That was apparent when Benjamin Netanyahu provided President Obama and the nation with some perspective about Israel and its Palestinian nemesis during his U. S. visit recently.
Not all Americans may have agreed with the Israeli prime minister and his perception of the Middle East, but one thing his visit did is make me realize that Americans need a lot more information from this part of the world--even information provided by Al Jazeera English.
And it strengthened my conviction that censorship of any kind is a slippery slope that will lead us all to a place we don't want to be--a country where we are afraid to disparage authority, write critically or speak our minds openly.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Anne Keegan: An Original Lost to the Ages
Today I learned that Anne Keegan, a friend and colleague from my days with the Chicago Tribune, passed away. What a loss to Chicago journalism.
How can I describe Anne Keegan? She was a walking, talking paradox. She could be tough, with an ability to display, at a moment's notice, the vocabulary of an angry truck driver or Marine drill sergeant. But she could also be sensitive and pliable, almost nun-like in the deep felt emotions she (occasionally) wore on her sleeve.
She was what some people call a jelly bean. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.
It was those qualities that made Anne Keegan a first rate reporter and a great writer. In fact, she was one of the greatest writers I ever had the pleasure of working with at the Chicago Tribune--which once upon a time, was a truly great newspaper.
The 1970s and 1980s were Anne Keegan's prime years at the Tribune--though they could have stretched on into the 1990s and even 2000s had the paper's editors made an effort to understand her and find a way to use her enormous and unique talent. As it was, Anne left the paper the same year I did (1997) when it became clear that the Tribune had long ceased to be a writers' paper in favor of one that encouraged predictable and formulaic journalism that made the bean counters and stockholders happy at the expense of originality.
During the 1970s and 1980s Anne was given a front page column at the Tribune--testimony to her talent at storytelling, which at its heart is what great journalism is all about. I first learned of Anne's wonderful talents when I was working as the paper's weekend city editor under managing editor Bill Jones.
Jones had an eye for talent and he knew how to encourage it and nurture it. Later editors at the Tribune seemed mystified by anybody who was the least bit iconoclastic, which is what Anne definitely was. Jones was not afraid of iconoclasts.
On Saturdays and Sundays when the paper was essentially in my hands I was blessed to have a group of reporters on the City Desk who were some of the best to ever wield a notebook and pen in Chicago. There was Mike Sneed, now a successful columnist at the Sun-Times. There was Jack Fuller, who went on to become the Tribune's editor and then president and CEO of the Chicago Tribune. There was Bill Gaines, who would go to win two Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting. And there was Anne Keegan.
My job was easy. I would come in on Saturday morning and announce that we needed a good local story for the front page of the Sunday paper. After everyone had finished their coffee and read through the Sun-Times, Chicago Daily News and Chicago Today (in those days there were four competing dailies in Chicago--not to mention City News Bureau and the Chicago Defender), I would simply say: "Go find me a good reader for the front page."
Keegan and Sneed would be out the door in flash. And invariably, one of them would return with just what was needed.
I recall once when Keegan was on assignment to do a story on truckers who were angry about something--it may have been the 55 mph speed limit imposed during the first oil crisis in 1973. She called the office from a pay phone at a truck stop to dictate a story. After she had finished one of the truckers she was writing about grabbed the phone and asked:
"What kind of girl reporters does the Tribune have? This one can out-swear all us!"
Then, I heard Keegan's unmistakable voice in the background: "Don't call me a girl, you asshole!"
I laughed out loud. That was Anne Keegan, alright. She could hold her own with any potty mouthed truck driver.
The story she wrote belied her skills with Anglo-Saxon expletives. It was fair, provided context and was even, by Keegan's tough standards, a little sympathetic.
In the mid-1970s I was posted to Tokyo as the Tribune's Far East Correspondent and Anne and I never really worked together again.
However, I followed her career and she followed mine. A few times Anne came to Asia to write stories about a range of topics such as S.E. Asian refugees.
Invariably, as she did in Chicago, Anne would unearth characters who found their nirvana in places like Bangkok.
Her stories about some of these people were wonderful studies of the human condition and spirit--people such as A. J. "Tiger" Rydberg, a gruff, rough and tumble construction worker who built airstrips all over South Vietnam during the war.
In the 1970s and early 1980s Rydberg operated a watering hole in Bangkok called the "Tiger's Den" for former CIA Air America pilots, off shore oil riggers, itinerant hacks and various and sundry soldiers of fortune. Anne discovered "Tiger" and told me about him.
"Look him up, Yatsie," she said. (She always called me Yatsie, never Ron). "You'll like him."
I did look him up and she was right, I did like him.
"You work with Anne Keegan?" Rydberg asked me when I introduced myself to him in his Tiger's Den. "What a broad! She can out-cuss me and I thought I knew every swearword in the English language."
She also did a wonderful story on a Chicago priest, Father Raymond Brennan, who operated an orphanage for Thai children in the Thai coastal city of Pattaya, some 120 miles southeast of Bangkok. Her powerful story, along with Tribune photographer Val Mazzenga's riveting photographs, resulted in an avalanche of donations for the orphanage that housed about 150 homeless children.
After Anne left the Tribune she continued to write. In 2007 she published "On the Street Doing Life," a book about former Chicago cop Mike Cronin who spent years working on Chicago's rough, gang-infested West Side. It is a gritty story about a cop walking a fine line between toughness and fairness. Eventually Cronin rose through the ranks to head two of the Chicago Police Department's top units: Narcotics and Gangs. Cronin did all of this despite the fact that he lost a leg in Vietnam and had to convince the Chicago Police Department to hire him despite his disability.
Anne also wrote a children's book called "A Cat for Claire" that, at first glance seems like a significant departure from the kinds of stories she was famous for. In fact, however, that book displays Anne's "soft" side--a side of her character that she was very careful about sharing. In this case the book was written for her granddaughter.
Another side of Anne Keegan's disposition was her almost total lack of ego--a rarity in newsrooms then and now. She never boasted about her work or sought celebrity from her ground-breaking stories; never blew her own horn; never allowed herself to become the story, the way so many journalists do today in this self-absorbed era of tweeting and ubiquitous social media.
As she once told the Chicago Reader: "I may have led a very interesting life, but there are people whose stories are far more fascinating than mine."
And nobody told them better than Anne Keegan did.
How can I describe Anne Keegan? She was a walking, talking paradox. She could be tough, with an ability to display, at a moment's notice, the vocabulary of an angry truck driver or Marine drill sergeant. But she could also be sensitive and pliable, almost nun-like in the deep felt emotions she (occasionally) wore on her sleeve.
She was what some people call a jelly bean. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.
It was those qualities that made Anne Keegan a first rate reporter and a great writer. In fact, she was one of the greatest writers I ever had the pleasure of working with at the Chicago Tribune--which once upon a time, was a truly great newspaper.
The 1970s and 1980s were Anne Keegan's prime years at the Tribune--though they could have stretched on into the 1990s and even 2000s had the paper's editors made an effort to understand her and find a way to use her enormous and unique talent. As it was, Anne left the paper the same year I did (1997) when it became clear that the Tribune had long ceased to be a writers' paper in favor of one that encouraged predictable and formulaic journalism that made the bean counters and stockholders happy at the expense of originality.
During the 1970s and 1980s Anne was given a front page column at the Tribune--testimony to her talent at storytelling, which at its heart is what great journalism is all about. I first learned of Anne's wonderful talents when I was working as the paper's weekend city editor under managing editor Bill Jones.
Jones had an eye for talent and he knew how to encourage it and nurture it. Later editors at the Tribune seemed mystified by anybody who was the least bit iconoclastic, which is what Anne definitely was. Jones was not afraid of iconoclasts.
On Saturdays and Sundays when the paper was essentially in my hands I was blessed to have a group of reporters on the City Desk who were some of the best to ever wield a notebook and pen in Chicago. There was Mike Sneed, now a successful columnist at the Sun-Times. There was Jack Fuller, who went on to become the Tribune's editor and then president and CEO of the Chicago Tribune. There was Bill Gaines, who would go to win two Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting. And there was Anne Keegan.
My job was easy. I would come in on Saturday morning and announce that we needed a good local story for the front page of the Sunday paper. After everyone had finished their coffee and read through the Sun-Times, Chicago Daily News and Chicago Today (in those days there were four competing dailies in Chicago--not to mention City News Bureau and the Chicago Defender), I would simply say: "Go find me a good reader for the front page."
Keegan and Sneed would be out the door in flash. And invariably, one of them would return with just what was needed.
I recall once when Keegan was on assignment to do a story on truckers who were angry about something--it may have been the 55 mph speed limit imposed during the first oil crisis in 1973. She called the office from a pay phone at a truck stop to dictate a story. After she had finished one of the truckers she was writing about grabbed the phone and asked:
"What kind of girl reporters does the Tribune have? This one can out-swear all us!"
Then, I heard Keegan's unmistakable voice in the background: "Don't call me a girl, you asshole!"
I laughed out loud. That was Anne Keegan, alright. She could hold her own with any potty mouthed truck driver.
The story she wrote belied her skills with Anglo-Saxon expletives. It was fair, provided context and was even, by Keegan's tough standards, a little sympathetic.
In the mid-1970s I was posted to Tokyo as the Tribune's Far East Correspondent and Anne and I never really worked together again.
However, I followed her career and she followed mine. A few times Anne came to Asia to write stories about a range of topics such as S.E. Asian refugees.
Invariably, as she did in Chicago, Anne would unearth characters who found their nirvana in places like Bangkok.
Her stories about some of these people were wonderful studies of the human condition and spirit--people such as A. J. "Tiger" Rydberg, a gruff, rough and tumble construction worker who built airstrips all over South Vietnam during the war.
In the 1970s and early 1980s Rydberg operated a watering hole in Bangkok called the "Tiger's Den" for former CIA Air America pilots, off shore oil riggers, itinerant hacks and various and sundry soldiers of fortune. Anne discovered "Tiger" and told me about him.
"Look him up, Yatsie," she said. (She always called me Yatsie, never Ron). "You'll like him."
I did look him up and she was right, I did like him.
"You work with Anne Keegan?" Rydberg asked me when I introduced myself to him in his Tiger's Den. "What a broad! She can out-cuss me and I thought I knew every swearword in the English language."
She also did a wonderful story on a Chicago priest, Father Raymond Brennan, who operated an orphanage for Thai children in the Thai coastal city of Pattaya, some 120 miles southeast of Bangkok. Her powerful story, along with Tribune photographer Val Mazzenga's riveting photographs, resulted in an avalanche of donations for the orphanage that housed about 150 homeless children.
After Anne left the Tribune she continued to write. In 2007 she published "On the Street Doing Life," a book about former Chicago cop Mike Cronin who spent years working on Chicago's rough, gang-infested West Side. It is a gritty story about a cop walking a fine line between toughness and fairness. Eventually Cronin rose through the ranks to head two of the Chicago Police Department's top units: Narcotics and Gangs. Cronin did all of this despite the fact that he lost a leg in Vietnam and had to convince the Chicago Police Department to hire him despite his disability.
Anne also wrote a children's book called "A Cat for Claire" that, at first glance seems like a significant departure from the kinds of stories she was famous for. In fact, however, that book displays Anne's "soft" side--a side of her character that she was very careful about sharing. In this case the book was written for her granddaughter.
Another side of Anne Keegan's disposition was her almost total lack of ego--a rarity in newsrooms then and now. She never boasted about her work or sought celebrity from her ground-breaking stories; never blew her own horn; never allowed herself to become the story, the way so many journalists do today in this self-absorbed era of tweeting and ubiquitous social media.
As she once told the Chicago Reader: "I may have led a very interesting life, but there are people whose stories are far more fascinating than mine."
And nobody told them better than Anne Keegan did.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Pakistan: Friendly Foe; Angry Ally
In the wake of Osama Bin Laden's killing in Abbottabad, Pakistan there has been much discussion about the Pakistanis and just how much their military and security forces knew about where the terrorist leader was hiding.
Questions have been raised about how much the Pakistani's can be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to Muslim terrorists who without doubt populate their country.
Most recently the U.S. has asked Pakistan for access to Bin Laden's three widows and any intelligence materials that the Navy SEALS may have left behind in the house where the leader of Al Qaeda terrorist was hiding.
Don't hold your breath. The women along with several children were picked up by Pakistani authorities and are now in custody somewhere in Pakistan. If U.S. authorities ever get to interview the three widows and any other occupants of the house where Bin Laden was hiding it will be a miracle. In the meantime Pakistan is depriving American officials of potentially valuable intelligence--intelligence that could forestall another terrorist attack somewhere in the world.
It is patently obvious that someone somewhere in the Pakistani military hierarchy not only knew of Bin Laden's whereabouts but was probably aiding him in his efforts to remain hidden from CIA operatives in Pakistan.
The fact is Pakistan is a nation ruled less by political expediency than by religious zeal. The biggest challenge facing Pakistan's national security establishment is to recognize how continuing links to extremist groups mortgage Pakistan's future. Don't expect a change in Pakistan's ties to the Afghan Taliban, but this would be a good time for Pakistan's military leaders to re-think any ties they may still have to the remnants of al-Qaeda within their country.
Once again, don't hold your breath. The Taliban and al-Qaeda resonate strongly with fundamental Islamists in Pakistan, of which there are millions. These are the same people who are out in the streets of Islamabad shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the Infidel Invaders" in the wake of Bin Laden's demise.
The fact is fundamental Muslims such as the Taliban and their Pakistani followers who oppose any form of democratic government and who support the continued suppression of women are not in agreement with Western ideas of free speech, freedom of religion, or other forms of free expression.
In that respect not much has changed since I first traveled on Pakistan on assignment for the Chicago Tribune. That was in 1987 and I was in Pakistan to work on a series of stories about the Mujahedeen guerillas who were engaged in a long and bloody struggle with Russian invaders. After spending some time in Islamabad getting briefed by various diplomatic missions I set off on the Grand Trunk Road for Peshawar, the ancient city at the mouth of the Khyber Pass.
I hired a car and driver and during the 90 mile drive along a road that has been in use since the British Raj I was able to get some idea of what the Pakistanis think of the West in general and the United States in particular. My driver was a fellow named Haaroon Kakar--an excellent English speaker who had worked for many visiting journalists.
Haaroon had been instrumental in helping me meet up with some local Mujahedeen and was taking me to Peshawar so I could link up with a guerilla unit that moved at will between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the intervening years nothing has changed--only the names. Today, it is no longer the Mujahedeen that moves with relative impunity across the Pakistani-Afghani border, it is the Taliban.
As we drove along the Grand Trunk Road, which now has been replaced in part by the new six-lane M-1, I marveled at how well Haaroon was able to elude the scrum of camels and cattle that meandered along the highway at will--not to mention the ancient trucks and cars that grunted along spewing thick clouds of black and blue smoke.
"Did you know that Alexander the Great came along this road in 326 BC?" Haaroon asked as he deftly avoided a cart powered by a struggling donkey and a multi-colored bus whose roof was populated by some dozen riders unable to find a seat inside.
At this point nothing along the Grand Trunk Road surprised me any longer--not even the fact that in Peshawar there was actually a Sultan of Swat. And here I always thought that appellation was only Babe Ruth's.
As we made our way west away from Islamabad, I asked Haaroon what he thought of Americans. That was a mistake.
"They are OK, I guess--for unbelievers."
"Unbelievers?" I responded.
"Yes, you are not Muslim are you?"
"No, I am not," I answered.
"Then you are an unbeliever. Only Muslims know the true God."
"I see," I said, not wanting to enter into a discussion about religion or politics--two topics that could get your skull decorated with a scimitar in this part of the world.
Haaroon was not finished with this theme, however.
"Why do America and Europe allow their women to behave like prostitutes?" he asked.
I wasn't quite sure how to answer that question, so I responded with another question.
"How do you mean?"
"Look at how you allow your women to dress--like tarts," he countered.
"Believe me, there is no question of men telling women how to dress in America," I said. "They dress the way they want to."
"Well, that's the problem isn't it?" Haaroon said. "Do you see Pakistani women going about in such disgraceful attire?"
I responded that not only did I not see any Pakistani women wandering around in risqué attire; I didn't even see many Pakistani women at all on the streets.
"That is because we don't let them out of our houses unless they are accompanied by a male family member," he said.
"Why?"
"Why must you ask...if we let them out by themselves other men would, how do you say...screw them," Haaroon insisted.
"Are we talking about religion here or slavery?" I asked. "Don't you think Pakistani women can be trusted to venture outside their homes?" I wondered if Haaroon had a mini scimitar in the front seat that I couldn't see.
Haaroon paused before answering. "Our women are not slaves...we are protecting them against temptation and vice. You Americans no longer protect your women. And that is why they are all being raped."
"What?" I was getting irritated. "Where do you get such rubbish?"
"We see it in the movies and on television every night," he said. He then rattled off a few cops and robbers shows and films that he assumed were accurate portrayals of American life.
"You are talking about fiction, entertainment..."
Haaroon jumped in before I could finish my response.
"Are these films and shows untrue then?" he asked.
"There is some truth to them, but they are mostly gross exaggerations of what happens in America," I said. "I am sure you have crime in Pakistan, but it is not constant and omnipresent is it?"
After I explained what omnipresent meant, he seemed to agree. Then he insisted that if American women at least were compelled to wear burkas they would be safer on American streets.
Somehow I was not convinced.
Nor am I convinced today that Pakistan will behave rationally in the aftermath of the Abbottabad raid and allow Washington access to critical intelligence left behind in Bin Laden's lair. Some of the information the Seals acquired in Abbottabad is likely to show that under Pakistani protection Bin Laden continued to plot and scheme against the United States, Europe and perhaps even Saudi Arabia.
I wonder what Haaroon would make of that?
Questions have been raised about how much the Pakistani's can be trusted to do the right thing when it comes to Muslim terrorists who without doubt populate their country.
Most recently the U.S. has asked Pakistan for access to Bin Laden's three widows and any intelligence materials that the Navy SEALS may have left behind in the house where the leader of Al Qaeda terrorist was hiding.
Don't hold your breath. The women along with several children were picked up by Pakistani authorities and are now in custody somewhere in Pakistan. If U.S. authorities ever get to interview the three widows and any other occupants of the house where Bin Laden was hiding it will be a miracle. In the meantime Pakistan is depriving American officials of potentially valuable intelligence--intelligence that could forestall another terrorist attack somewhere in the world.
It is patently obvious that someone somewhere in the Pakistani military hierarchy not only knew of Bin Laden's whereabouts but was probably aiding him in his efforts to remain hidden from CIA operatives in Pakistan.
The fact is Pakistan is a nation ruled less by political expediency than by religious zeal. The biggest challenge facing Pakistan's national security establishment is to recognize how continuing links to extremist groups mortgage Pakistan's future. Don't expect a change in Pakistan's ties to the Afghan Taliban, but this would be a good time for Pakistan's military leaders to re-think any ties they may still have to the remnants of al-Qaeda within their country.
Once again, don't hold your breath. The Taliban and al-Qaeda resonate strongly with fundamental Islamists in Pakistan, of which there are millions. These are the same people who are out in the streets of Islamabad shouting "Death to America" and "Death to the Infidel Invaders" in the wake of Bin Laden's demise.
The fact is fundamental Muslims such as the Taliban and their Pakistani followers who oppose any form of democratic government and who support the continued suppression of women are not in agreement with Western ideas of free speech, freedom of religion, or other forms of free expression.
In that respect not much has changed since I first traveled on Pakistan on assignment for the Chicago Tribune. That was in 1987 and I was in Pakistan to work on a series of stories about the Mujahedeen guerillas who were engaged in a long and bloody struggle with Russian invaders. After spending some time in Islamabad getting briefed by various diplomatic missions I set off on the Grand Trunk Road for Peshawar, the ancient city at the mouth of the Khyber Pass.
I hired a car and driver and during the 90 mile drive along a road that has been in use since the British Raj I was able to get some idea of what the Pakistanis think of the West in general and the United States in particular. My driver was a fellow named Haaroon Kakar--an excellent English speaker who had worked for many visiting journalists.
Haaroon had been instrumental in helping me meet up with some local Mujahedeen and was taking me to Peshawar so I could link up with a guerilla unit that moved at will between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the intervening years nothing has changed--only the names. Today, it is no longer the Mujahedeen that moves with relative impunity across the Pakistani-Afghani border, it is the Taliban.
As we drove along the Grand Trunk Road, which now has been replaced in part by the new six-lane M-1, I marveled at how well Haaroon was able to elude the scrum of camels and cattle that meandered along the highway at will--not to mention the ancient trucks and cars that grunted along spewing thick clouds of black and blue smoke.
"Did you know that Alexander the Great came along this road in 326 BC?" Haaroon asked as he deftly avoided a cart powered by a struggling donkey and a multi-colored bus whose roof was populated by some dozen riders unable to find a seat inside.
At this point nothing along the Grand Trunk Road surprised me any longer--not even the fact that in Peshawar there was actually a Sultan of Swat. And here I always thought that appellation was only Babe Ruth's.
As we made our way west away from Islamabad, I asked Haaroon what he thought of Americans. That was a mistake.
"They are OK, I guess--for unbelievers."
"Unbelievers?" I responded.
"Yes, you are not Muslim are you?"
"No, I am not," I answered.
"Then you are an unbeliever. Only Muslims know the true God."
"I see," I said, not wanting to enter into a discussion about religion or politics--two topics that could get your skull decorated with a scimitar in this part of the world.
Haaroon was not finished with this theme, however.
"Why do America and Europe allow their women to behave like prostitutes?" he asked.
I wasn't quite sure how to answer that question, so I responded with another question.
"How do you mean?"
"Look at how you allow your women to dress--like tarts," he countered.
"Believe me, there is no question of men telling women how to dress in America," I said. "They dress the way they want to."
"Well, that's the problem isn't it?" Haaroon said. "Do you see Pakistani women going about in such disgraceful attire?"
I responded that not only did I not see any Pakistani women wandering around in risqué attire; I didn't even see many Pakistani women at all on the streets.
"That is because we don't let them out of our houses unless they are accompanied by a male family member," he said.
"Why?"
"Why must you ask...if we let them out by themselves other men would, how do you say...screw them," Haaroon insisted.
"Are we talking about religion here or slavery?" I asked. "Don't you think Pakistani women can be trusted to venture outside their homes?" I wondered if Haaroon had a mini scimitar in the front seat that I couldn't see.
Haaroon paused before answering. "Our women are not slaves...we are protecting them against temptation and vice. You Americans no longer protect your women. And that is why they are all being raped."
"What?" I was getting irritated. "Where do you get such rubbish?"
"We see it in the movies and on television every night," he said. He then rattled off a few cops and robbers shows and films that he assumed were accurate portrayals of American life.
"You are talking about fiction, entertainment..."
Haaroon jumped in before I could finish my response.
"Are these films and shows untrue then?" he asked.
"There is some truth to them, but they are mostly gross exaggerations of what happens in America," I said. "I am sure you have crime in Pakistan, but it is not constant and omnipresent is it?"
After I explained what omnipresent meant, he seemed to agree. Then he insisted that if American women at least were compelled to wear burkas they would be safer on American streets.
Somehow I was not convinced.
Nor am I convinced today that Pakistan will behave rationally in the aftermath of the Abbottabad raid and allow Washington access to critical intelligence left behind in Bin Laden's lair. Some of the information the Seals acquired in Abbottabad is likely to show that under Pakistani protection Bin Laden continued to plot and scheme against the United States, Europe and perhaps even Saudi Arabia.
I wonder what Haaroon would make of that?
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Fall of Saigon: A Correspondent Remembers
Today, the Pentagon issued a press release saying that tomorrow (April 30) marks the 36th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War--a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans and continues to affect the United States, including its military leaders and current wartime operations.
Of all the stories I covered during my career as a foreign correspondent, the end of the war in Vietnam was without doubt the most challenging and life changing for me.
What follows is a story I wrote about the fall of Saigon and my last day "in country." It is longer than my normal blog posts, but I hope you will find it interesting and enlightening.
Long before America became embroiled in such places as Afghanistan and Iraq, there was Vietnam—an almost 10 year-long war that some have called America’s “lost crusade.”
This is the story of the last day of that crusade—a 24 hour period between April 29-30, 1975 when America’s political and military involvement in Vietnam came to a frenzied, sad and ignominious end. The memories of the final day of America’s involvement in Vietnam remain etched in my mind even after 36 years.
During that final day 1,373 Americans, 5,680 Vietnamese and an exhausted and ailing American ambassador with the American flag folded under one arm and his pet poodle under the other would flee a land infamous for its coups d'etat and its byzantine cabals—a stunningly beautiful land of soaring green hills, lush forests, vast rubber plantations and fertile rice paddies that had become a political and military swamp for several American presidents.
Most Americans have subsequently concluded that the longest war in this nation’s history was also the first war America ever lost. In fact, however, as a former North Vietnamese colonel told me several years ago, one of the great ironies of Vietnam is that the American military was never defeated in any battle of consequence.
“You lost the war in the cities and villages of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam,” said Col. Ba Thang political commissar of the Saigon¬ Gia Dinh Special Action Unit. “We could never hope for a military victory against such a formidable foe. Our strategy was to survive, to make the war last so long that you Americans would eventually tire and go home. That is what happened. We divided you politically and sapped your will to fight a war in a country few Americans had ever heard of or cared about.”
Indeed, while the specter of Vietnam still haunts us today, in the 1960s and 1970s it divided the nation like nothing since the Civil War. In some ways, it continues to do so.
References to American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as America’s “new Vietnams” are constantly seen and heard in the news media. The phrase “no more Vietnams” adorns placards at nearly every demonstration against U.S. involvement in Iraq and one even hears references to “the light at the end of the tunnel,” the phrase used in the 1960s by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to describe U.S. progress toward winning the war in Vietnam.
McNamara’s pet phrase was far from my mind 36 years ago when a barrage of 122 mm rockets slammed into Saigon. It was a little after 4 a.m. on April 29, 1975 when I was jolted awake in my second floor room of Saigon’s four-story French colonial-era Continental Palace Hotel. As I sat upright in my bed I realized it was oppressively hot and after the initial explosions, strangely quiet.
Then I realized why. The ancient window air conditioner had stopped its moaning and coughing. There was no electricity. Apparently the North Vietnamese had hit one of Saigon’s power plants—a common occurrence during the past few weeks. I lit one of the dozen or so candles I always kept ready and looked up at the ceiling. The gecko lizards had stopped chasing after mosquitoes and were retreating down the walls. Cockroaches the size of credit cards were scampering into the cracks of the ruby floor tiles. Even the rat that regularly patrolled my room was gone (I had named him General Giap, after the architect of North Vietnam’s military campaign).
I wondered if what I had heard had been thunder. April 28th had been a day of thunderstorms with lightening flashing over the city. Then, a few moments later the unmistakable metallic sound of a 122 mm rocket shrieked through the heavy humid night air and exploded nearby. This time chunks of ancient plaster fell from the ceiling and the walls of the 100-year-old hotel shuddered.
That was not thunder. These were the first rockets to hit Saigon since April 27 when one slammed into the roof of the Majestic Hotel overlooking the Saigon River a few blocks away killing a hotel porter. Later that same morning another rocket smashed into Saigon’s bustling Ben Thanh Market killing more than a dozen people.
I jumped from bed, scampered barefoot over the cool crimson tiles to the small balcony overlooking Lam Son Square and threw open the French windows. Before me, looming in all its hulking alabaster majesty, was the old National Assembly Building and beyond it the high rise Caravelle Hotel. Both were intact.
To my right where Le Loi Street bisected Tu Do Street several members of the South Vietnamese home guard with red rosettes in their buttonholes identifying them as loyalists, were firing their ancient M-1 carbines. For the past several weeks home guard troops, who were mostly teenagers, had patrolled the streets by day and at night had slept on sidewalks wrapped in ponchos.
As I looked down at the home guard, bullets buzzed through the dank night air and ricocheted off nearby buildings. I ducked as several rounds slammed into the white façade of the hotel. During the past several months I had gotten to know several of these home guard militia. Their job was to enforce Saigon’s nighttime curfew. I paid them to escort me after curfew to the Public Telephone and Telegraph Office so I could telex my stories back to the Chicago Tribune.
“What are you shooting at?” I yelled.
“V.C., beaucoup V.C.,” a 17-year-old named Nha shouted back.
“Where?”
“They everywhere…you better hide.” Then Nha, who was usually wasted on Vietnamese “33” beer by this time, shrieked with laughter. “Khong co gi,” (it doesn’t matter). We kill all number ten V.C.”
Yeah, I remember thinking, if you don’t kill everybody else in the city first. Nha lifted his rifle and fired several more rounds into the air. I had seen Nha in action with his M-1 carbine during our after curfew hikes to the PTT office. He often amused himself by blasting away at the giant rats that roamed Saigon’s deserted streets after the cyclos and ancient smoke-belching Renault taxis had stopped running for the night.
I retreated back into my room. In the distance there were more heavy explosions—what sounded like 80 mm mortar rounds and 130mm heavy artillery hitting Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s main airport some 7 miles away. The temperature was already approaching 90 degrees as I got dressed, and the sun wasn’t even up. I decided to forgo what would have been a cold shower. I needed to get downstairs to see what was going on.
Was this it? I can recall thinking. Is this the end? As it turned out, America's ill-fated crusade in Vietnam was indeed over. And this was the way it would end: not with honor, as one president had suggested, but in ignominy and humiliation and chaos.
Even though the city was now under a 24-hour curfew, for much of that final day some 20,000 terrified, shrieking Vietnamese—many of them former U.S. government employees—would surround the American Embassy, pleading with Marine guards to allow them inside the 10-foot walls so they could board the choppers that would take them to the armada of 44 American ships waiting off the Vietnamese coast.
Some would make it over the walls and onto the choppers. But only some. Most would be held at bay by U.S. soldiers—former allies—who pointed M-16s at them, cursed them, pounded their clawing fingers with rifle butts and threatened to blow their heads off.
I can still hear the voices of American embassy officials and their Vietnamese interpreters shouting: “Khong ai se bi bo lai!” (No one will be left behind) at the frantic throng outside the Embassy compound.
It was a scene that still saddens me today—one that made me ashamed to be an American, not because we were leaving in abject defeat but because we were betraying thousands if not millions of Vietnamese who believed our promises of a free and better Vietnam if they supported our policies.
I had arrived in Vietnam from my Tokyo base in January 1975, and with the exception of a few weeks spent in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in late February and early March, I had lived in Saigon at the Continental Palace.
The North Vietnamese push for Saigon began March 7 in Vietnam's central highlands. Four days later, the provincial capital city of Ban Me Thuot, 180 miles north of Saigon fell. A few days later, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu decided to adopt a plan of “strategic withdrawal,” which, in effect, conceded the northern half of South Vietnam to the Communists and precipitated one of the greatest routs in military history.
By early April, the North Vietnamese controlled almost 75 percent of the country and a palpable sense of doom enveloped Saigon. The city’s ubiquitous bars, famous for their “Saigon tea,” were mostly empty. Vendors selling “pho” and “ca-phe sua” (beef noodle soup and “white” coffee), beggars and hundreds of homeless children had all retreated from the streets.
While these were ominous signs, I knew the end was near when the Indian tailor on Tu Do Street where I had gotten shirts made and changed dollars into Vietnamese piastres, began producing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong flags instead of American and South Vietnamese banners.
“It’s the reality of the situation you see,” he told me matter-of-factly one afternoon. “You do what you must to survive. You press chaps can leave, I cannot. Frankly, I am happy that this nasty affair is ending finally after so many terrible years.”
The official length of the war is generally conceded to have been eight years—from 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the U.S. Marines, to 1973, when the Paris peace accord was signed. However, if you count the first advisers sent to Vietnam by Harry Truman in 1950, America's involvement in S. E. Asia spanned three decades. During that time, about 3.1 million military personnel (including 7,200 women) served in Vietnam.
The human toll was staggering. By the time America's active involvement in the war officially ended in 1973, it had claimed the lives of 58,183 American men and women. Another 304,000 Americans came home wounded, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally. One of every 10 soldiers who served in Vietnam was a casualty.
In addition, some 105 journalists died covering the war—more than in any other conflict in world history. Several are still missing.
Vietnam was nothing if not intense. For example, Pentagon figures show that the average infantryman in the Pacific theater in World War II saw about 40 days of actual combat in four years. In Vietnam the average infantryman saw about 240 days of combat in one year—a fact directly attributable to the helicopter, which allowed for much more rapid deployment of troops.
Then there are the MIAs—the 2,211 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, including 1,651 in Vietnam.
The dollar cost of the war: More than $165 billion—a figure which includes the loss of 3,689 fixed-wing aircraft, 4,857 helicopters and 15 million tons of ammunition.
In Vietnam the impact of America's involvement in the war was even more conspicuous: 3 million Vietnamese killed, including 1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers; and 2 million civilians, according to Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs. More than 600,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops were wounded, while 500,000 South Vietnamese troops were wounded and 2 million civilians on both sides were crippled by mines, artillery fire, chemical defoliants, bombings and the general mayhem of war.
*********************************************
In early April I had driven my rented jeep to a town called Phouc Hiep and found myself in the middle of a rice paddy along with a handful of other reporters when a fire fight broke out between ARVN (South Vietnamese) and North Vietnamese troops.
We broke into a wild run across a wide expanse of dry paddies toward a hamlet when we heard the telltale “thump” of a mortar shell being fired.
“Eat dirt,” someone yelled and we plunged en masse into a 3-foot deep irrigation ditch. Seconds later an earsplitting explosion sent huge chunks of dirt and rock flying through the air and on top of us. We were fully exposed in the middle of a 10-acre chain of rice paddies. The nearest cover was a small river about 300 yards away. We thought about making a dash for it, but small arms fire from both sides kept us pinned down. We remained there in the muddy ditch for what seemed like hours as bullets kicked up dirt all around us. In fact, the battle lasted only about 15 minutes.
When the shooting subsided we scampered toward the river, zigging and zagging as we went. When we got there we paid some farmers who had taken cover along the river bank to ferry us to the other side in their wooden canoes. Once, there we were met with the aftermath of the battle. The bodies of perhaps 15 NVA soldiers were strewn across a field. They had walked into an ambush.
I was making a few notes and photographing the scene when several children from the nearby village emerged and began stripping the soldiers of any valuables they had—watches, rings, shoes. Others were amusing themselves by jumping back and forth over the wire cable that connected several anti-personnel claymore mines to a triggering device. One touch and the mines could have killed six or seven children and anybody else in standing within the effective killing range. When detonated a Claymore sends some 700 steel balls flying in a 60-degree horizontal arc at a height of 6 feet over a radius of 300 feet.
In Vietnam, I wrote in my notebook, the war and its instruments of destruction had become a deadly amusement park.
********************************************************
On April 20, the provincial capital of Xuan Loc just 46 miles east of Saigon fell after holding out for several days against a tenacious siege by NVA troops. The fall of Xuan Loc was a signal for people to proclaim what quickly became Saigon's epitaph: "La Guerre est fini; Saigon est fini; everything est fini."
It also sped up the dynamic Saigon rumor mill. One rumor said that Catholics originally from the north would be sent on a death march along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Another rumor said that Viet Cong soldiers in Da Nang had ripped out the manicured fingernails of prostitutes, prompting a frenzy of fingernail cutting and polish removing among Saigon's bar girls. Yet another rumor said that unmarried Catholic girls would be forced to marry North Vietnamese war invalids.
The rumors had one cumulative effect: they tended to support the growing belief that the end was near.
Since early April, several of us had pressed the U.S. Embassy for details of the evacuation—with no result. U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, who died in 1990, was intent on not creating panic by discussing the possibility of an American exodus. Until the last day of the war, he had held out hope that a negotiated end of hostilities could be worked out. Indeed, two days before he had gone on Vietnamese television and announced: “I, the American Ambassador, am not going to run away in the middle of the night. Any of you can come to my home and see for yourselves that I have not packed my bags. I give you my word.”
Martin had, nevertheless, sanctioned a low-key evacuation of Vietnamese and Americans called Operation Talon Vise. During a two week period before April 30, Operation Talon Vise evacuated about 37,000 Vietnamese employees of the U.S. government and their families from Tan Son Nhut to Clark Air Base in the Philippines—far short of the several hundred thousand Vietnamese who had worked with the American military assistance command in some way and who ultimately would be consigned to horrific “reeducation camps” by the communist conquerors, in some cases for 10 years or more.
In order to ensure that Talon Vise went smoothly, Martin authorized bribes to Saigon police so buses could move through checkpoints without a problem. He also allowed Vietnamese to be smuggled into the American Embassy through a hole cut into the wall of the adjacent French Embassy.
“What a perfect metaphor for this f…ked up place,” the late Hunter S. Thompson, who was covering the end of the war for Rolling Stone Magazine, told me one evening. We were having dinner at the My Canh floating restaurant on the Saigon River. “Lies, deceit and betrayal. Hey, I think I have the name for my next book.” The “gonzo” journalist then took a long drag on a fat Buddha grass joint and asked if he could ride out with me to “the action” the next day.
I dreaded taking Thompson with me because he had a tendency to wander off. I always feared that I would return to Saigon and have to announce that Thompson was captured by the Viet Cong or had stepped on a mine. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death or capture of “Uncle Duke” the Doonesberry cartoon strip character modeled on Thompson.
“What a thought,” someone said one evening. “If Thompson gets captured he will get the whole North Vietnamese Army high and the war will be over tomorrow.”
As it turned out, Thompson left Saigon for Hong Kong long before the evacuation and Rolling Stone had to send in another reporter to cover the story. “This bull shit is going to last forever. I’ve got rigorous shopping to do,” he told me before he left for the airport.
Thompson’s assessment notwithstanding, Ambassador Martin did not want to be accused of cutting and running. It is possible today to forgive Martin for his muddled thinking—especially in light of the revelations contained in the book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” published in 1995 by one of the architects of America's involvement in Vietnam, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
McNamara's admission that he and others in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations knew the war was wrong—and even un-winnable—as far back as 1965 but decided to send Americans to fight and die there anyway makes Martin's diplomatic dithering seem acceptably innocuous.
Finally, on April 26 with 16 NVA army divisions converging on the capital from every direction, a special “evacuation code” was revealed by the U.S. Embassy that would alert us when an evacuation was imminent.
The code, which would be played over a local U.S.-operated FM station would be this: A short announcement that said “The temperature is 105 degrees and rising,” followed by the first eight bars of the song “White Christmas.”
I can recall sitting one evening on the "Continental Shelf"—the open air veranda of the Continental Palace Hotel (now glassed in and renamed Chez Guido) that overlooks Tu Do and Le Loi streets—when several Japanese correspondents came rushing up to my table.
“How does ‘White Christmas’ go?” they inquired anxiously. I hummed it for them. For the next few days Japanese and others not familiar with the old Bing Crosby Christmas standard could be seen standing on Saigon street corners humming the song to one another.
It was one of those droll little moments that punctuated the larger agony of the war's last few hours.
But that humor was all but forgotten as April 29 dawned and several of us huddled in the lobby of the Continental Hotel listening to the portable UHF receiver an embassy official had given the American press corps.
Over the tiny receiver we could hear radio traffic between the U.S. Marine contingent charged with guarding the hulking complex of U.S. Defense Attache Office buildings near Tan Son Nhut Air Base called “Pentagon East.”
The radio crackled with a running commentary from the Marine unit assigned to the building as one artillery shell after another slammed into Tan Son Nhut and the American compound.
“The back end of the gym's been hit!” a Marine shouted into his radio.
“Roger that, Whiskey Joe,” came the monotone reply from the embassy which was appropriately code named “Dodge City.”
“My god, control, we've got two Marine KIAs.”
“Where are the bodies?” asked the voice from the embassy.
“They're right here. What should we do with them?”
Then there was a tremendous explosion, amplified by the small radio.
“Jesus, the ammo dump's just been hit! All hell has broken loose out here!”
A few hours later, Operation Frequent Wind (the name given to the final evacuation) was ordered by President Gerald Ford and I paid one last visit to my room in the Continental Palace. I had stockpiled a couple of cases of American beer, soft drinks and a variety of PX junk food, along with a small library of pirated books.
I found Mr. Phan, one of the elderly hotel concierge staffers who slept in a small room on the second floor, sweeping my room as if nothing had happened. For almost two months Mr. Phan, who always appeared in clean white cotton pants and jacket, had cleaned my room, kept me in fresh bottled water and occasionally sprayed my room in a futile gesture at ridding it of roaches and other critters of the night.
I pressed a wad of Vietnamese piastres into his hand. Then it occurred to me that the money would be worthless in a few hours—indeed, as far as Saigon’s ubiquitous money changers were concerned, piastres had been worthless for the past two weeks.
I had about $500 in cash and I pealed off $300 and gave it to him.
“Here, this may come in handy, Mr. Phan,” I said. “And please take anything you want from my room.” I suggested he might want to get out of central Saigon and find a safe place until the fighting and artillery barrage stopped.
He smiled, bowed ever so slightly and announced: “Thank you, but not to worry, I am V.C!”
Many of us had suspected for some time that a lot of the “boys,” as Mr. Phan and his co-workers at the Continental were called, were probably Viet Cong or V.C. sympathizers. One reason many journalists stayed at the old hotel was because we had heard that the owner paid “war taxes” to the Viet Cong so it would not be targeted for attack.
As we shook hands he looked up at me and said: “Why do you not stay. Everything will be OK here. Much better if you stay here.”
I explained that the Tribune had ordered me to leave and that I had a baby daughter I hadn’t seen for almost four months.
He nodded. “Yes, yes, maybe better you go now.”
It was the last time I would ever see Phan, who was in his 70s at the time. When I returned in 1985 for the 10th anniversary of the war’s end, the staff at the Continental Palace informed me he had passed away in 1982.
By 10 a.m., a small army of American, European and Asian correspondents lugging typewriters, sound equipment, suitcases and shoulder bags left the Continental in silent single file. We had been told to make our way to a point six blocks away near the Saigon River.
As we trudged down Tu Do Street, ARVN soldiers and home guard units watched our ragtag formation menacingly. In the distance we could hear the constant explosion of artillery and mortar shells as they slammed into the city's suburbs.
“You leave now?” Nha, the home guard soldier, asked me as we slogged toward the river. His M-1 carbine was slung over his back and for the first time since I had known him and his small squad of home guard soldiers, he seemed genuinely terrified of what the next few hours would bring.
“Yes, we leave now,” I said sheepishly. Then, for some reason, I said: “I'm sorry . . . sorry for all of this.”
“Bo di, chang co sao aau” (Never mind, it doesn’t matter), Nha said. “You come back someday.” He was right, of course. I would return in 1985 and again in 1995 to witness the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the fall of Saigon.
Finally, we arrived at our evacuation point: a spot facing a statue of Vietnam's 6th Century military hero Tran Hung Dao. A helipad had been created atop a building, but the South Vietnamese navy had placed a 50-caliber machine gun on the top of a building next door. It was decided the machine gun might be used against departing U.S. choppers. So that evacuation point was abandoned.
I made my way to the U.S. Embassy thinking that might be an option for catching a chopper out. It was surrounded by thousands of furious Vietnamese demanding to be let inside the embassy compound. There was no way I was going to push my way through that mob.
I trudged down Hai Ba Trung Street. The temperature was already close to 100 degrees and my shirt was soaked through with perspiration. Eventually, I made my way to an alternate evacuation point—the University of Maryland's Saigon Education Center. It was padlocked. I waited. Finally, at 12:20 p.m. two olive drab buses arrived and I climbed aboard along with about 60 other members of the Saigon press corps.
The two buses then began an aimless voyage through Saigon. Every few blocks the buses would stop and the Marine assigned to our bus would ask for instructions with his two-way radio.
“What's this, the Graham Martin sightseeing excursion?” someone asked.
The UHF radio in the Marine's hand crackled. It was “Dodge City” again.
“We're in trouble here!” a voice said. “There are 20,000 people at the front gate of the embassy. It's getting hostile.”
“What should I do with my bus?” our Marine driver shouted into his radio.
“Looks like Tan Son Nhut's your only option,” came the reply. “Don't come here!”
“Roger that,” the Marine said. Then, turning to the 60 people jammed on the bus, he said. “Looks like we're going to the airport.” In the distance we could hear the explosion of rockets and mortar shells slamming into Tan Son Nhut.
As the bus approached the main gate of the air base we could see black pillars of smoke rising from the runway. Then Vietnamese guards at the gate began firing their M-16s in our direction. We dove for the floor.
Our Marine escort, code named “Wagon master,” yelled into his radio for instructions. “This looks bad. What should we do? What is the situation at DAO?”
”It ain't good,” the radio crackled. “We are taking lots of mortar and artillery fire. Bust through the gate if necessary and then drive like hell.” The radio crackled and as an afterthought, a voice said: “Good luck.”
I seriously considered getting off the bus and walking the 7 or 8 miles back to the city. Before I could, the driver moved the bus back some 100 yards from the gate.
“This is it,” he yelled. “Keep low. We’re busting through the gate!” He stomped on the accelerator and the bus lurched forward. As we bore down on the gate at about 60 mph, we expected the guards to start shooting. Instead, they inexplicably backed off and opened the gates seconds before the lumbering vehicle would have rammed through them.
Off to one side a downed Huey helicopter, one skid broken off, lay on its side with its motor running and its tail rotor still spinning.
We watched a Vietnamese C-119 transport plane somehow lift off from the cratered runway and we applauded the pilot's skill. Our applause turned to horror seconds later when a heat-seeking missile streaked skyward, slammed into the transport and sent it plummeting toward what looked like the Cholon section of Saigon.
As we pulled up to the DAO compound, a 122 mm rocket punched into the Air America terminal just across the road, showering us with debris.
I was in the back of the bus trying frantically to get the locked emergency rear door open when another artillery shell exploded a few hundred feet away, pelting the area with shrapnel and breaking several windows in the bus. By this point I was on my back kicking with all my strength at the door. Finally, I managed to kick the door open. I slid down to the ground and waited for a few minutes using the bus as cover. Most of the press corps had already made it into the building. I took a deep breath, then began my sprint over some 50 feet of open ground to the DAO building. Another rocket slammed into the road a few yards behind me. I dove to the ground and flattened myself on the hot concrete. I could hear razor sharp metal shrapnel slicing through the air behind me. A few seconds later I pulled myself up and scuttled like a crab toward the door.
Once inside we crouched along interior hallways and waited. A couple of hours went by. Several Marines handed out paper tags and told us to write our names and next of kin on them and attach them to our clothing.
“These are for you, not your luggage,” they said. I knew what they were. I had seen them before—attached to the bodies of battle casualties.
Outside a constant deluge of rockets, mortars and artillery shells rained on Tan Son Nhut and the DAO compound. I closed my eyes and actually managed a few minutes of sleep between explosions.
It was almost 6 p.m., some 14 hours since the final bombardment of Saigon had begun. I was exhausted. I was sure every ounce of adrenalin in my body was used up. I thought about the C-119 I had watched get knocked out the sky by a SAM-7 missile and began to wonder if I had made the right choice. Maybe I should stay. After all, during one of the Saturday briefings at the Viet Cong compound at Tan Son Nhut, which was established as part of the 1973 Peace Accords, Col. Ba had told me all correspondents would be treated as “guests” by the conquering North Vietnamese Army.
“We are not barbarians like the Khmer Rouge,” Col. Ba said, referring to the news of the carnage in Phnom Penh that was beginning to filter into Saigon. “Just remain in your hotel room and someone will come for you. Those who earn an honest living will be welcome.”
Of course, I had not remained in my hotel room. I was inside the DAO compound, more than 7 miles from the Continental Palace Hotel. How would I get back to the city center? Catch a ride on a NVA T-54 tank? Hardly.
The shelling outside intensified. The huge DAO building trembled as one artillery shell after another slammed the compound. I was on the verge of getting up and hoofing it back to central Saigon when a Marine captain walked into the corridor and bellowed:
“OK, this is it! We’re moving out! Di di mao…Go, go, go!”
We spilled out of the DAO building. Two Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy helicopters were waiting on a tennis court about 300 feet away, their blades whooshing slowly in the hot sticky air. After what seemed an eternity I and about 80 others scrambled up the rear loading ramp hunkered on the floor and canvas bench seats. Seconds later the load master raised the ramp and we lifted off.
We flew low at first, then the pilot put the helicopter into a steady climb. I stood up and looked down at Saigon over door gunner’s shoulder. The city looked bizarrely peaceful and idyllic with the Saigon River meandering through the city and toward the South China Sea some 50 miles away.
Forty minutes later we were landing on the deck of the USS Denver, a Landing Platform Dock about 35 miles off the coast of Vung Tau.
For the next several hours we watched one helicopter after another arrive. Some unauthorized South Vietnamese army helicopters were allowed to land and then were pushed over the side into the sea.
Eventually, with the ship’s decks filled, Vietnamese pilots were no longer allowed to land, so they would fly their Hueys to within 100 yards of the ship, open the doors and jump into the sea along with their passengers. The chopper would remain in flight for a few moments and then pitch into the ocean-sometimes dangerously close to those swimming toward our ship.
At 4:58 a.m. April 30, Ambassador Martin closed down the embassy, destroyed its communications equipment and climbed aboard a helicopter on the embassy roof.
The helicopter pilot sent a message to the fleet: “Lady Ace Zero Nine, Code Two is aboard.” Lady Ace Zero Nine was the chopper’s own call sign; “Code Two” was the designation for an ambassador.
At 7:52 a.m., the last chopper lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy, carrying out the small detachment of Marines who had guarded the embassy compound and engaged terrified Vietnamese in a running floor-by-floor holding action throughout April 29 and early April 30.
As the last Huey lifted off, the pilot radioed the final official U.S. message from Saigon: “Swift-Two-Two is airborne with 11 passengers. Ground security force is aboard.”
Then, the radio crackled again: “Bye, bye Vietnam,” a voice said. “Bye, bye for now.”
Aboard the USS Denver several of us looked at one another in stunned silence. The longest war of the 20th Century was finally over. Our emotions ran the gamut: relief, guilt, anger, disgust, joy, sadness—depending on who you were and what country you were from.
“So this is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like,” I said to no one in particular. I then went below decks to write my last story of America’s war in Vietnam.
endit
Of all the stories I covered during my career as a foreign correspondent, the end of the war in Vietnam was without doubt the most challenging and life changing for me.
What follows is a story I wrote about the fall of Saigon and my last day "in country." It is longer than my normal blog posts, but I hope you will find it interesting and enlightening.
Long before America became embroiled in such places as Afghanistan and Iraq, there was Vietnam—an almost 10 year-long war that some have called America’s “lost crusade.”
This is the story of the last day of that crusade—a 24 hour period between April 29-30, 1975 when America’s political and military involvement in Vietnam came to a frenzied, sad and ignominious end. The memories of the final day of America’s involvement in Vietnam remain etched in my mind even after 36 years.
During that final day 1,373 Americans, 5,680 Vietnamese and an exhausted and ailing American ambassador with the American flag folded under one arm and his pet poodle under the other would flee a land infamous for its coups d'etat and its byzantine cabals—a stunningly beautiful land of soaring green hills, lush forests, vast rubber plantations and fertile rice paddies that had become a political and military swamp for several American presidents.
Most Americans have subsequently concluded that the longest war in this nation’s history was also the first war America ever lost. In fact, however, as a former North Vietnamese colonel told me several years ago, one of the great ironies of Vietnam is that the American military was never defeated in any battle of consequence.
“You lost the war in the cities and villages of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam,” said Col. Ba Thang political commissar of the Saigon¬ Gia Dinh Special Action Unit. “We could never hope for a military victory against such a formidable foe. Our strategy was to survive, to make the war last so long that you Americans would eventually tire and go home. That is what happened. We divided you politically and sapped your will to fight a war in a country few Americans had ever heard of or cared about.”
Indeed, while the specter of Vietnam still haunts us today, in the 1960s and 1970s it divided the nation like nothing since the Civil War. In some ways, it continues to do so.
References to American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as America’s “new Vietnams” are constantly seen and heard in the news media. The phrase “no more Vietnams” adorns placards at nearly every demonstration against U.S. involvement in Iraq and one even hears references to “the light at the end of the tunnel,” the phrase used in the 1960s by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to describe U.S. progress toward winning the war in Vietnam.
McNamara’s pet phrase was far from my mind 36 years ago when a barrage of 122 mm rockets slammed into Saigon. It was a little after 4 a.m. on April 29, 1975 when I was jolted awake in my second floor room of Saigon’s four-story French colonial-era Continental Palace Hotel. As I sat upright in my bed I realized it was oppressively hot and after the initial explosions, strangely quiet.
Then I realized why. The ancient window air conditioner had stopped its moaning and coughing. There was no electricity. Apparently the North Vietnamese had hit one of Saigon’s power plants—a common occurrence during the past few weeks. I lit one of the dozen or so candles I always kept ready and looked up at the ceiling. The gecko lizards had stopped chasing after mosquitoes and were retreating down the walls. Cockroaches the size of credit cards were scampering into the cracks of the ruby floor tiles. Even the rat that regularly patrolled my room was gone (I had named him General Giap, after the architect of North Vietnam’s military campaign).
I wondered if what I had heard had been thunder. April 28th had been a day of thunderstorms with lightening flashing over the city. Then, a few moments later the unmistakable metallic sound of a 122 mm rocket shrieked through the heavy humid night air and exploded nearby. This time chunks of ancient plaster fell from the ceiling and the walls of the 100-year-old hotel shuddered.
That was not thunder. These were the first rockets to hit Saigon since April 27 when one slammed into the roof of the Majestic Hotel overlooking the Saigon River a few blocks away killing a hotel porter. Later that same morning another rocket smashed into Saigon’s bustling Ben Thanh Market killing more than a dozen people.
I jumped from bed, scampered barefoot over the cool crimson tiles to the small balcony overlooking Lam Son Square and threw open the French windows. Before me, looming in all its hulking alabaster majesty, was the old National Assembly Building and beyond it the high rise Caravelle Hotel. Both were intact.
To my right where Le Loi Street bisected Tu Do Street several members of the South Vietnamese home guard with red rosettes in their buttonholes identifying them as loyalists, were firing their ancient M-1 carbines. For the past several weeks home guard troops, who were mostly teenagers, had patrolled the streets by day and at night had slept on sidewalks wrapped in ponchos.
As I looked down at the home guard, bullets buzzed through the dank night air and ricocheted off nearby buildings. I ducked as several rounds slammed into the white façade of the hotel. During the past several months I had gotten to know several of these home guard militia. Their job was to enforce Saigon’s nighttime curfew. I paid them to escort me after curfew to the Public Telephone and Telegraph Office so I could telex my stories back to the Chicago Tribune.
“What are you shooting at?” I yelled.
“V.C., beaucoup V.C.,” a 17-year-old named Nha shouted back.
“Where?”
“They everywhere…you better hide.” Then Nha, who was usually wasted on Vietnamese “33” beer by this time, shrieked with laughter. “Khong co gi,” (it doesn’t matter). We kill all number ten V.C.”
Yeah, I remember thinking, if you don’t kill everybody else in the city first. Nha lifted his rifle and fired several more rounds into the air. I had seen Nha in action with his M-1 carbine during our after curfew hikes to the PTT office. He often amused himself by blasting away at the giant rats that roamed Saigon’s deserted streets after the cyclos and ancient smoke-belching Renault taxis had stopped running for the night.
I retreated back into my room. In the distance there were more heavy explosions—what sounded like 80 mm mortar rounds and 130mm heavy artillery hitting Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s main airport some 7 miles away. The temperature was already approaching 90 degrees as I got dressed, and the sun wasn’t even up. I decided to forgo what would have been a cold shower. I needed to get downstairs to see what was going on.
Was this it? I can recall thinking. Is this the end? As it turned out, America's ill-fated crusade in Vietnam was indeed over. And this was the way it would end: not with honor, as one president had suggested, but in ignominy and humiliation and chaos.
Even though the city was now under a 24-hour curfew, for much of that final day some 20,000 terrified, shrieking Vietnamese—many of them former U.S. government employees—would surround the American Embassy, pleading with Marine guards to allow them inside the 10-foot walls so they could board the choppers that would take them to the armada of 44 American ships waiting off the Vietnamese coast.
Some would make it over the walls and onto the choppers. But only some. Most would be held at bay by U.S. soldiers—former allies—who pointed M-16s at them, cursed them, pounded their clawing fingers with rifle butts and threatened to blow their heads off.
I can still hear the voices of American embassy officials and their Vietnamese interpreters shouting: “Khong ai se bi bo lai!” (No one will be left behind) at the frantic throng outside the Embassy compound.
It was a scene that still saddens me today—one that made me ashamed to be an American, not because we were leaving in abject defeat but because we were betraying thousands if not millions of Vietnamese who believed our promises of a free and better Vietnam if they supported our policies.
I had arrived in Vietnam from my Tokyo base in January 1975, and with the exception of a few weeks spent in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in late February and early March, I had lived in Saigon at the Continental Palace.
The North Vietnamese push for Saigon began March 7 in Vietnam's central highlands. Four days later, the provincial capital city of Ban Me Thuot, 180 miles north of Saigon fell. A few days later, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu decided to adopt a plan of “strategic withdrawal,” which, in effect, conceded the northern half of South Vietnam to the Communists and precipitated one of the greatest routs in military history.
By early April, the North Vietnamese controlled almost 75 percent of the country and a palpable sense of doom enveloped Saigon. The city’s ubiquitous bars, famous for their “Saigon tea,” were mostly empty. Vendors selling “pho” and “ca-phe sua” (beef noodle soup and “white” coffee), beggars and hundreds of homeless children had all retreated from the streets.
While these were ominous signs, I knew the end was near when the Indian tailor on Tu Do Street where I had gotten shirts made and changed dollars into Vietnamese piastres, began producing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong flags instead of American and South Vietnamese banners.
“It’s the reality of the situation you see,” he told me matter-of-factly one afternoon. “You do what you must to survive. You press chaps can leave, I cannot. Frankly, I am happy that this nasty affair is ending finally after so many terrible years.”
The official length of the war is generally conceded to have been eight years—from 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the U.S. Marines, to 1973, when the Paris peace accord was signed. However, if you count the first advisers sent to Vietnam by Harry Truman in 1950, America's involvement in S. E. Asia spanned three decades. During that time, about 3.1 million military personnel (including 7,200 women) served in Vietnam.
The human toll was staggering. By the time America's active involvement in the war officially ended in 1973, it had claimed the lives of 58,183 American men and women. Another 304,000 Americans came home wounded, sometimes physically and sometimes mentally. One of every 10 soldiers who served in Vietnam was a casualty.
In addition, some 105 journalists died covering the war—more than in any other conflict in world history. Several are still missing.
Vietnam was nothing if not intense. For example, Pentagon figures show that the average infantryman in the Pacific theater in World War II saw about 40 days of actual combat in four years. In Vietnam the average infantryman saw about 240 days of combat in one year—a fact directly attributable to the helicopter, which allowed for much more rapid deployment of troops.
Then there are the MIAs—the 2,211 Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, including 1,651 in Vietnam.
The dollar cost of the war: More than $165 billion—a figure which includes the loss of 3,689 fixed-wing aircraft, 4,857 helicopters and 15 million tons of ammunition.
In Vietnam the impact of America's involvement in the war was even more conspicuous: 3 million Vietnamese killed, including 1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers; 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers; and 2 million civilians, according to Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs. More than 600,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops were wounded, while 500,000 South Vietnamese troops were wounded and 2 million civilians on both sides were crippled by mines, artillery fire, chemical defoliants, bombings and the general mayhem of war.
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In early April I had driven my rented jeep to a town called Phouc Hiep and found myself in the middle of a rice paddy along with a handful of other reporters when a fire fight broke out between ARVN (South Vietnamese) and North Vietnamese troops.
We broke into a wild run across a wide expanse of dry paddies toward a hamlet when we heard the telltale “thump” of a mortar shell being fired.
“Eat dirt,” someone yelled and we plunged en masse into a 3-foot deep irrigation ditch. Seconds later an earsplitting explosion sent huge chunks of dirt and rock flying through the air and on top of us. We were fully exposed in the middle of a 10-acre chain of rice paddies. The nearest cover was a small river about 300 yards away. We thought about making a dash for it, but small arms fire from both sides kept us pinned down. We remained there in the muddy ditch for what seemed like hours as bullets kicked up dirt all around us. In fact, the battle lasted only about 15 minutes.
When the shooting subsided we scampered toward the river, zigging and zagging as we went. When we got there we paid some farmers who had taken cover along the river bank to ferry us to the other side in their wooden canoes. Once, there we were met with the aftermath of the battle. The bodies of perhaps 15 NVA soldiers were strewn across a field. They had walked into an ambush.
I was making a few notes and photographing the scene when several children from the nearby village emerged and began stripping the soldiers of any valuables they had—watches, rings, shoes. Others were amusing themselves by jumping back and forth over the wire cable that connected several anti-personnel claymore mines to a triggering device. One touch and the mines could have killed six or seven children and anybody else in standing within the effective killing range. When detonated a Claymore sends some 700 steel balls flying in a 60-degree horizontal arc at a height of 6 feet over a radius of 300 feet.
In Vietnam, I wrote in my notebook, the war and its instruments of destruction had become a deadly amusement park.
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On April 20, the provincial capital of Xuan Loc just 46 miles east of Saigon fell after holding out for several days against a tenacious siege by NVA troops. The fall of Xuan Loc was a signal for people to proclaim what quickly became Saigon's epitaph: "La Guerre est fini; Saigon est fini; everything est fini."
It also sped up the dynamic Saigon rumor mill. One rumor said that Catholics originally from the north would be sent on a death march along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Another rumor said that Viet Cong soldiers in Da Nang had ripped out the manicured fingernails of prostitutes, prompting a frenzy of fingernail cutting and polish removing among Saigon's bar girls. Yet another rumor said that unmarried Catholic girls would be forced to marry North Vietnamese war invalids.
The rumors had one cumulative effect: they tended to support the growing belief that the end was near.
Since early April, several of us had pressed the U.S. Embassy for details of the evacuation—with no result. U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, who died in 1990, was intent on not creating panic by discussing the possibility of an American exodus. Until the last day of the war, he had held out hope that a negotiated end of hostilities could be worked out. Indeed, two days before he had gone on Vietnamese television and announced: “I, the American Ambassador, am not going to run away in the middle of the night. Any of you can come to my home and see for yourselves that I have not packed my bags. I give you my word.”
Martin had, nevertheless, sanctioned a low-key evacuation of Vietnamese and Americans called Operation Talon Vise. During a two week period before April 30, Operation Talon Vise evacuated about 37,000 Vietnamese employees of the U.S. government and their families from Tan Son Nhut to Clark Air Base in the Philippines—far short of the several hundred thousand Vietnamese who had worked with the American military assistance command in some way and who ultimately would be consigned to horrific “reeducation camps” by the communist conquerors, in some cases for 10 years or more.
In order to ensure that Talon Vise went smoothly, Martin authorized bribes to Saigon police so buses could move through checkpoints without a problem. He also allowed Vietnamese to be smuggled into the American Embassy through a hole cut into the wall of the adjacent French Embassy.
“What a perfect metaphor for this f…ked up place,” the late Hunter S. Thompson, who was covering the end of the war for Rolling Stone Magazine, told me one evening. We were having dinner at the My Canh floating restaurant on the Saigon River. “Lies, deceit and betrayal. Hey, I think I have the name for my next book.” The “gonzo” journalist then took a long drag on a fat Buddha grass joint and asked if he could ride out with me to “the action” the next day.
I dreaded taking Thompson with me because he had a tendency to wander off. I always feared that I would return to Saigon and have to announce that Thompson was captured by the Viet Cong or had stepped on a mine. I didn’t want to be responsible for the death or capture of “Uncle Duke” the Doonesberry cartoon strip character modeled on Thompson.
“What a thought,” someone said one evening. “If Thompson gets captured he will get the whole North Vietnamese Army high and the war will be over tomorrow.”
As it turned out, Thompson left Saigon for Hong Kong long before the evacuation and Rolling Stone had to send in another reporter to cover the story. “This bull shit is going to last forever. I’ve got rigorous shopping to do,” he told me before he left for the airport.
Thompson’s assessment notwithstanding, Ambassador Martin did not want to be accused of cutting and running. It is possible today to forgive Martin for his muddled thinking—especially in light of the revelations contained in the book “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam” published in 1995 by one of the architects of America's involvement in Vietnam, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
McNamara's admission that he and others in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations knew the war was wrong—and even un-winnable—as far back as 1965 but decided to send Americans to fight and die there anyway makes Martin's diplomatic dithering seem acceptably innocuous.
Finally, on April 26 with 16 NVA army divisions converging on the capital from every direction, a special “evacuation code” was revealed by the U.S. Embassy that would alert us when an evacuation was imminent.
The code, which would be played over a local U.S.-operated FM station would be this: A short announcement that said “The temperature is 105 degrees and rising,” followed by the first eight bars of the song “White Christmas.”
I can recall sitting one evening on the "Continental Shelf"—the open air veranda of the Continental Palace Hotel (now glassed in and renamed Chez Guido) that overlooks Tu Do and Le Loi streets—when several Japanese correspondents came rushing up to my table.
“How does ‘White Christmas’ go?” they inquired anxiously. I hummed it for them. For the next few days Japanese and others not familiar with the old Bing Crosby Christmas standard could be seen standing on Saigon street corners humming the song to one another.
It was one of those droll little moments that punctuated the larger agony of the war's last few hours.
But that humor was all but forgotten as April 29 dawned and several of us huddled in the lobby of the Continental Hotel listening to the portable UHF receiver an embassy official had given the American press corps.
Over the tiny receiver we could hear radio traffic between the U.S. Marine contingent charged with guarding the hulking complex of U.S. Defense Attache Office buildings near Tan Son Nhut Air Base called “Pentagon East.”
The radio crackled with a running commentary from the Marine unit assigned to the building as one artillery shell after another slammed into Tan Son Nhut and the American compound.
“The back end of the gym's been hit!” a Marine shouted into his radio.
“Roger that, Whiskey Joe,” came the monotone reply from the embassy which was appropriately code named “Dodge City.”
“My god, control, we've got two Marine KIAs.”
“Where are the bodies?” asked the voice from the embassy.
“They're right here. What should we do with them?”
Then there was a tremendous explosion, amplified by the small radio.
“Jesus, the ammo dump's just been hit! All hell has broken loose out here!”
A few hours later, Operation Frequent Wind (the name given to the final evacuation) was ordered by President Gerald Ford and I paid one last visit to my room in the Continental Palace. I had stockpiled a couple of cases of American beer, soft drinks and a variety of PX junk food, along with a small library of pirated books.
I found Mr. Phan, one of the elderly hotel concierge staffers who slept in a small room on the second floor, sweeping my room as if nothing had happened. For almost two months Mr. Phan, who always appeared in clean white cotton pants and jacket, had cleaned my room, kept me in fresh bottled water and occasionally sprayed my room in a futile gesture at ridding it of roaches and other critters of the night.
I pressed a wad of Vietnamese piastres into his hand. Then it occurred to me that the money would be worthless in a few hours—indeed, as far as Saigon’s ubiquitous money changers were concerned, piastres had been worthless for the past two weeks.
I had about $500 in cash and I pealed off $300 and gave it to him.
“Here, this may come in handy, Mr. Phan,” I said. “And please take anything you want from my room.” I suggested he might want to get out of central Saigon and find a safe place until the fighting and artillery barrage stopped.
He smiled, bowed ever so slightly and announced: “Thank you, but not to worry, I am V.C!”
Many of us had suspected for some time that a lot of the “boys,” as Mr. Phan and his co-workers at the Continental were called, were probably Viet Cong or V.C. sympathizers. One reason many journalists stayed at the old hotel was because we had heard that the owner paid “war taxes” to the Viet Cong so it would not be targeted for attack.
As we shook hands he looked up at me and said: “Why do you not stay. Everything will be OK here. Much better if you stay here.”
I explained that the Tribune had ordered me to leave and that I had a baby daughter I hadn’t seen for almost four months.
He nodded. “Yes, yes, maybe better you go now.”
It was the last time I would ever see Phan, who was in his 70s at the time. When I returned in 1985 for the 10th anniversary of the war’s end, the staff at the Continental Palace informed me he had passed away in 1982.
By 10 a.m., a small army of American, European and Asian correspondents lugging typewriters, sound equipment, suitcases and shoulder bags left the Continental in silent single file. We had been told to make our way to a point six blocks away near the Saigon River.
As we trudged down Tu Do Street, ARVN soldiers and home guard units watched our ragtag formation menacingly. In the distance we could hear the constant explosion of artillery and mortar shells as they slammed into the city's suburbs.
“You leave now?” Nha, the home guard soldier, asked me as we slogged toward the river. His M-1 carbine was slung over his back and for the first time since I had known him and his small squad of home guard soldiers, he seemed genuinely terrified of what the next few hours would bring.
“Yes, we leave now,” I said sheepishly. Then, for some reason, I said: “I'm sorry . . . sorry for all of this.”
“Bo di, chang co sao aau” (Never mind, it doesn’t matter), Nha said. “You come back someday.” He was right, of course. I would return in 1985 and again in 1995 to witness the 10th and 20th anniversaries of the fall of Saigon.
Finally, we arrived at our evacuation point: a spot facing a statue of Vietnam's 6th Century military hero Tran Hung Dao. A helipad had been created atop a building, but the South Vietnamese navy had placed a 50-caliber machine gun on the top of a building next door. It was decided the machine gun might be used against departing U.S. choppers. So that evacuation point was abandoned.
I made my way to the U.S. Embassy thinking that might be an option for catching a chopper out. It was surrounded by thousands of furious Vietnamese demanding to be let inside the embassy compound. There was no way I was going to push my way through that mob.
I trudged down Hai Ba Trung Street. The temperature was already close to 100 degrees and my shirt was soaked through with perspiration. Eventually, I made my way to an alternate evacuation point—the University of Maryland's Saigon Education Center. It was padlocked. I waited. Finally, at 12:20 p.m. two olive drab buses arrived and I climbed aboard along with about 60 other members of the Saigon press corps.
The two buses then began an aimless voyage through Saigon. Every few blocks the buses would stop and the Marine assigned to our bus would ask for instructions with his two-way radio.
“What's this, the Graham Martin sightseeing excursion?” someone asked.
The UHF radio in the Marine's hand crackled. It was “Dodge City” again.
“We're in trouble here!” a voice said. “There are 20,000 people at the front gate of the embassy. It's getting hostile.”
“What should I do with my bus?” our Marine driver shouted into his radio.
“Looks like Tan Son Nhut's your only option,” came the reply. “Don't come here!”
“Roger that,” the Marine said. Then, turning to the 60 people jammed on the bus, he said. “Looks like we're going to the airport.” In the distance we could hear the explosion of rockets and mortar shells slamming into Tan Son Nhut.
As the bus approached the main gate of the air base we could see black pillars of smoke rising from the runway. Then Vietnamese guards at the gate began firing their M-16s in our direction. We dove for the floor.
Our Marine escort, code named “Wagon master,” yelled into his radio for instructions. “This looks bad. What should we do? What is the situation at DAO?”
”It ain't good,” the radio crackled. “We are taking lots of mortar and artillery fire. Bust through the gate if necessary and then drive like hell.” The radio crackled and as an afterthought, a voice said: “Good luck.”
I seriously considered getting off the bus and walking the 7 or 8 miles back to the city. Before I could, the driver moved the bus back some 100 yards from the gate.
“This is it,” he yelled. “Keep low. We’re busting through the gate!” He stomped on the accelerator and the bus lurched forward. As we bore down on the gate at about 60 mph, we expected the guards to start shooting. Instead, they inexplicably backed off and opened the gates seconds before the lumbering vehicle would have rammed through them.
Off to one side a downed Huey helicopter, one skid broken off, lay on its side with its motor running and its tail rotor still spinning.
We watched a Vietnamese C-119 transport plane somehow lift off from the cratered runway and we applauded the pilot's skill. Our applause turned to horror seconds later when a heat-seeking missile streaked skyward, slammed into the transport and sent it plummeting toward what looked like the Cholon section of Saigon.
As we pulled up to the DAO compound, a 122 mm rocket punched into the Air America terminal just across the road, showering us with debris.
I was in the back of the bus trying frantically to get the locked emergency rear door open when another artillery shell exploded a few hundred feet away, pelting the area with shrapnel and breaking several windows in the bus. By this point I was on my back kicking with all my strength at the door. Finally, I managed to kick the door open. I slid down to the ground and waited for a few minutes using the bus as cover. Most of the press corps had already made it into the building. I took a deep breath, then began my sprint over some 50 feet of open ground to the DAO building. Another rocket slammed into the road a few yards behind me. I dove to the ground and flattened myself on the hot concrete. I could hear razor sharp metal shrapnel slicing through the air behind me. A few seconds later I pulled myself up and scuttled like a crab toward the door.
Once inside we crouched along interior hallways and waited. A couple of hours went by. Several Marines handed out paper tags and told us to write our names and next of kin on them and attach them to our clothing.
“These are for you, not your luggage,” they said. I knew what they were. I had seen them before—attached to the bodies of battle casualties.
Outside a constant deluge of rockets, mortars and artillery shells rained on Tan Son Nhut and the DAO compound. I closed my eyes and actually managed a few minutes of sleep between explosions.
It was almost 6 p.m., some 14 hours since the final bombardment of Saigon had begun. I was exhausted. I was sure every ounce of adrenalin in my body was used up. I thought about the C-119 I had watched get knocked out the sky by a SAM-7 missile and began to wonder if I had made the right choice. Maybe I should stay. After all, during one of the Saturday briefings at the Viet Cong compound at Tan Son Nhut, which was established as part of the 1973 Peace Accords, Col. Ba had told me all correspondents would be treated as “guests” by the conquering North Vietnamese Army.
“We are not barbarians like the Khmer Rouge,” Col. Ba said, referring to the news of the carnage in Phnom Penh that was beginning to filter into Saigon. “Just remain in your hotel room and someone will come for you. Those who earn an honest living will be welcome.”
Of course, I had not remained in my hotel room. I was inside the DAO compound, more than 7 miles from the Continental Palace Hotel. How would I get back to the city center? Catch a ride on a NVA T-54 tank? Hardly.
The shelling outside intensified. The huge DAO building trembled as one artillery shell after another slammed the compound. I was on the verge of getting up and hoofing it back to central Saigon when a Marine captain walked into the corridor and bellowed:
“OK, this is it! We’re moving out! Di di mao…Go, go, go!”
We spilled out of the DAO building. Two Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion heavy helicopters were waiting on a tennis court about 300 feet away, their blades whooshing slowly in the hot sticky air. After what seemed an eternity I and about 80 others scrambled up the rear loading ramp hunkered on the floor and canvas bench seats. Seconds later the load master raised the ramp and we lifted off.
We flew low at first, then the pilot put the helicopter into a steady climb. I stood up and looked down at Saigon over door gunner’s shoulder. The city looked bizarrely peaceful and idyllic with the Saigon River meandering through the city and toward the South China Sea some 50 miles away.
Forty minutes later we were landing on the deck of the USS Denver, a Landing Platform Dock about 35 miles off the coast of Vung Tau.
For the next several hours we watched one helicopter after another arrive. Some unauthorized South Vietnamese army helicopters were allowed to land and then were pushed over the side into the sea.
Eventually, with the ship’s decks filled, Vietnamese pilots were no longer allowed to land, so they would fly their Hueys to within 100 yards of the ship, open the doors and jump into the sea along with their passengers. The chopper would remain in flight for a few moments and then pitch into the ocean-sometimes dangerously close to those swimming toward our ship.
At 4:58 a.m. April 30, Ambassador Martin closed down the embassy, destroyed its communications equipment and climbed aboard a helicopter on the embassy roof.
The helicopter pilot sent a message to the fleet: “Lady Ace Zero Nine, Code Two is aboard.” Lady Ace Zero Nine was the chopper’s own call sign; “Code Two” was the designation for an ambassador.
At 7:52 a.m., the last chopper lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy, carrying out the small detachment of Marines who had guarded the embassy compound and engaged terrified Vietnamese in a running floor-by-floor holding action throughout April 29 and early April 30.
As the last Huey lifted off, the pilot radioed the final official U.S. message from Saigon: “Swift-Two-Two is airborne with 11 passengers. Ground security force is aboard.”
Then, the radio crackled again: “Bye, bye Vietnam,” a voice said. “Bye, bye for now.”
Aboard the USS Denver several of us looked at one another in stunned silence. The longest war of the 20th Century was finally over. Our emotions ran the gamut: relief, guilt, anger, disgust, joy, sadness—depending on who you were and what country you were from.
“So this is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like,” I said to no one in particular. I then went below decks to write my last story of America’s war in Vietnam.
endit
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Why Was There No Looting in Japan in Earthquake Aftermath?
Recently someone sent me an e-mail that mentioned a magazine article discussing the orderly conduct of Japanese citizens and the absence of looting and other forms of social mayhem after large portions of that country north of Tokyo were devastated by the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear nightmare.
Social scientists in the U.S., the article said, were baffled by the total non-existence of looting and savage behavior in Japan considering the magnitude of this catastrophe and the fact that you have 130 million Japanese crammed together in an area the size of California.
Think back to the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. All social order essentially broke down and looting, robbery, and killing became the norm. For weeks it was every man and woman for themselves and anything went. Naturally, the first rule of survival was to break into an appliance store and loot a big screen HD TV or some other appliance. How many scenes like that did you see from Japan?
I can tell you. None.
I lived and worked as a correspondent almost 10 years in Japan and I can tell you it is different from all other countries I reported from.
First, it remains a largely homogeneous society with minimal immigration. Thus Japanese society behaves like some vast bee hive where people live and work collaboratively while still competing with one another. They are governed by a highly developed system of behavior that dates back some 2,000 years.
Without going into great detail the way Japanese people behave is governed by three rather complex concepts:
1. Giri (義理), which denotes an “obligation, duty, justice” and an obligation to be ”faithful” and “conscientious”.
2. Tatemae (建前), which literally means "façade," is the behavior and opinions one displays in public. Tatemae is what is expected by society and required according to one's position and circumstances, and these may or may not match one's honne.
3. Honne (本音) refers to a person's true feelings and desires. These may be contrary to what is expected by society or what is required according to one's position and circumstances, and they are often kept hidden, except with one's closest friends.
Taken together, these are powerful forces on the individual to behave in an honorable way. The idea that there would be mass looting in Japan is simply anathema to Japanese culture. If you chose to behave outside of these norms then you are bringing shame on your name and your family. That is an unforgiveable sin in Japan.
Does that mean there is no violence in Japan or that murder, rape and other forms of assault never happen?
No.
Crime does occur in Japan, but in much less than in the United States and most other Western nations. The 1,097 murders in Japan last year were, according to statistics from the National Police Agency (NPA), down 200 from the previous year, a third of the number in 1954. This is out of a population of some 130 million, in the middle of the worst recession since the war.
This represents less than a tenth of the murder rate in the U.S., and a hundredth of that of the most violent countries in the Caribbean and South and Central America. Chicago, with a population of some 3 million, recorded 458 homicides--almost half of the murders in the entire nation of Japan with its 130 million people.
Some social scientists have concluded that in addition to the peculiarly Japanese concepts of Giri, Tatamae and Honne, another reason for the low murder rate is the nation's aging society. The number of people in their 20s — which is the peak age for murder — is falling, and with it, the murder rate is falling steadily, they say.
Of course, the U.S. and most of Western Europe are also aging societies with birth rates dropping sharply. Yet violent crime is still high compared with Japan.
In the late 1980s I wrote a story for the Chicago Tribune that discussed Japan's low crime rate. In it I discussed Japan's unique social structure and the importance it places on the individual to conform to the objectives and motivations of the larger group. In Japan much more importance is placed on conformity and social responsibility.
In the U.S. and most other Western Nations tremendous emphasis is placed on the individual. We encourage independent thought and place great value on individuality and uniqueness. In the U.S. it is often "all about me" to the detriment of others. We teach our children that they are more important than the whole. This "me, me, me" attitude continues into adolescence and adulthood and ironically has manifested itself into an inability of people to accept personal responsibility for their actions.
How often do we hear people say: "But it's not my fault," when, in fact, it is. Or maybe they are simply saying "The Devil made me do it." Avoiding personal responsibility has become a new American pastime. Look at the millions of people who took out low interest, sub-prime loans for houses they knew they couldn't afford. Then, when the housing market crashed and burned, they were left upside down in houses with mortgages much higher than the value of their property.
"It wasn't my fault," many said. "The banks made me do it."
Sigh.
In my story from Japan I used the example of a real event that occurred in Tokyo. A thief broke into the house of an aging pensioner. Holding a small knife he demanded the old man's money. The pensioner went to a small chest and pulled out the yen equivalent of about $100.
"That's all I have," the old man said.
The thief took the money, counted it and asked the pensioner how long it would be before he got his next check.
"About a week," he said.
"Here," the thief said. "This should be enough until then." He then returned half of the old man's money, bowed politely, and left.
In Japan, apparently, even thieves possess a sense of Giri, Tatamae and Honne.
Below are some recent crime statistics for selected countries and Japan. They are quite revealing.
Murders per 100,000:
1. Russian Federation 18.07
2. United States 6.32
3. Malaysia 2.73
4. Taiwan 1.17
5. Spain 1.08
6. Japan 0.58
Rape per 100,000:
1. United States 34.20
2. England and Wales 14.69
3. France 13.38
4. Taiwan 8.82
5. South Korea 4.38
6. Spain 3.23
7. Japan 1.48
Serious Assault per 100,000:
1. Australia 713.68
2. England & Wales 405.20
3. United States 357.94
4. Taiwan 37.30
5. Spain 23.94
6. Japan 15.40
Robbery/Violent Theft per 100,000:
1. Spain 169.85
2. United States 169.02
3. France 144.10
4. Taiwan 14.35
5. South Korea 11.74
6. Japan 2.71
In the U.S. we can't even win an NBA or NFL championship without violence breaking out. In Japan a devastating 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and threat of nuclear disaster has little impact on the fabric of Japanese society.
Go figure.
Social scientists in the U.S., the article said, were baffled by the total non-existence of looting and savage behavior in Japan considering the magnitude of this catastrophe and the fact that you have 130 million Japanese crammed together in an area the size of California.
Think back to the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans. All social order essentially broke down and looting, robbery, and killing became the norm. For weeks it was every man and woman for themselves and anything went. Naturally, the first rule of survival was to break into an appliance store and loot a big screen HD TV or some other appliance. How many scenes like that did you see from Japan?
I can tell you. None.
I lived and worked as a correspondent almost 10 years in Japan and I can tell you it is different from all other countries I reported from.
First, it remains a largely homogeneous society with minimal immigration. Thus Japanese society behaves like some vast bee hive where people live and work collaboratively while still competing with one another. They are governed by a highly developed system of behavior that dates back some 2,000 years.
Without going into great detail the way Japanese people behave is governed by three rather complex concepts:
1. Giri (義理), which denotes an “obligation, duty, justice” and an obligation to be ”faithful” and “conscientious”.
2. Tatemae (建前), which literally means "façade," is the behavior and opinions one displays in public. Tatemae is what is expected by society and required according to one's position and circumstances, and these may or may not match one's honne.
3. Honne (本音) refers to a person's true feelings and desires. These may be contrary to what is expected by society or what is required according to one's position and circumstances, and they are often kept hidden, except with one's closest friends.
Taken together, these are powerful forces on the individual to behave in an honorable way. The idea that there would be mass looting in Japan is simply anathema to Japanese culture. If you chose to behave outside of these norms then you are bringing shame on your name and your family. That is an unforgiveable sin in Japan.
Does that mean there is no violence in Japan or that murder, rape and other forms of assault never happen?
No.
Crime does occur in Japan, but in much less than in the United States and most other Western nations. The 1,097 murders in Japan last year were, according to statistics from the National Police Agency (NPA), down 200 from the previous year, a third of the number in 1954. This is out of a population of some 130 million, in the middle of the worst recession since the war.
This represents less than a tenth of the murder rate in the U.S., and a hundredth of that of the most violent countries in the Caribbean and South and Central America. Chicago, with a population of some 3 million, recorded 458 homicides--almost half of the murders in the entire nation of Japan with its 130 million people.
Some social scientists have concluded that in addition to the peculiarly Japanese concepts of Giri, Tatamae and Honne, another reason for the low murder rate is the nation's aging society. The number of people in their 20s — which is the peak age for murder — is falling, and with it, the murder rate is falling steadily, they say.
Of course, the U.S. and most of Western Europe are also aging societies with birth rates dropping sharply. Yet violent crime is still high compared with Japan.
In the late 1980s I wrote a story for the Chicago Tribune that discussed Japan's low crime rate. In it I discussed Japan's unique social structure and the importance it places on the individual to conform to the objectives and motivations of the larger group. In Japan much more importance is placed on conformity and social responsibility.
In the U.S. and most other Western Nations tremendous emphasis is placed on the individual. We encourage independent thought and place great value on individuality and uniqueness. In the U.S. it is often "all about me" to the detriment of others. We teach our children that they are more important than the whole. This "me, me, me" attitude continues into adolescence and adulthood and ironically has manifested itself into an inability of people to accept personal responsibility for their actions.
How often do we hear people say: "But it's not my fault," when, in fact, it is. Or maybe they are simply saying "The Devil made me do it." Avoiding personal responsibility has become a new American pastime. Look at the millions of people who took out low interest, sub-prime loans for houses they knew they couldn't afford. Then, when the housing market crashed and burned, they were left upside down in houses with mortgages much higher than the value of their property.
"It wasn't my fault," many said. "The banks made me do it."
Sigh.
In my story from Japan I used the example of a real event that occurred in Tokyo. A thief broke into the house of an aging pensioner. Holding a small knife he demanded the old man's money. The pensioner went to a small chest and pulled out the yen equivalent of about $100.
"That's all I have," the old man said.
The thief took the money, counted it and asked the pensioner how long it would be before he got his next check.
"About a week," he said.
"Here," the thief said. "This should be enough until then." He then returned half of the old man's money, bowed politely, and left.
In Japan, apparently, even thieves possess a sense of Giri, Tatamae and Honne.
Below are some recent crime statistics for selected countries and Japan. They are quite revealing.
Murders per 100,000:
1. Russian Federation 18.07
2. United States 6.32
3. Malaysia 2.73
4. Taiwan 1.17
5. Spain 1.08
6. Japan 0.58
Rape per 100,000:
1. United States 34.20
2. England and Wales 14.69
3. France 13.38
4. Taiwan 8.82
5. South Korea 4.38
6. Spain 3.23
7. Japan 1.48
Serious Assault per 100,000:
1. Australia 713.68
2. England & Wales 405.20
3. United States 357.94
4. Taiwan 37.30
5. Spain 23.94
6. Japan 15.40
Robbery/Violent Theft per 100,000:
1. Spain 169.85
2. United States 169.02
3. France 144.10
4. Taiwan 14.35
5. South Korea 11.74
6. Japan 2.71
In the U.S. we can't even win an NBA or NFL championship without violence breaking out. In Japan a devastating 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and threat of nuclear disaster has little impact on the fabric of Japanese society.
Go figure.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Can The Donald Win the White House in 2012?
One thing about Donald Trump. He is not afraid to speak his mind. Of course, if you have serious political ambitions (and he apparently does), saying what you REALLY believe can prove politically fatal.
Yet, the most current poll shows the New York real estate billionaire and reality show producer (The Celebrity Apprentice) in second place among Republicans--just behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and neck and neck with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. So what does that tell us?
Does it mean that the American people are at last ready to hear someone who tells it like it is? Does it mean that there could be a fresh wind blowing through Washington's government palaces with their deceitful populations of prevaricating political eunuchs and concubines?
Or does it mean that we will see another H. Ross Perot emerge a la 1992 and then crash and burn as the campaign gets serious?
Somehow, I don't think the 64-year-old Trump is another H. Ross Perot. For one thing the things he says have the ring of truth to them.
Let's take a look at a few of his most recent comments:
"I hate what’s happening to this country," he told Newsmax recently. "I hate to see this country ripped off by every other smart nation — China, India, Mexico. You look at the jobs that are pouring into Mexico. We give them incentives to move people out of Iowa. Newton, Iowa, got destroyed by Mexico. They had incentives from this government and they built the plant in Mexico and it wiped out a town called Newton."
Trump said, if elected, he would not hire "diplomats to negotiate with the Red Chinese, because we’re dealing with people who truly are not only smart, they’re great natural negotiators. They’re not our friends. They’re looking to strip us of everything they can strip us of.
"This country is in serious trouble. It’s not going to be a great country for long. It may not be a great country now. This country has to be brought back. Go out and get the toughest, smartest guys, because that’s what you need if you’re going to beat China and other countries."
Trump is right about China. It is NOT our friend. China is out for itself and if we are not careful, it will own the United States. Who is propping up the dollar, buying our Treasury bills, etc? It is China. How long will that go on? Only as long as it benefits the Chinese--or perhaps until they own the Washington Monument.
"The federal government has no money," Trump said recently. "It’s being taken away between fighting wars and being the policeman for countries that in all fairness we shouldn’t have been in in the first place. I’m a very conservative person. I am the world’s greatest hawk. I am a very militant person. I’m a big believer in the military. But we should be rebuilding our own country.
"We go to Afghanistan, we build a road, we build a highway. We build a school at the end of the highway. The school gets blown up, the road gets blown up, and we’re starting all over again. Why aren’t we building roads in Alabama? Why aren’t we building roads in New Jersey coming into Manhattan? You come into Manhattan on roads that look like we’re a Third World country. And you think they’re going to have democracy [in Afghanistan]? I don’t think so. We’ve totally defanged Iraq. As soon as we leave, Iran will come in and take over the oil of Iraq. And frankly, I think if somebody’s going to take over the oil in Iraq, maybe it should be us.
"I would like to rebuild the United States. I go to Abu Dhabi, I go to Qatar and other places. You go to China and they have airports that are so unbelievable, that they are building with our money. China is rebuilding itself. We are rebuilding China. Then you come into Kennedy International Airport and it’s obsolete. It’s a Third World airport. We have to rebuild our self."
The fact is China and OPEC are destroying the U.S economy. While everybody talks about an open and free global economy, that is not the case when it comes to China and many of our other so-called "friends." These countries manipulate their currencies to keep their goods priced low. They also erect barriers to American products or make it difficult for American firms to do business within their borders.
Trump's idea is to place a 25 percent tax on Chinese goods if it continues to manipulate its currency. He also said the United States needs to get much tougher with OPEC. Amen to that!
Yet many Americans fear that getting tougher with China, OPEC and other nations who have policies harmful to the U.S. economy could ultimately be bad for the U.S.
Trump is not convinced. "Our weak president that kisses everybody's ass is in more wars than I've ever seen," Trump said recently. "He's in Libya. He's in Afghanistan. He's in Iraq. Nobody respects us … Can I do worse?"
I don't think so.
Then there is the fact that Trump has the money needed to run a presidential campaign--which is estimated to cost about $600 million. When asked recently if he had that kind of money to spend he responded:
"Much more than that. That's one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich. So if I need $600 million, I could put up $600 million myself. That's a huge advantage."
Trump's net worth is $2.7 billion, making him the 137th richest person in the U.S., according to Forbes magazine. President Obama raised nearly $750 million in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. So, if it comes down to money, there is little doubt that Trump could hold his own against Obama.
The biggest question is whether or not Trump will get the Republican nomination. That would be a stretch. He is not a Republican insider, he has no political track record and he is considered a loose cannon by Republican leaders like Karl Rove, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush.
The other question is whether or not Trump would run as an independent candidate if he did not get the Republican nod.
H. Ross Perot tried that and all he did was take votes away from President Bush senior. If that is what Trump has in mind, then I suspect the Democrats are already licking their chops.
I think Trump is more politically savvy than that, however. If he doesn't get the Republican nomination then perhaps which ever Republican candidate wins the White House will do the smart thing and send The Donald to China as our ambassador.
Now THAT would be reality show I would pay to see!
Yet, the most current poll shows the New York real estate billionaire and reality show producer (The Celebrity Apprentice) in second place among Republicans--just behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and neck and neck with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. So what does that tell us?
Does it mean that the American people are at last ready to hear someone who tells it like it is? Does it mean that there could be a fresh wind blowing through Washington's government palaces with their deceitful populations of prevaricating political eunuchs and concubines?
Or does it mean that we will see another H. Ross Perot emerge a la 1992 and then crash and burn as the campaign gets serious?
Somehow, I don't think the 64-year-old Trump is another H. Ross Perot. For one thing the things he says have the ring of truth to them.
Let's take a look at a few of his most recent comments:
"I hate what’s happening to this country," he told Newsmax recently. "I hate to see this country ripped off by every other smart nation — China, India, Mexico. You look at the jobs that are pouring into Mexico. We give them incentives to move people out of Iowa. Newton, Iowa, got destroyed by Mexico. They had incentives from this government and they built the plant in Mexico and it wiped out a town called Newton."
Trump said, if elected, he would not hire "diplomats to negotiate with the Red Chinese, because we’re dealing with people who truly are not only smart, they’re great natural negotiators. They’re not our friends. They’re looking to strip us of everything they can strip us of.
"This country is in serious trouble. It’s not going to be a great country for long. It may not be a great country now. This country has to be brought back. Go out and get the toughest, smartest guys, because that’s what you need if you’re going to beat China and other countries."
Trump is right about China. It is NOT our friend. China is out for itself and if we are not careful, it will own the United States. Who is propping up the dollar, buying our Treasury bills, etc? It is China. How long will that go on? Only as long as it benefits the Chinese--or perhaps until they own the Washington Monument.
"The federal government has no money," Trump said recently. "It’s being taken away between fighting wars and being the policeman for countries that in all fairness we shouldn’t have been in in the first place. I’m a very conservative person. I am the world’s greatest hawk. I am a very militant person. I’m a big believer in the military. But we should be rebuilding our own country.
"We go to Afghanistan, we build a road, we build a highway. We build a school at the end of the highway. The school gets blown up, the road gets blown up, and we’re starting all over again. Why aren’t we building roads in Alabama? Why aren’t we building roads in New Jersey coming into Manhattan? You come into Manhattan on roads that look like we’re a Third World country. And you think they’re going to have democracy [in Afghanistan]? I don’t think so. We’ve totally defanged Iraq. As soon as we leave, Iran will come in and take over the oil of Iraq. And frankly, I think if somebody’s going to take over the oil in Iraq, maybe it should be us.
"I would like to rebuild the United States. I go to Abu Dhabi, I go to Qatar and other places. You go to China and they have airports that are so unbelievable, that they are building with our money. China is rebuilding itself. We are rebuilding China. Then you come into Kennedy International Airport and it’s obsolete. It’s a Third World airport. We have to rebuild our self."
The fact is China and OPEC are destroying the U.S economy. While everybody talks about an open and free global economy, that is not the case when it comes to China and many of our other so-called "friends." These countries manipulate their currencies to keep their goods priced low. They also erect barriers to American products or make it difficult for American firms to do business within their borders.
Trump's idea is to place a 25 percent tax on Chinese goods if it continues to manipulate its currency. He also said the United States needs to get much tougher with OPEC. Amen to that!
Yet many Americans fear that getting tougher with China, OPEC and other nations who have policies harmful to the U.S. economy could ultimately be bad for the U.S.
Trump is not convinced. "Our weak president that kisses everybody's ass is in more wars than I've ever seen," Trump said recently. "He's in Libya. He's in Afghanistan. He's in Iraq. Nobody respects us … Can I do worse?"
I don't think so.
Then there is the fact that Trump has the money needed to run a presidential campaign--which is estimated to cost about $600 million. When asked recently if he had that kind of money to spend he responded:
"Much more than that. That's one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I'm very rich. So if I need $600 million, I could put up $600 million myself. That's a huge advantage."
Trump's net worth is $2.7 billion, making him the 137th richest person in the U.S., according to Forbes magazine. President Obama raised nearly $750 million in 2008, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. So, if it comes down to money, there is little doubt that Trump could hold his own against Obama.
The biggest question is whether or not Trump will get the Republican nomination. That would be a stretch. He is not a Republican insider, he has no political track record and he is considered a loose cannon by Republican leaders like Karl Rove, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush.
The other question is whether or not Trump would run as an independent candidate if he did not get the Republican nod.
H. Ross Perot tried that and all he did was take votes away from President Bush senior. If that is what Trump has in mind, then I suspect the Democrats are already licking their chops.
I think Trump is more politically savvy than that, however. If he doesn't get the Republican nomination then perhaps which ever Republican candidate wins the White House will do the smart thing and send The Donald to China as our ambassador.
Now THAT would be reality show I would pay to see!
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