
Vietnam critic’s end was the start of family’s pain - smollett
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vietnam-critics-end-was-the-start-of-familys-pain/2015/11/01/b50e1d54-7cdf-11e5-b575-d8dcfedb4ea1_story.html
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owenversteeg
Nobody here is showing the other perspective: that of the millions of
Vietnamese whose hearts were touched by his actions. He was a martyr for the
Vietnamese people. Vietnamese schoolchildren learned a poem by heart - by
Vietnam's poet laureate - about Morrison's brave sacrifice. He is a national
hero ther, and is still remembered there for what he did.

Read
[http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/16/norman-m...](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/16/norman-
morrison-vietnam-war-protest) for a better description than I can do.

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Semiapies
One lesson? The moment ideology enters a scene, we pretend that's what it's
all about. Even his surviving family can only talk about his unhappiness in a
purely political context. The writer doesn't note that the man's behavior
leading up to the suicide is strongly reminiscent of other suicides and family
annihilators. Many people reading this article will only think of the war and
pacifism and not this guy's humanity.

It's similar to how many people imagine suicide bombers are just random
fervent Muslims given an explosive vest. In actuality, their recruiters target
depressed and traumatized people and try to sell them a way out of their pain.

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unclesaamm
On the contrary, it's meaningless to view this only through psychology. Was
the monk who self-immolated in Vietnam depressed? Psychology doesn't have the
vocabulary in place to understand political emotions, and the only people who
insist that political emotions don't exist are people who would prefer you
didn't have them.

This action is inseparable from the politics that created it -- that's why
people talk about politics in its context. Was it a cold action that hurt his
wife and the people closest to him? Yes. But was it also a bold humanitarian
move that made him a hero in Vietnam? Yes. It's possible for something to be
both political and personal, and this article didn't try to oversimplify that.

How about a different lesson? That unnecessary war causes untold suffering.

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Semiapies
"On the contrary, it's meaningless to view this only through psychology"

Nice excluded middle. But realistically, this man wasn't a humanitarian hero.
He accomplished nothing--nothing changed due to his immolation. Except that he
died, which looks like it was his actual and ultimate goal.

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rdl
If he had had the foresight to somehow get a reporter with camera onsite,
guaranteeing a photo, I think the impact of this would have been far greater.

A 1% chance of ending the Vietnam War in 1965 was probably objectively worth
one man's sacrifice. (Suicide is horrible, but on utilitarian grounds of
greatest good for greatest number.) I'm not sure what the actual odds were.
Pentagon Papers clearly had a bigger impact and no one died. There were
probably other effective anti-war protests which could have been used, too. (I
personally would listen to military officers breaking ranks and explaining why
the war is unwinnable as it was being prosecuted much more closely than I'd
listen to arbitrary hippie anti-war protestors; particularly someone who had
actually served in Vietnam in a capacity to see that firsthand, and who was
advocating a reasonable course. Similarly I listen to Binney/Drake/Wiebe,
Snowden, etc. far more seriously than random anti-NSA-on-moral-grounds
people.)

~~~
cinquemb
"The future will repeat the recent past until some catastrophe changes our
current way of implementing republican government, and Americans may not like
what that change will bring." \- Major General (Rtd) Mike Symanski

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tim333
There was also presumably some pain for the families of 2 million or so
Vietnamese killed. Maybe the moral is to avoid wars even if the alternatives
are less glamorous. The US could have allied with the Vietnamese and basically
bribed them to adopt liberal values rather than going the puppet government
and military intervention route.

